The Portable Bernard Shaw [The Viking Portable Library #90 ed.] 0140150900, 9780140150902

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she hears right off

been at it all her life. \ though six months ago, she'd never PICKERING./ much as touched a piano / MRS HIGGINS [putting her fingers in her ears, as they are by this time shouting one another down with an intolerable

HIGGINS.

(

I

(as

noise] Sh-sh-sh-sh! [They stop].

PICKERING.

beg your pardon. [He draws his chair back

I

apologetically].

HIGGINS. Sorry.

When

can get a word

MRS

in

Pickering starts shouting nobody

edgeways.

Henry. Colonel Pickering: dont you realize that when Eliza walked into Wimpole Street, something walked in with her? PICKERING. Her father did. But Henry soon got rid of him. MRS HIGGINS. It would havc been more to the point if her HIGGINS.

Be

quict,

mother had. But as her mother didnt something PICKERING. But what?

MRS

else did.

HIGGINS [unconsciously dating herself by the word]

A

problem. PICKERING.

Oh

I see.

The problem

of

how

to pass her off

as a lady.

HIGGINS.

MRS

I'll

solve that problem. Ive half solved

it

already.

HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem of what is to be done with her afterwards.

388

Pygmalion

HiGGiNS. I dont see anything in that. She can go her

way, with

own

have given her. MRS HIGGINS. The advantages of that poor woman who was here just now! The manners and habits that disqualify a fine

the advantages

all

lady from earning her

I

own

living

without giving

what you mean? PICKERING [indulgently, being rather bored] Oh, that will be all right, Mrs Higgins. [He rises to go]. HIGGINS [rising also] We'll find her some light employment. PICKERING. She's happy enough. Dont you worry about her. Goodbye. [He shakes hands as if he were consoling a frightened child, and makes for the door], HIGGINS. Anyhow, theres no good bothering now. The thing's done. Goodbye, mother. [He kisses her, and foU her a fine lady's income!

lows Pickering]. PICKERING [turning for a

Is that

final

consolation]

There are

plenty of openings. We'll do whats right. Goodbye.

HIGGINS

[to

Pickering as they go out together] Lets take her

to the Shakespear exhibition at Earls Court.

PICKERING. Yes:

lets.

HIGGINS. She'll mimic

Her remarks all

will

be delicious.

the people for us

when we

get

home. PICKERING. Ripping. [Both are heard laughing as they go downstairs].

MRS HIGGINS

[riscs

work

With an impatient bounce, and returns

She sweeps a litter of disarranged papers out of the way; snatches a sheet of paper from her stationery case; and tries resolutely to to her

write.

At

at the writing-table.

the third time she gives

it

up; flings

down her

pen; grips the table angrily and exclaims] Oh, men! men!

men!! men!!!

Clearly Eliza will not pass as a duchess yet; and Higgins's bet remains unwon. But the six months are not yet ex-

hausted; and just in time Eliza does actually pass as a

For a glimpse of how she did it imagine an Embassy in London one summer evening after dark. The hall door has an awning and a carpet across the sidewalk to the

princess.

Pygmalion

389

kerb, because a grand reception

crowd

is

lined

up

A Rolls-Royce

is

in progress.

A

small

to see the guests arrive.

car drives up. Pickering in evening dress,

with medals and orders,

and hands out Eliza, in opera cloak, evening dress, diamonds, fan, flowers and all accessories. Higgins follows. The car drives off; and the three go up the steps and into the house, the door opening for them as they approach. Inside the house they find themselves in a spacious hall from which the grand staircase rises. On the left are the arrangements for the gentlemen's cloaks. The male guests are depositing their hats and wraps there. On the right is a door leading to the ladies' cloakroom. Ladies are going in cloaked and coming out in splendor. Pickering whispers to Eliza and points out the ladies' room. She goes into it. Higgins and Pickering take off their overcoats and take tickets for them from the attendant. One of the guests, occupied in the same way, has his back turned. Having taken his ticket, he turns round and reveals himself as an important looking young man with an astonishingly hairy face. He has an enormous mous-. alights,

tache, flowing out into luxuriant whiskers.

Waves

of hair

on his brow. His hair is cropped closely at the back and glows with oil. Otherwise he is very smart. He cluster

wears several worthless orders. He is evidently a foreigner, guessable as a whiskered Pandour from Hungary; but in spite of the ferocity of his moustache he is amiable and genially voluble.

Recognizing Higgins, he flings his arms wide apart and approaches him enthusiastically. WHISKERS. Maestro, maestro [he embraces Higgins and kisses

HIGGINS.

him on both

No

I

dont.

am

cheeks].

Who

You remember me?

the devil are you?

your best and greatest pupil. I am little Nepommuck, the marvellous boy. I have made your name famous throughout Europe. You teach me phonetic. You cannot forget ME. HIGGINS. Why dont you shave? NEPOMMUCK. I have not your imposing appearance, your

WHISKERS.

I

your pupil: your

first

pupil,

390

Pygmalion

your brow. Nobody notice me when I shave. Now famous: they call me Hairy Faced Dick. HiGGiNS. And what are you doing here among all these chin, I

am

swells?

NEPOMMUCK.

I

am

32 languages.

interpreter. I speak

indispensable at these international parties.

You

I

am

are great

you place a man anywhere in London the moment he open his mouth. I place any man in cockney

specialist:

Europe.

A to

footman hurries down the grand

staircase

and comes

Nepommuck.

FOOTMAN. You are wanted upstairs. Her Excellency cannot understand the Greek gentleman. NEPOMMUCK. Thank you, yes, immediately. The footman goes and is lost in the crowd. NEPOMMUCK \to Higgins] This Greek diplomatist pretends he cannot speak nor understand English. He cannot deceive me. He is the son of a Clerkenwell watchmaker. He speaks English so villainously that he dare not utter a word of it without betraying his origin. I help him to pretend; but

them

PICKERING.

make him pay through

I

pay.

all

Ha

the nose.

make

I

[He hurries upstairs], fellow really an expert? Can he find out

Is this

ha!

Eliza and blackmail her?

HIGGINS.

We

Eliza

shall see. If

comes from

I lose

my

bet.

and joins them. Are you ready?

the cloakroom

PICKERING. Well, Eliza, LIZA.

he finds her out

now

for

it.

Are you nervous, Colonel?

PICKERING. Frightfully. first battle. It's

LIZA. It

is

the

not the

first

first

—

I feel

exactly as I felt before

my

time that frightens.

time for me. Colonel.

—

I

have done

hundreds of times in my little piggery Angel Court in my day-dreams. I am in a dream now. Promise me not to let Professor Higgins wake me; for if he does I shall forget everything and talk as I used to in Drury Lane. PICKERING. Not a word, Higgins. [To Eliza] Now ready? LIZA. Ready. PICKERING. Go. this fifty times

in

Pygmalion

391

They mount the stairs, Higgins last. Pickering whispers footman on the first landing. FIRST LANDING FOOTMAN. Miss Doolittlc, Colonel Pickering, to the

Professor Higgins.

SECOND LANDING FOOTMAN. Miss

Doolittlc, Colonel Picker-

ing, Professor Higgins.

At

Ambassador and

the top of the staircase the

Nepommuck

wife, with

his

at her elbow, are receiving.

HOSTESS [taking Eliza's hand] How d'ye do? HOST [same play] How d'ye do? How d'ye do, Pickering? LIZA [with a beautiful gravity that awes her hostess] How do you do? [She passes on to the drawing room]. HOSTESS. Is that your adopted daughter. Colonel Pickering? She will make a sensation. PICKERING. Most kind of you to invite her for me. [He passes on].

HOSTESS

[to

Nepommuck] Find

NEPOMMUCK

[bowing]

out

Excellency

about her.

all

—

goes into

[he

the

crowd].

HOST.

He

How

d'ye do, Higgins?

You have

a rival here tonight.

introduced himself as your pupil.

He

can learn a language dozens of them. A sure mark of a

HIGGINS.

Is

he any good?

in a fortnight

fool.

As

—knows

a phonetician,

no good whatever. HOSTESS,

How How

d'ye do. Professor?

do you do? Fearful bore for you this sort of thing. Forgive my part in it. [He passes on]. In the drawing room and its suite of salons the reception is in full swing. Eliza passes through. She is so intent on her ordeal that she walks like a somnambulist

HIGGINS.

in a desert instead of a

They

debutante in a fashionable crowd.

stop talking to look at her, admiring her dress,

her jewels, and her strangely attractive

self.

Some

of

the younger ones at the back stand on their chairs to see.

from the staircase and mingle with their guests. Higgins, gloomy and contemptuous of the whole business, comes into the group where

The Host and Hostess come

they are chatting.

in

Pygmalion

392

HOSTESS. Ah, here us

all

Professor Higgins: he will

is

HIGGINS [almost morosely] HOSTESS.

tell us.

Tell

about the wonderful young lady, Professor.

You know

What wonderful young

very well. They

tell

me

lady?

there has been

nothing like her in London since people stood on their

Mrs Langtry.

chairs to look at

Nepommuck

joins the group, full of news.

HOSTESS. Ah, here you are

found out

all

NEPOMMUCK. HOSTESS.

A

I

at last,

Nepommuck, Have you

about the Doolittle lady? have found out all about her. She

fraud!

Oh

NEPOMMUCK. YES,

is

a fraud.

no.

yes.

She cannot deceive me. Her name

cannot be Doolittle. HIGGINS. Why? NEPOMMUCK. Because

she

is

Doolittle

is

an English name.

And

not English.

HOSTESS. Oh, nonsense! She speaks English perfectly.

NEPOMMUCK. Too perfectly. Can you shew me any English woman who speaks English as it should be spoken? Only foreigners who have been taught to speak it speak it well.

HOSTESS. Certainly she

terrified

me by

the

way

she said

How d'ye

do. I had a schoolmistress who talked like that; and I was mortally afraid of her. But if she is not English what is she?

NEPOMMUCK. Hungarian. ALL THE REST. Hungarian!

NEPOMMUCK. Hungarian. And garian.

My blood

is

of royal blood.

I

am Hun-

royal.

HIGGINS. Did you speak to her in Hungarian?

NEPOMMUCK.

She was very clever. She said "Please speak to me in English: I do not understand French." French! She pretends not to know the difference between Hungarian and French. Impossible: "she knows both. HIGGINS. And the blood royal? How did you find that out? NEPOMMUCK. Instinct, maestro, instinct. Only the Magyar races can produce that air of the divine right, those resolute eyes. She is a princess. HOST. What do you say, Professor? HIGGINS. I say an ordinary London girl out of the gutter I did.

Pygmalion

393

and taught

by an expert.

to speak

I

place her in Drury

Lane.

NEPOMMUCK. Ha ha

mad on gutter

HiGGiNS

ha! Oh, maestro, maestro, you are

the subject of cockney dialects.

The London

the whole world for you.

IS

What does your Excellency say? I agree with Nepommuck. She must

[to the hostess]

HOSTESS. Oh, of course be a princess

at least.

HOST. Not necessarily legitimate, of course. Morganatic perhaps. But that HIGGINS.

I

my

stick to

undoubtedly her

is

class.

opinion.

HOSTESS. Oh, you are incorrigible.

The group breaks

up, leaving Higgins isolated. Picker-

ing joins him.

PICKERING.

Where

Eliza?

is

We

must keep an eye on

her.

Eliza joins them.

much more. The people all stare so at me. An old lady has just told me that I speak exactly like Queen Victoria. I am sorry if I have lost your bet. I have done my best; but nothing can make me

LIZA.

the

I

dont think

same

PICKERING.

can bear

I

as these people.

You have

not lost

it,

my

dear.

You have won

it

ten times over.

HIGGINS. Let us get out of

this.

I

have had enough of

chattering to these fools.

and I am hungry. Let us clear out and have supper somewhere.

PICKERING. Eliza

ACT

is

tired;

IV

The Wimpole Street laboratory. Midnight. Nobody in the room. The clock on the mantlepiece strikes twelve. The fire is

not alight:

it is

a

summer

Presently Higgins

HIGGINS [calling

night.

and Pickering are heard on

down

the stairs,

to Pickering] I say. Pick: lock up,

will you? I shant be going out again. PICKERING. Right. Can Mrs Pearce go to bed?

want anything more, do we?

We

dont

Pygmalion

394 HiGGiNS. Lord, no! Eliza opens the door in all the finery in

and

is

seen on the lighted landing

which she has

just

won

Higgins's bet

for him. She comes to the hearth, and switches on the electric lights there.

She

is

is

almost

tragic.

She takes

gloves on the piano; and

and

silent.

hat,

comes

off

sits

her pallor contrasts

tired:

and

strongly with her dark eyes

and her expression her cloak; puts her fan and hair;

down on

the bench, brooding

Higgins, in evening dress, with overcoat in,

and

carrying a smoking jacket which he has

He

takes off the hat and overcoat; throws them carelessly on the newspaper stand; disposes

picked up downstairs. of his coat in the

same way; puts on

and throws himself wearily

the

smoking jacket;

into the easy-chair at the

hearth. Pickering, similarly attired,

comes

in.

He

also

takes off his hat and overcoat, and is about to throw them on Higgins's when he hesitates. PICKERING. I say: Mrs Pearce will row if we leave these things lying about in the drawing room. HIGGINS. Oh, chuck them over the banisters into the hall. She'll find them there in the morning and put them away all right. She'll think we were drunk. PICKERING. We are, slightly. Are there any letters? HIGGINS. I didnt look. [Pickering takes the overcoats and hats and goes downstairs. Higgins begins half singing half yawning an air from La Fanciulla del Golden West. Suddenly he stops and exclaims] I wonder where the devil

my

slippers are!

Eliza looks at

him darkly; then

rises

suddenly and

leaves the room.

Higgins yawns again, and resumes his song. Pickering returns, with the contents of the letter-box in his

hand.

PICKERING. Only circulars, and for you.

[He throws the

this

coroneted billet-doux

circulars into the fender,

and

posts himself on the hearthrug, with his back to the grate].

HIGGINS [glancing at the billet-doux] Money-lender. [He

throws the Eliza

letter after the circulars].

returns

with

a

pair

of

large

down-at-heel

Pygmalion slippers.

395

She places them on the carpet before Higgins,

and sits as before without a word. HIGGINS [yawning again] Oh Lord! What an evening! What a crew! What a silly tomfoolery! [He raises his shoe to and catches sight of the slippers. He stops unlacing and looks at them as if they had appeared there of their own accord]. Oh! Theyre there, are they? unlace

it,

PICKERING [stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It's been a long day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the reception! Rather too much of a good thing. But youve won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the trick, and something to spare, eh? HIGGINS [fervently] Thank God it's over! Eliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her;

and she recovers herself and sits stonily as before. Were you nervous at the garden party? Eliza didnt seem a bit nervous.

PICKERING.

HIGGINS. Oh,

she

wasnt nervous.

I

knew

she'd be

/ was.

all right.

No: it's a strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on me. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics; but after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadnt backed myself to do it I should have chucked the whole thing up two months ago. It was a silly notion: the whole thing has been a bore. PICKERING. Oh come! the garden party was frightfully exciting. My heart began beating like anything. HIGGINS. Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw we were going to win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing nothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour, with no-

body but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to! I tell

you, Pickering, never again for me.

artificial

duchesses.

The whole

to talk

No more

thing has been simple

purgatory.

PICKERING. Youve never been broken in properly to the social routine. [Strolling over to the piano]

dipping into

young

again.

success. I

it

occasionally myself:

Anyhow,

it

was

it

I

rather enjoy

makes me feel immense

a great success: an

was quite frightened once or twice because

Eliza was doing

it

so well.

You

see, lots of the real

people

Pygmalion

396 cant do

it

at all:

theyre such fools that they think style

comes by nature to people in their position; and so they never learn. Theres always something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.

me mad:

HiGGiNs. Yes: thats what drives

the

silly

people

dont know their own silly business. [Rising] However, it's over and done with; and now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow. Eliza's beauty becomes murderous, PICKERING. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it's been a great occasion: a triumph for you. Goodnight. [He goes],

HIGGINS [following him] Goodnight. [Over his shoulder, at the door] Put out the lights, Eliza; and

make

not to

[He goes

coffee for

me

and walks across

lights.

By

I'll

take tea.

to the

and

feel indignant as she

hearth to switch off the is on the point of

the time she gets there she

screaming. She

hard

morning:

in the

Mrs Pearce

out],

Eliza tries to control herself rises

tell

sits

down

in Higgins's chair

and holds on

way and

flings herself

to the arms. Finally she gives

furiously on the floor, raging.

HIGGINS I

[in

despairing wrath outside]

done with

my

slippers?

What

[He appears

the devil have

at the door].

LIZA [snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him

one

There are your And there. Take your slippers; and may you never have a day's luck with them! HIGGINS [astounded] What on earth [He comes to her], Whats the matter? Get up. [He pulls her up]. Anything after the other with all her force]

slippers.

—

wrong? LIZA [breathless] Nothing wrong bet for you, havnt I? Thats

matter,

I

!

—with you. Ive won your enough for you,

/ dont

suppose.

You won my

bet! You! Presumptuous insect! / you throw those slippers at me for? LIZA. Because I wanted to smash your face. I'd like to kill you, you selfish brute. Why didnt you leave me where you picked me out of in the gutter? You thank God it's all over, and that now you can throw me back again there, do you? [She crisps her fingers frantically].

HIGGINS.

won

it.

What

did

—

Pygmalion

397

HiGGiNS [looking at her in cool wonder] The creature nervous, after

is

all.

LIZA, [gives a suffocated

scream of fury, and

instinctively

darts her nails at his face]\\

HIGGINS [catching her wrists] Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How dare you shew your temper to me? Sit down

and be

[He throws her roughly into the easy-chair], LIZA [crushed by superior strength and weight] Whats to quiet.

become of me? Whats

become of me? HIGGINS. How the devil do I know whats to become of you? What does it matter what becomes of you? LIZA. You dont care. I know you dont care. You wouldnt care if I was dead. I'm nothing to you not so much as them slippers. to

—

HIGGINS [thundering]

Those

slippers.

LIZA [with bitter submission] Those slippers. it

made any

A

difference

I

didnt think

now.

pause. Eliza hopeless

and crushed. Higgins a

little

uneasy.

HIGGINS

on

manner] Why have you begun going I ask whether you complain of your

[in his loftiest

like this?

May

treatment here? LIZA.

No.

Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs Pearce? Any of the servants? LIZA. No. HIGGINS. I presume you dont pretend that / have treated HIGGINS.

you badly? No.

LIZA.

I am glad to hear it. [He moderates his tone]. Perhaps youre tired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne? [He moves towards the door]. LIZA. No [Recollecting her manners] Thank you. HIGGINS [good-humored again] This has been coming on you for some days. I suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party. But thats all over now.

HIGGINS.

[He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She writhes]. Theres nothing more to worry about. LIZA. No. Nothing more for you to worry about. [She suddenly rises and gets away from him by going to the

Pygmalion

398

piano bench, where she I

wish

I

sits

and hides her

face].

Oh God!

was dead.

HiGGiNS [staring after her in sincere surprise] Why? In heaven's name, why? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen

me, Eliza. All this irritation is purely subjective. LIZA. I dont understand. I'm too ignorant. HIGGINS. It's only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else: Nobody's hurting you. Nothing's wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep it off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you comfortable. LIZA. I heard your prayers. *Thank God it's all over!" HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, dont you thank God it's all over? Now you are free and can do what you like. to

What am I What have you left me fit for? Where am I go? What am I to do? Whats to become of me?

LIZA, [pulling herself together in desperation]

for?

fit

to

HIGGINS [enlightened, but not at

all impressed] Oh, thats whats worrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks about in his usual manner, rattling

condescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shoudnt bother about it if I were you. I should imagine you wont have

the contents of his pockets, as

much

if

difficulty in settling yourself

somewhere or

other,

I hadnt quite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he does not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and decides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He

though

bites a large piece out of the apple

You like

see, Eliza, all

me and

men

the Colonel.

and munches

it

noisily].

are not confirmed old bachelors

Most men

are the marrying sort

(poor devils!); and youre not bad-looking: it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes not now, of course, because youre crying and looking as ugly as the very devil; but when youre all right and quite yourself, youre

—

what I should call attractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you understand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up and look at yourself in the glass; and you wont feel so cheap. Eliza again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.

—

,

Pygmalion

399

The look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy expression of happiness, as it is quite a good one, HIGGINS

[a genial

my mother

afterthought occurring to him]

could find some chap or other

I

daresay

who would do

very well.

We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road. HIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean? LIZA.

LIZA.

I

sold flowers. I didnt

me

a lady of left

I'm not

fit

sell

myself.

Now

youve made

to sell anything else.

I

wish youd

me where you found me.

HIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate] Tosh, Eliza. Dont you insult human relations by dragging

all this

cant about buying and selling into

You neednt marry the fellow if you dont like him. What else am I to do? HIGGINS. Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea

it.

LIZA.

of a

you up in one: he has lots of money. [Chuckling] He'll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing today; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole in two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it florist's

shop? Pickering could

set

the millennium to have a flower shop of your own.

Come!

youU be all right. I must clear off to bed: I'm devilish sleepy. By the way, I came down for something: I forgot what it was. LIZA. Your slippers. HIGGINS. Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up, and is going out when she rises and speaks to him].

LIZA. Before

you

go, sir

HIGGINS [dropping the slippers

him LIZA.

Sir]

in his surprise at

her calling

Eh?

Do my

clothes belong to

me

or to Colonel Pickering?

HIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very climax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering?

He

might want them for the next experiment on.

LIZA.

girl

you pick up

to

400

Pygmalion

HiGGiNs [shocked and hurt]

Is

that the

way you

feel

towards

us?

dont want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know is whether anything belongs to me. My

LIZA.

I

own

clothes were burnt.

HIGGINS. But what does

it

matter?

Why

need you

start

bothering about that in the middle of the night?

want to know what I may take away with me, I dont want to be accused of stealing, HIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldnt have said that, Eliza. That shews a want of feeling. LIZA. I'm sorry. I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I have to be careful. There cant be any feelings between the like of you and the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what doesnt? HIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you like. Except the jewels. Theyre hired. Will that satisfy you? [He turns on his heel and is about to go LIZA.

I

extreme dudgeon]. LIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a further supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take these to your room and keep them safe? J dont want to rua the risk of their being in

missing.

HIGGINS [furious]

Hand them

his hands]. If these

jeweller, I'd

over. [She puts

belonged to

ram them down your

perfunctorily thrusts

them

decorating himself

with

me

them

into his

instead of to the

ungrateful throat. [He

into his pockets, unconsciously

the

protruding

ends of the

chains].

LIZA [taking a ring

off]

one you bought

me

This ring

isnt the jeweller's:

in Brighton. I

dont want

it*s it

the

now.

[Higgins dashes the ring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly that she crouches over the

piano with her hands over her face, and exclaims] Dont you hit me, HIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such a thing? It is you who have hit me.

You have wounded me

to the heart

Pygmalion

401

LIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad* Ive got a

my own

little

of

back anyhow.

HIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have caused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to me before, I prefer to say nothing

more

am

tonight. I

LIZA [pertly]

Youd

better leave a note for

the coffee; for she

HIGGINS [formally]

going to bed.

wont be

Damn

and damn you; and

Mrs Pearce about

by me, Mrs Pearce; and damn the told

[wildly]

damn my own

folly in

coffee;

having

my hard-earned knowledge and the treasure of regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He goes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by lavished

my

slamming the door savagely]. Eliza goes down on her knees on the hearthrug for the ring.

moment what

When

she finds

it

to look

she considers for a

do with it. Finally she flings it down on the dessert stand and goes upstairs in a tearing rage^

The

to

furniture of Eliza*s

room has been

increased by a

and a sumptuous dressing-table. She comes and switches on the electric light. She goes to the wardrobe; opens it; and pulls out a walking dress, a hat, and a pair of shoes, which she throws on the bed. She takes off her evening dress and shoes; then takes a padded hanger from the wardrobe; adjusts it carefully in the evening dress and hangs it in the wardrobe, which she shuts with a slam. She puts on her walking shoes, her walking dress, and hat. She takes her wrist watch from the dressing-table and fastens it on. She pulls on her gloves; takes her vanity bag; and looks into it to see that her purse is there before hanging it on her wrist. She makes for the door. Every movement expresses her big wardrobe

in

furious resolution.

She takes a last look at herself in the glass. She suddenly puts out her tongue at herself; then leaves the room, switching off the electric light at the door. Meanwhile, in the street outside, Freddy Eynsford

— 402

Pygmalion

Hill, lovelorn, is

gazing up at the second

floor, in

which

one of the windows is still lighted. The light goes out. FREDDY. Goodnight, darling, darling, darling. Eliza comes out, giving the door a considerable bang behind her,

Whatever are you doing here? FREDDY. Nothing. I spend most of my nights only place where I'm happy. Dont laugh LIZA.

here. at

It's

the

me, Miss

Doolittle.

Dont you call me Miss Doolittle, do you hear? Liza's good enough for me. [She breaks down and grabs him by the shoulders] Freddy: you dont think I'm a heartless guttersnipe, do you? FREDDY. Oh no, no, darling: how can you imagine such a LIZA.

You

thing?

He

are the loveliest, dearest

loses all self-control

and smothers her with kisses. They stand there in

She, hungry for comfort, responds.

one another's arms.

An

elderly police constable arrives.

Now

CONSTABLE [scandalized]

then!

Now

then!!

Now

then!!!

They

release

one another

Weve

FREDDY. Sorry, constable. They run away.

The

hastily,

only just become engaged.

constable shakes his head, reflecting on his

courtship and on the vanity of off

in

the

opposite

human

direction

hopes.

own

He moves

with slow professional

steps.

The

flight

of the lovers takes them to Cavendish

Square. There they halt to consider their next move. LIZA [out of breath]

He

didnt half give

me

a fright, that

him proper. havnt taken you out of your way. Where

copper. But you answered

FREDDY. I hope I were you going? LIZA.

To

the river.

FREDDY. What for? LIZA.

To make

a hole in

it.

FREDDY [horrified] Eliza, Whats the matter?

darling.

What do you mean?

Pygmalion LIZA.

403

Never mind.

It

doesnt matter now. Theres nobody in

the world now but you and me, FREDDY. Not a soul.

They indulge prised by a

there?

is

another embrace, and are again sur-

in

much younger

constable.

SECOND CONSTABLE. Now then, you two! Whats this? Where do you think you are? Move along here, double quick. FREDDY. As you Say, sir, double quick. They run away again, and are in Hanover Square -

before they stop for another conference.

FREDDY. LIZA.

I

It's

FREDDY.

had no idea the police were so

their business to

We

the streets LIZA.

hunt

girls off the streets.

must go somewhere. all

Cant we?

devilishly prudish.

We

cant wander about

night. I

think

it'd

be lovely to wander about for

ever.

FREDDY. Oh, darling.

They embrace crawling

again, oblivious of the arrival of a

taxi. It stops.

TAXiMAN. Can I drive you and the lady anywhere, sir? They start asunder. LIZA. Oh, Freddy, a taxi. The very thing. FREDDY. But, damn it, Ive no money. LIZA. I have plenty. The Colonel thinks you should never go out without ten pounds in your pocket. Listen. We'll drive about all night; and in the morning I'll call on old Mrs Higgins and ask her what I ought to do. I'll tell you all about it in the cab. And the police wont touch us there.

FREDDY. Righto! Ripping. \To the Taximan] Wimbledon Common. [They drive off].

ACT V Mrs

Higgins's drawing room. She

before.

The parlormaid comes

THE PARLORMAID stairs

[at the

door]

is

at

her writing-table as

in.

Mr

with Colonel Pickering.

Henry, maam,

is

down-

Pygmalion

404

MRS HiGGiNS. Well, shew them up. THE PARLORMAID. Theyrc using Telephoning to the police,

MRS

I

telephone,

the

maam.

think.

HIGGINS. What!

THE PARLORMAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr Henry is in a state, maam. I thought I'd better tell you.

MRS

HIGGINS. If you had told

in a state

to

me

that

would have been more

it

come up when theyve

suppose he's

lost

Mr Henry

surprising.

finished

was not Tell them

with the police.

something.

THE PARLORMAID. Ycs, maam [going]. MRS HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle Henry and the Colonel are here. Ask her not down til I send for her. THE PARLORMAID. Ycs, maam. Higgins bursts a

I

in.

He

is,

that to

Mr

come

as the parlormaid has said, in

state.

Look

confounded thing! MRS HIGGINS. Ycs, dear. Good morning. [He checks his impatience and kisses her, whilst the parlormaid goes

HIGGINS.

out].

What

here, mother: heres a

is it?

HIGGINS. Eliza's bolted.

MRS

HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing]

You must have

frightened her.

HIGGINS. Frightened her! Nonsense! She was

left last night,

and all that; and instead of going to bed she changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasnt slept in. She came in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool Mrs Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What am I to do? MRS HIGGINS. Do without, I'm afraid, Henry. The girl has as usual, to turn out the lights

a perfect right to leave

if

she chooses.

HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But

I

know what appointments Ive comes in. Mrs Higgins puts down

find anything. I dont

—

cant got,

[Pickering her I'm pen and turns away from the writing-table]. PICKERING [shaking hands] Good morning, Mrs Higgins.

Has Henry

told

you? [He

sits

down on

the ottoman].

— Pygmalion

405

What does

HiGGiNS.

that ass of

an inspector say? Have you

offered a reward?

MRS HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You dont mean to say you have set the poHce after Eliza? HIGGINS. Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do? [He sits in the Elizabethan chair]. PICKERING. The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he suspected us of

MRS

some improper purpose.

What right have you and give the girl's name as if she were umbrella, or something? Really! [She sits

HIGGINS. Well, of coursc he did.

to go to the police

a

thief,

down

or a lost

again, deeply vexed].

HIGGINS. But

PICKERING.

cant

to find her. let

her go like

What were we

Higgins.

MRS

we want

We

HIGGINS.

you know, Mrs

this,

to do?

You havc no more

two children. Why The parlormaid comes

in

sense, either of you, than

and breaks

off the convert

sation.

THE PARLORMAID. Mr Henry:

a gentleman wants to see you very particular. He's been sent on from Wimpole Street.

HIGGINS. Oh, brother!

THE PARLOMAiD.

I

A Mr

cant see anyone now. Doolittlc,

Who is it?

sir.

PICKERING. Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman? THE PARLORMAID. Dustmau! Oh no, sir: a gentleman. HIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it's some relative of hers that she's gone to. Somebody we know nothing about. [To the parlormaid] Send him up, quick, THE PARLORMAID. Ycs, sir. [She goes].

HIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives!

now we

shall

Chippendale

MRS

HIGGINS.

hear something. [He

sits

down

in

the

chair],

Do you know

any of her people?

PICKERING. Only her father: the fellow

THE PARLORMAID [announcing]

Mr

we

told

you about.

Doolittle.

[She with'

draws]. Doolittle enters.

He

is

resplendently dressed as for a

fashionable wedding, and might, in fact, be the bride-

groom.

A

and patent

flower in his buttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, leather shoes complete the effect. He is too

406

Pygmalion

concerned with the business he has come on to notice Higgins. He walks straight to Higgins, and accosts him with vehement reproach. DOOLiTTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this? You done this.

Mrs

Done what, man?

HIGGINS.

DOOLITTLE. This,

Look

I

tell

you.

Look

at

it.

Look

at this hat.

at this coat.

PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes? DOOLITTLE. EHza! Not she. Why would she buy

MRS HIGGINS. Good moming, Mr down?

Doolittle.

me clothes? Wont you sit

DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten his hostess] Asking your pardon, maam. [He approaches her and shakes her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on Pickering's right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I cant think of anything

What

else.

happened to you? DOOLITTLE. I shouldnt mind if it had only happened to me: anything might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you might say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Enry Iggins. HIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? DOOLITTLE. Havc you lost her? HIGGINS.

the dickens has

HIGGINS. Yes.

DOOLITTLE.

You have all the luck, you have; I aint found me quick enough now after what you

her; but she'll find

done

MRS

to

me.

my

HIGGINS. But what has

son done to you, Mr.

Doolittle?

DOOLITTLE. Donc to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality. HIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over Doolittle]

Youre

raving.

Youre drunk. Youre mad.

I

gave you

five

pounds. After that I had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. Ive never seen you since,

DOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk

am

I?

Mad am

you or did you not write a

letter to

I? Tell

me

this.

Did

an old blighter

in

Pygmalion

^qj

America that was giving five millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that wanted you to invent a universal language for him? HiGGiNS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He down again carelessly].

sits

DOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did you not write a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a common

dustman? HIGGINS. Oh, silly

after

your

remember making some

first visit I

joke of the kind.

DOOLITTLE. Ah!

You may

well call

it

a silly joke.

It

put the

on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to shew that Americans is not like us: that they reckonize and respect merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me lid

a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his

Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up to six times a year.

The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] a lark! PICKERING. safe thing for you, Doolittle. They wont ask

HIGGINS.

What

A

you

twice.

DOOLITTLE.

It aint

the lecturing

mind.

them hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Enry Iggins. Now I am worried; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches m e for money. blue in the face,

It's

I will,

I

I'll

lecture

and not turn a

my

a fine thing for you, says

solicitor. Is it? says

I.

You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram

in the dust cart,

and got

me

shut of

he got

him

could hardly stand on

off,

and got shut of

as quick as he could.

the doctors: used to shove I

me

me

me

Same with

out of the hospital before

my legs,

and nothing

to pay.

Now

408

Pygmalion

they finds out that I'm not a healthy unless they looks after

me

man and

cant live

twice a day. In the house I'm

do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must and touch me for it. A year ago I hadnt a relative in the world except two or three that wouldnt speak to me. Now Ive fifty, and not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for myself: thats middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Dont you be anxious: I bet she's on my doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling flowers if I wasnt respectable. And the next one to touch me will be you, Enry Iggins. I'll have to learn to speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper English. Thats where youll come in; and I daresay thats what you done it for. MRS HiGGiNS. But, my dear Mr Doolittle, you need not suffer all this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this bequest. You can repudiate it. not

do

let

it

Isnt that so, Colonel Pickering?

PICKERING.

I

believe so.

manner in deference to her sex] Thats the tragedy of it, maam. It's easy to say chuck it; but I havnt the nerve. Which of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, maam: thats what we are. What is

DOOLITTLE [softening

his

me if I chuck it but the workhouse in my old have to dye my hair already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They dont know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the expression, maam; youd use it yourself if you had my provocation.) Theyve got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I havnt the nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: thats what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and there for

age?

I

— Pygmalion

409

what And [He is overcome by

look on helpless, and envy them.

I'll

your son has brought

me

to.

thats

emotion].

MRS

HiGGiNS. Well, I'm very glad youre not going to do

anything foolish,

Mr

Doolittle.

For

this solves the

prob-

lem of Eliza's future. You can provide for her now. DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, maam: I'm expected to provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year. HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he cant provide for her. He shant provide for her. She doesnt belong to him. I paid him five pounds for her. Doolittle: either youre an honest

man

DOOLITTLE of us: a

or a rogue.

[tolerantly] little

HIGGINS. Well,

A

little

of both, Henry, like the rest

of both.

you took

that

money

for the girl;

and you

have no right to take her as well. HIGGINS. Henry: dont be absurd. If you want to know where Eliza is, she is upstairs. HIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her downstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door]. MRS HIGGINS [rising and following him] Be quiet, Henry. Sit

MRS

down. HIGGINS.

MRS

I

HIGGINS. Sit down, dear; and listen to me.

HIGGINS.

Oh

himself

very well, very well, very well. [He throws ungraciously on the ottoman, with his face

towards the windows]. But us this half an hour ago.

MRS

I

think you might have told

came to me this morning. She way you two treated her,

HIGGINS. Eliza

of the brutal

told

me

HIGGINS [bounding up again] What! PICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs Higgins, she's been telling you stories. We didnt treat her brutally. We hardly said a word to her; and we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on Higgins] Higgins: did you bully her after

I

went to bed?

HIGGINS. Just the other

my

way

about. She threw

my

slippers in

She behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her the slightest provocation. The slippers face.

Pygmalion

410

came bang

— before

I

into

my

moment I entered the room word. And [she] used perfectly

face the

had uttered a

awful language.

PICKERING [astonished] But why? What did we do to her? MRS HiGGiNS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl is

naturally rather affectionate,

I

think. Isnt she,

Mr

Doolittle?

DooLiTTLE. Very tender-hearted, maam. Takes after me. MRS HIGGINS. Just SO. She had become attached to you both. She worked very hard for you, Henry. I dont think

you quite realize what anything in the nature of brain work means to a girl of her class. Well, it seems that when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing for you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never said a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! / should have thrown the fire-irons at you. HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to bed. Did we, Pick? PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.

MRS HIGGINS

[ironically]

Quite sure?

PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was

MRS

HIGGINS.

her, or tell

You didnt thank her, her how splendid she'd

HIGGINS [impatiently] But she

all.

or pet her, or admire been.

knew

all

about

that.

We

didnt make speeches to her, if thats what you mean. PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate. Is she very angry? MRS HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well, I'm afraid she wont go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but she says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let bygones be bygones. HIGGINS [furious] Is she, by George? Ho! MRS HIGGINS. If you promisc to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to come down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite enough of my time.

Pygmalion

411

HiGGiNS. Oh, self.

all right.

Very

you behave your-

well. Pick:

Let us put on our best Sunday manners for this

creature that

we picked out

self sulkily into the

of the mud. [He flings him-

Elizabethan chair].

DOOLITTIE [remonstrating] Now, now, Enry

some consideration

MRS

for

my

Remember your

HIGGINS.

Have

Iggins!

feelings as a middle class

man.

promise, Henry. [She presses

on the writing-table]. Mr Doolittle: will you be so good as to step out on the balcony for a moment. I dont want Eliza to have the shock of your news until she has made it up with these two gentlemen. Would you mind? DOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her off my hands. [He disappears through the the bell-button

window]. The parlormaid answers the

Pickering

bell.

down

sits

in Doolittle' s place.

MRS

HIGGINS.

Ask Miss

come down,

Doolittle to

THE PARLORMAID. Ycs, maam. [She goes

MRS

please.

out].

Now, Henry: be good.

HIGGINS.

am behaving myself perfectly. PICKERING. He is doing his best, Mrs Higgins.

HIGGINS.

A

I

pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out

his legs

MRS

and begins

to whistle.

HIGGINS. Henry, dearest, you dont look at

all

nice in

that attitude.

HIGGINS [pulling himself together] nice,

MRS

I

was not

trying to look

mother.

HIGGINS.

It

docsut matter, dear.

I

make

only wanted to

you speak. HIGGINS.

MRS

Why?

HIGGINS. Bccausc you cant speak and whistle at the

same

time.

Higgins groans. Another very tiring pause. HIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil that girl? Are we to wait here all day? Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed,

and giving a

is

stag-

geringly convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a

Pickering

little is

work-basket, and

too

much

is

very

taken aback to

rise.

much

at

home.

— 412

Pygmalion

How

LIZA.

do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite

well?

HIGGINS [choking]

Am I — [He can say no more].

LIZA. But of course

see

you

you

you are never ill. So glad to [He rises hastily; and

are:

again, Colonel Pickering.

they shake hands]. Quite chilly this morning, isnt sits

down on

HIGGINS.

his left.

He

Dont you dare

you; and

it

me

it?

[She

beside her].

try this

doesnt take

and dont be a

sits

game on me.

in.

I

taught

it

to

Get up and come home;

fool.

Eliza takes a piece of needlework

begins to stitch at

it,

from her

basket,

and

without taking the least notice of

this outburst.

MRS

HIGGINS. Very nicely put, indeed, Henry.

could

resist

such an invitation.

You let her You will jolly

HIGGINS. self.

No woman

alone, mother. Let her speak for her-

soon see whether she has an idea that

havnt put into her head or a word that I havnt put into her mouth. I tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now she I

pretends to play the fine lady with me.

MRS HIGGINS

[placidly] Yes, dear; but

youU

sit

down, wont

you? Higgins

sits

down

again, savagely,

LIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins,

and working away

now

deftly] Will

that the experiment

PICKERING.

ment.

It

Oh

dont.

You

is

you

drop

me

altogether

over, Colonel Pickering?

mustnt think of

it

as

an experi-

shocks me, somehow.

Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf PICKERING [impulsively] No.

LIZA.

—but

I owe so much to you that you forgot me. PICKERING. It's very kind of you to say so. Miss Doolittle. LIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isnt it? You see it was so very difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always before me. I was brought up to be just like him, unable

LIZA [continuing quietly] I

should be very unhappy

if

— Pygmalion

413

-

and using bad language on the slightest provocation. And I should never have known that ladies and gentlemen didnt behave like that if you hadnt been to control myself,

there.

HiGGiNs. Well!!

PICKERING. Oh, thats only his way, you know.

mean LIZA. It

He

doesnt

it.

Oh, / didnt mean it either, when I was a flower girl. was only my way. But you see I did it; and thats what

makes

the difference after

PICKERING.

No

doubt.

Still,

all.

he taught you to speak; and

I

couldnt have done that, you know. LIZA

Of

[trivially]

course: that

is

his profession.

HIGGINS. Damnation!

LIZA [continuing]

was

It

just like learning to

fashionable way: there was nothing

But do you

know what began my

dance

more than

in the

that in

it.

real education?

PICKERING. What? LIZA [stopping her

work for a moment] Your

calling

me

Miss Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of self-respect for me. [She resumes her stitching]. And there were a hundred little things you never noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors

PICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.

shewed you thought and

LIZA. Yes: things that

me

as

if I

though of course

same dining

boots LIZA.

I

I

know you would have been

to a scullery-maid

drawing room.

You

room when

PICKERING. all

about

felt

were something better than a scullery-maid;

I

if

she had been

never took

was

off

just the

let into the

your boots

in the

there.

You mustnt mind

that.

Higgins takes off his

over the place.

know.

am

I

not blaming him.

It is his

way,

isnt it?

u c h a difference to me that you didnt do it. You see, really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and But

it

made

s

a flower girl

is

not

how

she behaves, but

how

she's

414

Pygmalion

treated.

always be a flower

shall

I

Higgins, because he always treats

always

will;

you always

MRS

but

I

treat

know

me

I

me

to

girl

Professor

as a flower girl,

and

can be a lady to you, because and always will.

as a lady,

HIGGINS. Plcasc dont grind your teeth, Henry.

PICKERING. Well,

this

is

very

nice

me

Eliza,

now,

really

of you,

Miss

Doolittle.

LIZA.

I

should

Thank

PICKERING. LIZA.

And

like

you

to call

if

you. Eliza, of course.

should like Professor Higgins to

I

you would. call

me

Miss

Doolittle.

you damned first. MRS HIGGINS. Henry! Henry! PICKERING [laughing] Why dont you slang back at him? Dont stand it. It would do him a lot of good. LIZA. I cant. I could have done it once but now I cant go back to it. You told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and HIGGINS.

I'll

see

can speak nothing but yours. Thats the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court Road. Leaving

Wimpole

Street finishes

it.

PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but youre coming back to Wimpole Street, arnt you? Youll forgive Higgins? HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow. Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified

reproach at Higgins,

he comes slowly and

who, with her back to the is unconscious of his approach. PICKERING. He's incorrigible, Eliza. You wont relapse, will you? silently

to

his

daughter,

window,

have learnt my lesson. I dont believe I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried. [Doolittle touches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work, losing her self-possession utterly at the spec-

LIZA.

No: not now. Never

again.

I

tacle of her father's splendor] A-a-a-a-a-ah-ow-ooh!

—

—

Pygmalion

415

HiGGiNs [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A-a-a-aahowooh! A-a-a-a-ahowooh! A-a-a-a-ahowooh! Victory! Victory! [He throws himself on the divan, folding his arms, and spraddling arrogantly].

DooLiTTLE. Can you blame the that, Eliza. It aint

LIZA.

my fault.

You must have touched

DOOLITTLE.

Ive

a millionaire this time, dad.

But I'm dressed something special

have.

I

Dont look at me like come into some money,

girl?

Hanover Square. Your

today. I'm going to St George's,

stepmother

is

LIZA [angrily]

going to marry me.

Youre going

down

to let yourself

to

marry

low common woman! PICKERING [quietly] He ought to, Eliza. [To Doolittle] Why has she changed her mind? DOOLITTLE [sadly] Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle class morality claims its victim. Wont you put on your hat, Liza, and come and see me turned off? LIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I I'll [almost sobbing] that

—

I'll

demean

And

myself.

get insulted for

my

pains, like

enough.

DOOLITTLE. Dont be afraid: she never comes to words with anyone now, poor woman! respectability has broke all the spirit out of her.

PICKERING [squeezing Eliza's elbow gently] Be kind to them, Eliza.

Make

the best of

LIZA [forcing a

Oh

little

well, just to

it.

smile for him through her vexation]

shew theres no

ill

feeling.

I'll

be back in

a moment. [She goes out].

DOOLITTLE

[sitting

down

beside Pickering]

nervous about the ceremony, Colonel. and see me through it. PICKERING. But youve been through

it

I feel I

before,

were married to Eliza's mother. DOOLITTLE. Who told you that. Colonel? PICKERING. Well, nobody told me. But

uncommon

wish youd come

I

man. You

concluded

naturally

DOOLITTLE. No: that aint the natural way, Colonel: it*s only the middle class way. My way was always the undeserving way. But dont say nothing to Eliza. She dont know: I always had a delicacy about telling her.

416

Pygmalion

PICKERING, Quite right Well leave

you dont mind. DooLiTTLE, And youU come to the church. Colonel, and it

so, if

put me through straight? PICKERING. With pleasure. As far as a bachelor can.

come, Mr Doolittle? I should be very sorry to miss your wedding. DOOLITTLE. I should indeed be honored by your condenscension, maam; and my poor old woman would take it as a tremenjous compliment. She's been very low, thinking of the happy days that are no more. MRS HIGGINS [rising] I'll order the carriage and get ready. [The men rise, except Higgins]. I shant be more than fifteen minutes, [As she goes to the door Eliza comes in, hatted and buttoning her gloves]. I'm going to the church to see your father married, Eliza. You had better come in the brougham with me. Colonel Pickering can go on with the bridegroom. Mrs Higgins goes out. Eliza comes to the middle of the room between the centre window and the ottoman,

MRS

HiGGiNS.

May

I

Pickering joins her,

What a word! It makes a man somehow. [He takes up his hat and

DOOLITTLE. Bridcgrooml realize his position,

goes towards the door], PICKERING. Before

I

go, Eliza,

do

forgive Higgins

and come

back to us. I dont think dad would allow me. Would you, dad? DOOLITTLE [sad but magnanimous] They played you off very cunning, Eliza, them two sportsmen. If it had been only one of them, you could have nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of them chaperoned the other, as you might say. [To Pickering] It was artful of you. Colonel; but I bear no malice: I should have done the same myself. I been the victim of one woman after another all my life, and I dont grudge you two getting LIZA.

the better of Liza.

I

shant interfere.

It's

time for us to go.

Colonel. So long, Henry. See you in St George's, Eliza.

[He goes out], PICKERING [coaxing]

Do

stay with us, Eliza.

[He follows

Doolittle],

Eliza goes out on the balcony to avoid being alone

Pygmalion

417

with Higgins,

He

comes back

ately

rises

into

but he goes along the

and joins her there. She immedithe room and makes for the door; balcony quickly and gets his back

door before she reaches it, HiGGiNs, Well, Eliza, youve had a bit of your own back, as you call it Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable? Or do you want any more? LIZA. You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with your tempers and fetch and carry for you, HiGGiNS, I havnt said I wanted you back at all. LIZA. Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about? HiGGiNS, About you, not about me- If you come back I shall treat you just as I have always treated you. I cant change my nature; and I dont intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as Colonel Pickering's. jLiZA. Thats not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a to the

duchess, HIGGINS.

And

I treat

if she was a flower girL away composedly, and sits on the window\. The same to everybody,

a duchess as

LIZA- I see. [She turns

ottoman, facing the HIGGINS. Just so.

LIZA. Like father. HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the comparison at all points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father is not a snob, and that he will be quite at

home in any station of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously^ The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in

Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another. LIZA- Amen. You are a born preacher. HIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.

LIZA [with sudden sincerity^

I

dont care

how you

treat

me- I shouldnt mind a black eye: Ive had one before this. But [standing up and facing him} I wont be passed over.

me.

I

dont mind your swearing

at

Pygmalion

418

Then

my

way; for I wont stop for you. You talk about me as if I were a motor bus. LIZA. So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no consideration for anyone. But I can do without you: dont HiGGiNs.

think

get out of

cant.

I

know you

you you could. away from him to the other side of the ottoman with her face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute. You wanted to get rid of me.

HIGGINS.

I

can. I told

LIZA [wounded, getting

HIGGINS. Liar. LIZA.

Thank you. [She

HIGGINS.

You

sits

down

with

never asked yourself,

could do without

dignity']. I

suppose, whether /

you.

LIZA [earnestly] Dont you try to get round me. Youll have to

do without me.

can do without anybody. I have my spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you, Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something from your

HIGGINS [arrogant]

own

soul:

idiotic notions:

And

I

my own

I

confess that

humbly and

gratefully.

have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather. LIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the machine on. It's got no I

feelings to hurt. I cant turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are

HIGGINS.

not you. LIZA.

Oh, you

area

devil.

You

can twist the heart

in a girl

some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs Pearce warned me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the last minute. And you dont care a bit for her. And you dont

as easy as

care a bit for me. HIGGINS.

of

it

I

care for

that has

life,

for humanity; and

come my way and been

What more can you

you are a part

built into

my

house.

or anyone ask? wont care for anybody that doesnt care for me. HIGGINS. Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing LIZA.

I

Pygmalion her

419

Covent Garden pronunciation

with

professional

exactness] s'yoHin voylets [selling violets], isnt LIZA.

Dont sneer

HiGGiNS.

at

me.

It's

mean

have never sneered

I

become

either the

expressing

my

human

in

to sneer at

my

life.

face or the

it?

me.

Sneering doesnt

human

soul. I

am

righteous contempt for Commercialism. I

You call me a brute buy a claim on me by fetching my my spectacles. You were a fool: I

dont and wont trade in affection. because you couldnt

and finding

slippers

think a

woman

fetching a man's slippers

sight: did I ever fetch

more of you slaving for

who

for throwing

me and

is

your sHppers? I think them

in

my

a disgusting a

good deal

face.

No

use

then saying you want to be cared for:

you come back, come back for good fellowship; for youll get nothing else.

cares for a slave? If

the sake of

a thousand times as much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your

Youve had

silly face.

you didnt care for me? HIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job. LIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me. HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. Theres only one way of escaping trouble; and thats killing things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed. LIZA. I'm no preacher: I dont notice things like that. I notice that you dont notice me. HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: youre an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back or go to the devil: which you please. LIZA. What am I to come back for? HIGGINS [bounding up on his knees on the ottoman and LIZA.

What

did you do

it

for

if

420

Pygmalion

leaning over

it

For the fun of

to her]

it.

Thats why

I

took

you on.

And you may throw me out tomorrow if I dont do everything you want me too? HiGGiNS. Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I dont do everything you want me to. LIZA. And live with my stepmother? LIZA [with averted face]

HIGGINS. Yes, or

sell

flowers.

could

go back to my flower basket! I should be independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did you take my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I'm a slave now, for all my fine

LIZA.

Oh!

if I

only

clothes.

Not a

HIGGINS.

bit.

my

adopt you as

I'll

daughter and

money on you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering? LIZA [looking fiercely round at him] I wouldnt marry you if you asked me; and youre nearer my age than what he settle

is.

HIGGINS

Than he

[gcfitly]

is:

not "than what he

LIZA [losing her temper and rising]

not

I'll

is.*'

talk as I like.

Youre

my teacher now.

HIGGINS

[reflectively]

dont suppose

I

Pickering

would,

I am. what I want; and dont you think it. Ive always had chaps enough wanting me that way. Freddy Hill writes to me twice and three times a day, sheets and

though. He's as confirmed an old bachelor as LIZA. Thats not

sheets.

HIGGINS [disagreeably surprised] recoils

LIZA.

He

and

Damn

finds himself sitting

has a right to

if

he

his

impudence! [He

on his heels]. poor lad. And he does

likes,

love me. off the ottoman] You have no right to encourage him. LIZA. Every girl has a right to be loved.

HIGGINS [getting

HIGGINS. What!

By

fools like that?

And if he's weak and poor and wants me, maybe he'd make me happier than my betters that bully me and dont want me. HIGGINS. Can he make anything of you? Thats the point.

LIZA. Freddy's not a fool.

Pygmalion

421

Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I only want to be natural.

LIZA.

you want me to be as infatuated about Freddy? Is that it? LIZA. No I dont. Thats not the sort of feeling I want from you. And dont you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad girl if I'd liked. Ive seen more of some things than you, for all your learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute. HIGGINS. Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we HiGGiNS. In short,

you

as

quarrelling about?

want a little kindness. I know Vm a and you a book-learned gentlecommon man; but I'm not dirt under your feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and came to care for you; not to want you to make I come love to me, and not forgetting the difference between us,

LIZA [much troubled]

ignorant

—

I

girl,

—

but more friendly

like.

HIGGINS. Well, of course. Thats just

Pickering

feels.

how

I feel.

And how

Eliza: youre a fool.

LIZA. Thats not a proper

answer to give

me

[she sinks

on the

chair at the writing-table in tears].

you stop being a common idiot. If youre going to be a lady, youll have to give up feeling neglected if the men you know dont spend half their time snivelling over you and the other half giving you black eyes. If you cant stand the coldness of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work til youre more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life of the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical Music and Philo-

HIGGINS.

It's all

youll get until

osphy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish, dont you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like. Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of

422

Pygmalion

money, and a thick pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you with. If you cant appreciate what youve got, youd better get what you can appreciate.

UZA

[desperate] Oh,

you

area

cruel tyrant.

I

cant talk to

you: you turn everything against me: I'm always

wrong. But you know very well nothing but a bully. You know

all I

in the

the time that youre

cant go back to the

it, and that I have no real friends in you and the Colonel. You know well I couldnt bear to live with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father's. But dont be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled on and talked down. I'll marry Freddy, I

gutter, as

you

call

the world but

will, as

soon as I'm able to support him.

HiGGiNS [thunderstruck] Freddy!!! that young fool! That poor devil who couldnt get a job as an errand boy even if it! Woman: do you not underhave made you a consort for a king?

he had the guts to try for stand that

I

Freddy loves me: that makes him king enough for I dont want him to work: he wasnt brought up to it as I was. I'll go and be a teacher. HIGGINS. Whatll you teach, in heaven's name? LIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics. HIGGINS. Ha! ha! ha! LIZA. I'll offer myself as an assistant to that hairyfaced LIZA.

me.

Hungarian. HIGGINS [rising

in

a fury] What! That impostor! that

bug! that toadying ignoramus! Teach him

my I'll

discoveries!

You

my

hum-

methods!

take one step in his direction and

wring your neck. [He lays his hands on

her].

Do you

hear? LIZA [defiantly non-resistant] I

knew youd

strike

Wring away. What do

me some

I

care?

day. [He lets her go, stamp-

ing with rage at having forgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that

he stumbles back into his seat on the ottoman].

Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a fool I was not to think of it before! You cant take away the

Pygmalion

423

knowledge you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than And I can be civil and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! [Purposely dropping her aitches to annoy him] Thats done you, Enry Iggins, it az. Now I dont care that [snapping her fingers] for your bullying and your big talk. I'll advertize it in the papers that your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself. HiGGiNS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But it's better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding spectacles, isn't it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a woman of you; and I have. I like you like this. LIZA. Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm not afraid of you, and can do without you. HIGGINS. Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were like a millstone round my neck. Now youre a tower of strength: a consort battleship. You and I arid Pickering will be three old bachelors instead of only two men and a silly girl. you.

Mrs

H iggins

instantly

MRS

returns, dressed for the wedding. Eliza

becomes cool and

HIGGINS.

The

Carriage

is

elegant.

waiting, Eliza.

LIZA. Quite. Is the Professor

MRS

HIGGINS. Certainly not.

church.

He makes

Are you ready?

coming?

He

cant behave himself in

remarks out loud

all

the time on the

clergyman's pronunciation. LIZA.

Then

I

shall not see

you again. Professor. Goodbye.

[She goes to the door],

MRS HIGGINS [coming

to Higgins]

Goodbye, dear.

is about to kiss her, when he recollects something]. Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stilton cheese, will you? And buy me a pair of

HIGGINS. Goodbye, mother. [He

and a tie to match that new suit of mine. You can choose the color. [His cheerful, careless, vigorous voice shews that he is incorrigible]. reindeer gloves,

number

eights,

Pygmalion

424 LIZA [disdainfully]

Number

eights are too small for

you

if

you want them lined with lamb's wool. You have three new ties that you have forgotten in the drawer of your washstand. Colonel Pickering prefers double Gloucester

and you dont notice the difTerence. I telephoned Mrs Pearce this morning not to forget the ham. What you are to do without me I cannot imagine. [She sweeps out]. MRS HiGGiNS. I'm afraid youve spoilt that girl, Henry. I should be uneasy about you and her if she were less fond to Stilton;

of Colonel Pickering. HIGGINS, Pickering! Nonsense: she's going to marry Freddy.

Ha

ha! Freddy! Freddy!!

Ha

ha ha ha

ha!!!!!

[He roars

with laughter as the play ends].

The

need not be shewn in action, and inif our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their lazy dependence on the readymades and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in which Romance keeps its stock of 'happy endings' to misfit all stories. Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because the transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common enough. Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of resolutely rest of the story

deed, would hardly need telling

ambitious young

women

since Nell

Gwynne

set

them the

example by playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she began by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions have assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable, not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine instinct in particular. Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked, was not coquetting: she was announcing a wellconsidered decision. When a bachelor interests, and domi-

Pygmalion

425

and teaches, and becomes important to a spinster, as Higgins with Eliza, she always, if she has character enough to be capable of it, considers very seriously indeed whether

nates,

she will play for becoming that bachelor's wife, especially

he is so devoted

little

interested in marriage that a determined

if

and

woman

might capture him if she set herself resodecision will depend a good deal on whether she is really free to choose; and that, again, will depend on her age and income. If she is at the end of her youth, and has no security for her livelihood, she will marry him because she must marry anybody who will provide for her. But at Eliza's age a good-looking girl does not feel that pressure: she feels free to pick and choose. She is therefore guided by her instinct in the matter. Eliza's instinct tells her not to marry Higgins. It does not tell her to give him up. It is not in the slightest doubt as to his remaining one of the strongest personal interests in her life. It would be very sorely strained if there was another woman likely to supplant her with him. But as she feels sure of him on that last point, she has no doubt at all as lutely to

do

it.

Her

and would not have any, even if the difference of twenty years in age, which seems so great to youth, did not exist between them. As our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion, let us see whether we cannot discover some reason in it. When Higgins excused his indifference to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate oldbachelordom. The case is uncommon only to the extent that remarkable mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity of character without harshness, and to her course,

a culitvated sense of the best art of her time to enable her make her house beautiful, she sets a standard for him

to

which very few women can struggle, besides effecthim a disengagement of his affections, his sense of beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This makes him a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or disagreeable paragainst

ing for

Pygmalion

426 ents,

and

to

whom,

sculpture, music,

consequently,

literature,

and affectionate personal

painting,

relations

come

modes of sex if they come at all. The word passion means nothing else to them; and that Higgins could have as

a passion for phonetics and idealize his mother instead

them absurd and unnatural. Nevertheless, when we look round and see that hardly anyone is too ugly or disagreeable to find a wife or a husband if he or she wants one, whilst many old maids and bachelors are above the average in quality and culture, we cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or aided by of Eliza, would seem to

parental fascination.

Now, though

was incapable of thus explaining to powers of resistance to the charm that prostrated Freddy at the first glance, she was instinctively aware that she could never obtain a complete grip of him, or come between him and his mother (the first Eliza

herself Higgins's formidable

necessity of the married

knew

woman). To put

it

shortly, she

that for some mysterious reason he had not the makings of a married man in him, according to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would be his nearest and fondest and warmest interest. Even had there been no mother-rival, she would still have refused to accept an interest in herself that was secondary to philosophic interests. Had Mrs Higgins died, there would still have been Milton and the Universal Alphabet. Landor's remark that to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair, would not have recommended Landor to Eliza. Put that along with her resentment of Higgins's domineering superiority, and her mistrust of his coaxing cleverness in getting round her and evading her wrath when he had gone too far with his impetuous bullying, and you will see that Eliza's instinct had good grounds for warning her not to marry her Pygmalion. And now, whom did Eliza marry? For if Higgins was a predestinate old bachelor, she was most certainly not a predestinate old maid. Well, that can be told very shortly

Pygmalion to those

427

who have

not guessed

it

from the indications she

has herself given them.

Almost immediately

after Eliza

is

stung into proclaim-

ing her considered determination not to marry Higgins,

Mr Frederick Eynsford pouring out his love for her daily through the post.

she mentions the fact that young Hill

is

Now

Freddy

is

than Higgins: he

young, practically twenty years younger is

a gentleman (or, as Eliza

would qualify

and speaks like one. He is nicely dressed, is by the Colonel as an equal, loves her unaffectedly, and is not her master, nor ever likely to dominate her in spite of his advantage of social standing. Eliza has no use him, a

toff),

treated

for the foolish romantic tradition that

all

women

love to

be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. 'When you go to women' says Nietzsche 'take your whip with you.' Sensible despots have never confined that precaution

women: they have taken

to

whips with them when

their

they have dealt with men, and been slavishly idealized by the

men

whom

over

much women

they have flourished the whip

more than by women. No as well as slavish men; and women, hke men, admire those doubt there are slavish

that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong

under that strong person's thumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but hfe is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out. person and to

Accordingly,

live

it

is

a truth everywhere in evidence that

strong people, masculine or feminine, not only do not marry stronger people, but do not shew any preference for

them

in selecting their friends.

other with a louder roar 'the bore'.

two,

The man or seeks

for

first

woman who

every

other

When

a lion meets an-

lion thinks the last a

feels strong

quality

in

a

enough for

partner

than

strength.

The converse

is

also true.

Weak

people want to marry

Pygmalion

428

who do

strong people

not frighten them too much; and this

make

often leads them to

the mistake

we

describe meta-

more than they can chew'. They too little; and when the bargain is un-

phorically as 'biting off

want too much

for

reasonable beyond sible:

it

all

bearing, the union

becomes impos-

ends in the weaker party being either discarded

or borne as a cross, which

only weak, but

silly

is

worse. People

who

are not

or obtuse as well, are often in these

difficulties.

when

she

is

human

what is Eliza fairly placed between Freddy and Higgins?

This being the state of sure to do

affairs,

Will she look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers or to a lifetime of

Freddy fetching hers? There can

be no doubt about the answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms

all

her other instincts, she

will, if

she marries either of them, marry Freddy.

And

that

is

just

what Eliza

did.

Complications ensued; but they were economic, not money and no occupation. His mother's jointure, a last relic of the opulence of Largelady Park, had enabled her to struggle along in Earls Court with romantic. Freddy had no

an

air of gentility,

but not to procure any serious second-

much

boy a profession. A clerkship at thirty shillings a week was beneath Freddy's dignity, and extremely distasteful to him besides. His prospects consisted of a hope that if he kept up appearances somebody would do something for him. ary education for her children,

The something appeared vaguely

less give the

to his imagination as a

some sort. To his mother it perhaps appeared as a marriage to some lady of means who could not resist her boy's niceness. Fancy her feelings when he married a flower girl who had become disclassed under extraordinary circumstances which were

private secretaryship or a sinecure of

now

notorious!

seem wholly inthough formerly a dustman, and now fantastically disclassed, had become extremely popular in the smartest society by a social talent which triumphed over every prejudice and every disadvantage. Rejected by It is

eligible.

true that Eliza's situation did not

Her

father,

Pygmalion

429

the middle class, which he loathed, he had shot

up at once dustmanship (which he carried like a banner), and his Nietzschean transcendence of good and evil. At intimate ducal dinners he sat on the right hand of the Duchess; and in country houses he smoked in the pantry and was made much of by the butler when he was not feeding in the dining room and being consulted by cabinet ministers. But he found it almost as hard to do all this on four thousand a year as Mrs Eynsford Hill to live in Earls Court on an income so pitiably smaller that I have not the heart to disclose its exact figure. He absolutely refused to add the last straw to his burden by coninto the highest circles

by

his wit, his

tributing to Eliza's support.

Thus Freddy and Eliza, now Mr and Mrs Eynsford Hill, would have spent a penniless honeymoon but for a wedding present of £500 from the Colonel to Eliza. It lasted a long time because Freddy did not know how to spend money, never having had any to spend, and Eliza, socially trained by a pair of old bachelors, wore her clothes and looked pretty, without the least regard to their being many months out of fashion. Still, £500 will not last two young people for ever; and they both knew, and Eliza felt as well, that they must shift for themselves in the end. She could quarter herself on Wimpole Street because it had come to be her home; but she was quite aware that she ought not to quarter Freddy there, and that it would not be good for his character if as long as they held together

she did.

Not

that the

Wimpole

Street bachelors objected.

When

she consulted them, Higgins declined to be bothered about when that solution was so simple.

her housing problem Eliza's desire to

have Freddy

in the

house with her seemed

more importance than if she had wanted an extra piece of bedroom furniture. Pleas as to Freddy's character, and the moral obligation on him to earn his own living, of no

on Higgins. He denied that Freddy had any character, and declared that if he tried to do any useful work some competent person would have the trouble of undoing it: a procedure involving a net loss to the community, and great unhappiness to Freddy himself, who was obviously were

lost

Pygmalion

430

intended by Nature for such light work as amusing Eliza,

which, Higgins declared, was a

much more

honorable occupation than working

in the city.

useful

When

and Eliza

referred again to her project of teaching phonetics, Higgins

abated not a

jot of his violent

opposition to

it.

He

said she

was not within ten years of being qualified to meddle with subject; and as it was evident that the Colonel agreed with him, she felt she could not go against them in this grave matter, and that she had no right, without Higgins's consent, to exploit the knowledge he had given her; for his knowledge seemed to her as much his private property as his watch: Eliza was no communist. Besides, she was superstitiously devoted to them both, more entirely and frankly after her marriage than before it. It was the Colonel who finally solved the problem, which had cost him much perplexed cogitation. He one day asked Eliza, rather shyly, whether she had quite given up her notion of keeping a flower shop. She replied that she had thought of it, but had put it out of her head, because the Colonel had said, that day at Mrs Higgin's, that it would never do. The Colonel confessed that when he said that, he had not quite recovered from the dazzling impression of the day before. They broke the matter to Higgins that evening. The sole comment vouchsafed by him very nearly led to a serious quarrel with Eliza. It was to the effect that she would have in Freddy an ideal errand boy. Freddy himself was next sounded on the subject. He said he had been thinking of a shop himself; though it had his pet

presented

itself

to his pennilessness

as

a small place in

which Eliza should sell tobacco at one counter whilst he sold newspapers at the opposite one. But he agreed that it would be extraordinarily jolly to go early every morning with Eliza to Covent Garden and buy flowers on the scene of their first meeting: a sentiment which earned him many kisses from his wife. He added that he had always been propose anything of the sort, because Clara would make an awful row about a step that must damage her matrimonial chances, and his mother could not be afraid

to

expected to like

it

after clinging for so

many

years to that

on which

trade

is

step of the social ladder

retail

impossible.

431

Pygmalion

This difficulty was removed by an event highly unexpected by Freddy's mother. Clara, in the course of her incursions into those artistic circles which were the highest

within her reach, discovered that her conversational quali-

were expected to include a grounding in the novels of Mr H. G. Wells. She borrowed them in various directions so energetically that she swallowed them all within two months. The result was a conversion of a kind quite common today. A modern Acts of the Apostles would fill fifty whole Bibles if anyone were capable of fications

writing

it.

Poor Clara, who appeared to Higgins and his mother as a disagreeable and ridiculous person, and to her own mother as in some inexplicable way a social failure, had never seen herself in either light; for, though to some extent ridiculed and mimicked in West Kensington like everybody else there, she was accepted as a rational and normal

—or

shall

we

say inevitable?

—

sort of

human

being.

them no more than to herself had it ever occurred that she was pushing the air, and pushing it in a wrong direction. Still, she was not happy. She was growing desperate. Her one asset, the fact that her mother was what the Epsom greengrocer called a carriage lady, had no exchange value, apparently. It had prevented her from getting educated, because the only education she could have afforded was education with the Earls Court greengrocer's daughter. It had led her to seek the society of her mother's class; and that class simply would not have her, because she was much poorer than the greengrocer, and, far from being able to afford a maid, could not afford even a housemaid, and had to scrape along at home with an illiberally treated general servant. Under

At worst they

called her

The Pusher; but

to

such circumstances nothing could give her an air of being a genuine product of Largelady Park. And yet its tradition made her regard a marriage with anyone within her reach as an unbearable humiliation. Commercial people and professional people in a small

way were odious

to her.

She

ran after painters and novelists; but she did not charm them; and her bold attempts to pick up and practise artistic and literary talk irritated them. She was, in short, an utter

Pygmalion

432

an ignorant, incompetent, pretentious, unwelcome, penniless, useless little snob; and though she did not admit

failure,

nobody ever faces unpleasant the possibility of a way out dawns

these disqualifications (for truths of this kind until

on them) she felt their effects too keenly to be satisfied with her position. Clara had a startling eyeopener when, on being suddenly wakened to enthusiasm by a girl of her own age who dazzled her and produced in her a gushing desire to take her for a model, and gain her friendship, she discovered that this exquisite apparition had graduated from the gut-

few months time. It shook her so violently, that when Mr H. G. Wells lifted her on the point of his puissant pen, and placed her at the angle of view from which the life she was leading and the society to which she clung appeared in its true relation to real human needs and worthy social structure, he effected a conversion and a conviction of sin comparable to the most sensational feats of General Booth or Gypsy Smith. Clara's snobbery went bang. Life suddenly began to move with her. Without knowing how or why, she began to make friends and enemies. Some of the acquaintances to whom she had been a tedious or indifferent or ridiculous affliction, dropped her: others became cordial. To her amazement she found that some 'quite nice' people were saturated with Wells, and that this accessibility to ideas was the secret of their niceness. People she had thought deeply religious, and had tried to conciliate on that tack with disastrous results, suddenly took an interest in her, and revealed a hostility to conventional religion which she had never conceived possible except among the most desperate characters. They made her read Galsworthy; and Galsworthy exposed the vanity of Largelady Park and finished her. It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these discoveries, and the tumult of their reaction, she made a ter in a

433

Pygmalion fool of herself as freely and conspicuously as

rashly adopted Eliza's expletive in

Mrs

when

she so

Higgins's drawing

room; for the new-born Wellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously as a baby; but nobody hates a baby for

its

ineptitudes, or thinks the

worse of

no

eat the matches;

and Clara

They laughed

her to her face this

at

defend herself and

When Freddy did

paid a

when he could

announcement

fight

lost

it

for trying to

by her follies. time; and she had to

friends

out as best she could.

it

visit to

Earls Court (which he never

possibly help

it)

to

make

the desolating

were thinking of blackening the Largelady scutcheon by opening a shop, he found the little household already convulsed by a prior announcement from Clara that she also was going to work in an old furniture shop in Dover Street, which had been started by a fellow Wellsian. This appointment Clara owed, after all, to her old social accomplishment of Push. She had made up her mind that, cost what it might, she would see Mr Wells in the flesh; and she had achieved her end at a garden party. She had better luck than so rash an enterprise deserved. Mr Wells came up to her expectations. Age had that he

and

his Eliza

not withered him, nor could custom stale his infinite variety in half an hour. His pleasant neatness and compactness, his small hands and feet, his teeming ready brain, his unaffected accessibility, and a certain fine apprehensiveness

which stamped him

as susceptible

from

his top-

most hair to his tipmost toe, proved irresistible. Clara talked of nothing else for weeks and weeks afterwards. And as she happened to talk to the lady of the furniture shop, and that lady also desired above all things to know Mr Wells and sell pretty things to him, she offered Clara a job on the chance of achieving that end through her. And so it came about that Eliza's luck held, and the expected opposition to the flower shop melted away. The shop

is

in the

arcade of a railway station not very far from

you live in that neighbourhood you may go there any day and buy a buttonhole from Eliza. Now here is a last opportunity for romance. Would you not like to be assured that the shop was an immense suethe Victoria and Albert

Museum; and

if

Pygmalion

434 cess,

thanks to Eliza's charms and her early business expe-

rience in Covent

Garden? Alas! the

truth

is

the truth: the

shop did not pay for a long time, simply because Eliza and her Freddy did not know how to keep it. True, Eliza had not to begin at the very beginning: she

and prices of the cheaper bounded when she found

flowers;

knew

and her elation

that Freddy, like

all

names was un-

the

youths ed-

ucated at cheap, pretentious, and thoroughly inefficient

knew a little Latin. It was very little, but enough to make him appear to her a Porson or Bentley, and to put him at his ease with botanical nomenclature. Unfortunately he knew nothing else; and Eliza, though she could count money up to eighteen shillings or so, and had acquired a schools,

certain familiarity with the language of Milton

from her

struggles to qualify herself for winning Higgins's bet, could

not write out a

bill

without utterly disgracing the establish-

ment. Freddy's power of stating in Latin that Balbus built a wall and that Gaul was divided into three parts did not

knowledge of accounts or business: Colonel Pickering had to explain to him what a cheque book and a bank account meant. And the pair were by no means easily teachable. Freddy backed up Eliza in carry with

it

the slightest

her obstinate refusal to believe that they could save

money

by engaging a bookkeeper with some knowledge of the business. How, they argued, could you possibly save money by going to extra expense when you already could not make both ends meet? But the Colonel, after making the ends meet over and over again, at last gently insisted; and Eliza, humbled to the dust by having to beg from him so often, and stung by the uproarious derision of Higgins, to whom the notion of Freddy succeeding at anything was a joke that never palled, grasped the fact that business, like phonetics, has to be learned.

On

the piteous spectacle of the pair spending their eve-

nings in shorthand schools and polytechnic classes, learn-

bookkeeping and typewriting with incipient junior clerks, male and female, from the elementary schools, let me not dwell. There were even classes at the London School of Economics, and a humble personal appeal to the ing

director of that institution to

recommend

a course bearing

Pygmalion

435

on the flower business. He, being a humorist, explained to them the method of the celebrated Dickensian essay on Chinese Metaphysics by the gentleman who read an article on China and an article on Metaphysics and combined the information. He suggested that they should combine the

London School with Kew Gardens.

Eliza, to

whom

the

procedure of the Dickensian gentleman seemed perfectly correct (as in fact it was) and not in the least funny (which was only her ignorance), took the advice with en-

But the

tire gravity.

ation

was a request

effort that cost her the deepest humili-

to Higgins,

whose pet

next to Milton's verse, was caligraphy, and

artistic

who

fancy,

himself

wrote a most beautiful Italian hand, that he would teach her to write. ble of

He

declared that she was congenitally incapa-

forming a single

letter

worthy of the

least of Milton's

words; but she persisted; and again he suddenly threw himself into the task

of teaching her with a combination of

stormy

concentrated

and occasional bursts of interesting disquisition on the beauty and nobility, the august mission and destiny, of human handwriting. Eliza ended by acquiring an extremely uncommercial script which was a positive extension of her personal beauty, and spending three times as much on stationery as anyone else because certain qualities and shapes of paper became indispensable to her. She could not even address an envelope in the usual way because it made the margins all wrong. Their commercial schooldays were a period of disgrace and despair for the young couple. They seemed to be learning nothing about flower shops. At last they gave it up as hopeless, and shook the dust of the shorthand schools, and the polytechnics, and the London School of Economics from their feet for ever. Besides, the business was in some mysterious way beginning to take care of itself. They had somehow forgotten their objections to employing other intensity,

people.

They came

was the

best,

for business.

some years

to the conclusion that their

and that they had

The

really a

own w^y

remarkable talent

who had been compelled for sufficient sum on current account at

Colonel,

keep a bankers to make up their to

patience,

found that the provision was unnecessary: the young couple were prospering. his

deficits,

Pygmalion

436

between them and their competitors in trade. Their week-ends in the country cost them nothing, and saved them the price of their Sunday dinners; for the motor car was the Colonel's; and he and Higgins paid the hotel bills. Mr F. Hill, florist and greengrocer (they soon discovered that there was money in asparagus; and asparagus led to other vegetables), had an air which stamped the business as classy; and in private life he was still Frederick Eynsford Hill, Esquire. Not that there was any swank about him: nobody but Eliza knew that he had been christened Frederick Challoner. Eliza herself swanked like anything. That is all. That is how it has turned out. It is astonishing how much Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole Street in spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable that though she never nags her husband, and frankly loves the Colonel as if she were true that there

It is

was not quite

his favorite daughter, she has

fair play

never got out of the habit

of nagging Higgins that was established on the fatal night

when

she

won

his bet for

him. She snaps his head off on the

on none. He no longer dares to by assuming an abysmal inferiority of Freddy's mind to his own. He storms and bullies and derides; but she stands up to him so ruthlessly that the Colonel has to ask her from time to time to be kinder to Higgins; and it faintest provocation, or

tease her

is

the only request of his that brings a mulish expression

Nothing but some emergency or calamity great enough to break down all likes and dislikes, and throw them both back on their common humanity and may they be spared any such trial! will ever alter this. She knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The very scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he had become used to having her there, and dependent on her for all sorts of Httle services, and that he should miss her if she went away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the into her face.

—

—

Colonel to say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certainty that she

is

'no

more

to

him than them

she has a sense, too, that his indifference the infatuation of

commoner

souls.

She

is

is

slippers'; yet

deeper than

immensely

inter-

Pygmalion

437

ested in him. She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have private imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the life that she really leads as distinguished

from the

life

of dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and

she likes the Colonel; and she does not like Higgins and

Mr

Doolittle, Galatea never does quite like

his relation to her is too godlike to

Pygmalion:

be altogether agreeable.

To

Webb

Beatrice and Sidney

was editor of The New Statesman, which Shaw and the Webbs were instrumental in founding. The Lusitania had been torpedoed by a German submarine in May 1915, and Shaw had commented that the sinking was no more a war crime than the sending of hundreds of thousands of young men to certain death in the trenches of France. The German Zeppelin downed near Ayot St Lawrence on 1 October 1916 was the L-3I, commanded by the daring former destroyer skipper Heinrich Mathy. Shaw used the episode to end Heartbreak House, which he was Clifford Sharp

then in the process of writing.

Ayot

St

Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts

5 October 1916

As

have got on poor Sharp's nerves, which have been

I

indifferent tune since the Lusitania torpedo got him,

it

in is

mere cruelty I

to animals remaining on the Statesman Board. have therefore written formally to the secretary to convey

my

me

resignation to the next meeting and regard

My

future as a simple shareholder.

withdrawal

in the

will

be a

great relief to everybody, probably; and as everything that

me would not be done anyhow, do no harm. Anyhow, I am always accessible if I

cannot be done without it

will

am

wanted.

.

The oddest

.

.

thing about the whole .business

Englishman seems

is

that

no

have any real concern for the future

to

of England provided his immediate passions are gratified. It

seems

me

to

enough

plain

that

Germany

is

going to

be smashed to the extent of completely eliminating from

European diplomacy

that dread of her

nated

for years

the

continent

together the

Alliance.

Nothing

which has domiand produced and held is

more

plainly

printed

Letter to Beatrice and Sidney

Webb

439

across the skies than that the removal of that dread will

operate on the Alliance like the removal of the string

from a faggot; and that Germany, forced to relinquish her dream of a Pax Germanica and to seek alliances like other human species, will seek them either in the east with Russia or

in

the

Germany

west with America. will

extremely

one; and

that

by the no

be succeeded

bogey of the British Empire.

Also

Our

dread of

the

less

formidable

position will then be an

our pro-Japs (perhaps led by you in your oriental enthusiasm) prevent us from the obvious solution of a western alliance to which both Britain and Germany will be parties, and from which France could then hardly withdraw, we may at last get what we deserve; critical

and a more fearful

fate could hardly be imagined.

Grey, with instinctive

by our

Somme

spits in his face,

her, as

if

folly,

is

letting himself

Already

be encouraged

successes to bully Sweden, which simply

knowing

that he can

do nothing now

to

any fool could have told him beforehand. Blatch-

ford and the Jingoes are already trying to repeat their

war with Germany by warnings war with America, without whose friendship we shall

success over warnings of of

be caught in such an Einkreisung as will make the German one seem a joke. But as there is no passionate satisfaction in contemplating these possibilities and providing for them, they stare us in the face in vain; and Sharp writes proposals for the disarmament of Germany and then calmly tells me that this is the policy of the Fabian Society as formulated

by me. The prospect fills me with genuine concern. It only bores you, because diplomacy and history are not your Fach.* I must stop this ridiculously long letter, which, however, will roughly convey to you my private mind. The Potters Bar Zeppelin manoeuvred over the Welwyn valley for about half an hour before

it

came round and passed Londonwards

with the nicest precision over our house straight along our ridge tiles. It made a magnificent noise the whole time; and not a searchlight touched it, as it was the nightout of the Essenden and Luton [search] lights. And not a shot was fired at it. I was amazed at its impunity and *

German: department, province,

business, profession.

Letter to Beatrice and Sidney

440 audacity.

It

Webb

London and must have got woke up and brought it down.

sailed straight for

past Hatfield before they

The commander was such

a splendid personage that the

and an officer who saw him grieved as for an only son. At two o'clock another Zeppelin passed over Ayot; but we have no telephone, and nobody bothered. I went to see the wreck on my motor bicycle. The police were in great feather, as there is a strict cordon, which means that you cant get in without paying. The charges divisional surgeon

are not excessive, as

I

guess; for

I

created a ducal impres-

sion by a shilling. Corpses are extra,

not intrude on the

last sleep

no doubt; but

of the brave.

What

is

I

did

hardly

that the sound of the Zepp's engines voyage through the stars so enchanting, that I positively caught myself hoping next night that there would be another raid. I grieve to add that after seeing the Zepp fall like a burning newspaper, with its human contents roasting for some minutes (it was frightfully slow) I went to bed and was comfortably asleep in ten minutes. One is so pleased at having seen the show that the destruction of a dozen people or so in hideous terror and torment does not count. "I didn't half cheer, I tell you*' said a damsel at the wreck. Pretty lot of animals we are! credible, but true,

was so

fine,

and

is

its

Yours

ever,

G.B.S.

HEARTBREAK HOUSE: A in the

Fantasia

Russian Manner on English Themes

HEARTBREAK HOUSE AND HORSEBACK HALL WHERE HEARTBREAK HOUSE STANDS Heartbreak House is not merely the name of the play which follows this preface. It is cultured, leisured Europe before the war. When the play was begun not a shot had been fired; and only the professional diplomatists and the very few amateurs whose hobby is foreign policy even knew that the guns were loaded. A Russian playwright, Tchekov, had produced four fascinating dramatic studies of Heartbreak House, of which three. The Cherry Orchard, Uncle Vanya, and The Seagull, had been performed in England. Tolstoy, in his Fruits of Enlightenment, had shewn us through it in his most ferociously contemptuous manner. Tolstoy did not waste any sympathy on it: it was to him the house in which Europe was stifling its soul; and he knew that our utter enervation and futilization in that overheated drawing-room atmosphere was delivering the world over to the control of ignorant and soulless cunning and energy, with the frightful consequences which have now overtaken it. Tolstoy was no pessimist: he was not disposed to leave the house standing if he could bring it down about the ears of its pretty and amiable voluptuaries; and he wielded the pickaxe with a will. He treated the case of the inmates as one of opium poisoning, to be dealt with by

and exercising them violently were broad awake. Tchekov, more of a fatalist, had no faith in these charming people extricating themselves. They would, he thought, be sold up and sent adrift by the bailiffs; therefore he had no scruple in exploiting and even flattering their charm. seizing the patients roughly until they

Heartbreak House

442

THE INHABITANTS Tchekov's plays, being less lucrative than swings and roundabouts, got no further in England, where theatres are only ordinary commercial affairs, than a couple of performances by the Stage Society. We stared and said, "How Russian!" They did not strike Ibsen's intensely

and professional

dle

Russian plays

me

in

that way.

Norwegian plays exactly

fitted

class all

suburb

in

fitted

Just

as

every mid-

Europe, these intensely

Europe in and the thea-

the country houses in

which the pleasures of music, art, literature, tre had supplanted hunting, shooting, fishing, flirting, eating, and drinking. The same nice people, the same utter futility. The nice people could read; some of them could write; and they were the only repositories of culture who had social opportunities of contact with our politicians, administrators, and newspaper proprietors, or any chance of sharing or influencing their activities. But they shrank from that contact. They hated politics. They did not wish to realize Utopia for the common people: they wished to realize their favorite fictions and poems in their own lives; and, when they could, they lived without scruple on incomes which they did nothing to earn. The women in their girlhood

and

made themselves look down later into the

settled

like variety theatre stars,

types of beauty imagined

by the previous generation of painters. They took the only was leisure for high culture, and made it an economic, political, and, as far as practicable, a moral vacuum; and as Nature, abhorring the vacuum, immediately filled it up with sex and v/ith all sorts of refined pleasures, it was a very delightful place at part of our society in which there

its

best for

was

moments

a veritable

of relaxation. In other

For prime ministers and Capua.

disastrous.

moments

their like,

it

it

was

HORSEBACK HALL But where were our front benchers to nest if not here? alternative to Heartbreak House was Horseback Hall, consisting of a prison for horses with an annex for the ladies and gentlemen who rode them, hunted them, talked about them, bought them and sold them, and gave nine-

The

Heartbreak House tenths

443

of their Hves to them,

dividing the

other

tenth

between charity, churchgoing (as a substitute for religion), and conservative electioneering (as a substitute for politics). It is true that the two establishments got mixed at the edges. Exiles from the library, the music room, and the picture gallery would be found languishing among the stables, miserably discontented; and hardy horsewomen who slept at the first chord of Schumann were born, horribly misplaced, into the garden of Klingsor; but sometimes one came upon horsebreakers and heartbreakers who could make the best of both worlds. As a rule, however, the two were apart and knew little of one another; so the prime minister folk had to choose between barbarism and Capua. And of the two atmospheres it is hard to say which was the

more

fatal to statesmanship.

REVOLUTION ON THE SHELF Heartbreak House was quite familiar with revolutionary ideas on paper. It aimed at being advanced and freethinking, and hardly ever went to church or kept the Sabbath except by a little extra fun at week-ends. When you spent a Friday to Tuesday in it you found on the shelf in your bedroom not only the books of poets and novelists, but of revolutionary biologists and even economists. Without at least a few plays by myself and Mr Granville Barker, and a few stories by Mr H. G. Wells, Mr Arnold Bennett, and Mr John Galsworthy, the house would have been out of

movement. You would find Blake among the poets, and beside him Bergson, Butler, Scott Haldane, the poems of Meredith and Thomas Hardy, and, generally speaking, all the literary implements for forming the mind of the perfect modern Socialist and Creative Evolutionist. It was a curious experience to spend Sunday in dipping into these books, and on Monday morning to read in the daily paper that the country had just been brought to the verge

the

of anarchy because a police, without

an idea

new Home Secretary in his

head that

or chief of

his great-grand-

had refused to "recognize" some powerful Trade Union, just as a gondola might refuse to recognize a 20,000-ton liner.

mother might not have had

to apologize for,

Heartbreak House

444

In short, power and culture were in separate compartments. The barbarians were not only literally in the saddle,

but on the front bench in the House of Commons, with nobody to correct their incredible ignorance of modern

thought and political science but upstarts from the counting-house, who had spent their lives furnishing their pockets instead of their minds. Both, however, were practised in

dealing with

money and with men,

as far as acquiring the

one and exploiting the other went; and although this is as undesirable an expertness as that of the medieval robber baron, it qualifies men to keep an estate or a business going in its old routine without necessarily understanding it, just as Bond Street tradesmen and domestic servants keep fashionable society going without any instruction in sociology.

THE CHERRY ORCHARD neither could nor would do anyWith their heads as full of the Anticipations of Mr H. G. Wells as the heads of our actual rulers were empty even of the anticipations of Erasmus or Sir Thomas More, they refused the drudgery of politics, and would have made a very poor job of it if they had changed their minds. Not that they would have been allowed to meddle anyhow, as only through the accident of being a

The Heartbreak people

thing of the sort.

hereditary peer can any one in these days of Votes for

Everybody

[fail to]

[lack of] serious

get into parliament

modern

if

handicapped by a

cultural equipment; but

if

they

vacuum would have left them and ineffective in public affairs. Even in private life they were often helpless wasters of their inheritance, like the people in Tchekov's Cherry Orchard. Even those who lived within their incomes were really kept going by their solicitors and agents, being unable to manage an estate or run a business without continual prompting from those who have to learn how to do such things or starve. From what is called Democracy no corrective to this state had, their habit of living in a

helpless

of things could be hoped.

It is

said that every people has

Government it deserves. It is more every Government has the electorate it

the

to the point that

deserves; for the

Heartbreak House

445

orators of the front bench can edify or debauch an ignorant electorate at will.

Thus our democracy moves in a vicious and unworthiness.

circle of reciprocal worthiness

nature's long credits Nature's

way

of dealing with unhealthy conditions

un-

is

fortunately not one that compels us to conduct a solvent

hygiene on a cash basis. She demoralizes us with long

and reckless overdrafts, and then pulls us up cruelly with catastrophic bankruptcies. Take, for example, common domestic sanitation. A whole city generation may neglect it utterly and scandalously, if not with absolute impunity, yet without any evil consequences that anyone thinks of tracing to it. In a hospital two generations of medical students may tolerate dirt and carelessness, and credits

then go out into general practice to spread the doctrine that fresh air is a fad, and sanitation an imposture set up to

make

profits for

plumbers. Then suddenly Nature takes

her revenge. She strikes at the city with a pestilence and at the hospital with an epidemic of hospital gangrene, slaughtering right and

left until

the innocent

paid for the guilty old, and the account

is

young have

balanced.

And

then she goes to sleep again and gives another period of

same result. what has just happened

credit, with the

This

is

in

our

political hygiene.

been as recklessly neglected by Governments and electorates during my lifetime as sanitary science was in the days of Charles the Second. In international relations diplomacy has been a boyishly lawless affair of family intrigues, commercial and territorial brigandage, torpors of pseudo-goodnature produced by laziness, and spasms of ferocious activity produced by terror. But Political science has

in these islands

we muddled

through. Nature gave us a

longer credit than she gave to France or sia.

To

British centenarians

who

Germany

or Rus-

died in their beds in 1914,

underground in London from the shells of an enemy seemed more remote and fantastic than a dread of the appearance of a colony of cobras and rattlesnakes in Kensington Gardens. In the prophetic works of Charles Dickens we were warned against many evils any dread of having

to hide

Heartbreak House

446

which have since come

to pass; but of the evil of being

slaughtered by a foreign foe on our own doorsteps there was no shadow. Nature gave us a very long credit; and

But when she struck at last she struck with a vengeance. For four years she smote our firstborn and heaped on us plagues of which Egypt never dreamed. They were all as preventible as the great Plague of London, and came solely because they had not been prevented. They were not undone by winning the war. The

we abused

earth

is

it

still

to the utmost.

.^

I

bursting with the dead bodies of the victors.

THE WICKED HALF CENTURY whether indifference and neglect are worse than false doctrine; but Heartbreak House and Horseback Hall unfortunately suffered from both. For half a century before the war civilization had been going to It is difficult

to say

the devil very precipitately under the influence of a pseudo-

science as disastrous as the blackest Calvinism. Calvinism taught that as we are predestinately saved or damned, Still, as Calvinism whether he had drawn

nothing that we do can alter our destiny.

gave the individual no a lucky number or an unlucky one, it left him a fairly strong interest in encouraging his hopes of salvation and allaying his fear of damnation by behaving as one of the clue as to

r

might be expected to behave rather than as one of the reprobate. But in the middle of the nineteenth century naturalists and physicists assured the world, in the name of Science, that salvation and damnation are all nonsense,

elect

and that predestination is the central truth of religion, inasmuch as human beings are produced by their environment, their sins and good deeds being only a series of chemical and mechanical reactions over which they have no control. Such figments as mind, choice, purpose, conscience, will, and so forth, are, they taught, mere illusions, produced because they are useful in the continual struggle of the human machine to maintain its environment in a favourable condition, a process incidentally involving the ruthless destruction or subjection of its competitors for the

supply (assumed to be limited) of subsistence available. We taught Prussia this religion; and Prussia bettered our in-

|

i

'

Heartbreak House

447

we

struction so effectively that

presently found ourselves

confronted with the necessity of destroying Prussia to prevent Prussia destroying us. And that has just ended in

each destroying the other to an extent doubtfully repara-

ble in our time.

may

It

came

be asked

how

so imbecile and dangerous a creed

answer that question more fully in my next volume of plays, which will be entirely devoted to the subject. For the present I will only say that there were better reasons than the obvious one that such sham science as this opened a scientific career to very stupid men, and all the other careers to shameless rascals, provided they were industrious enough. It is true that this motive operated very powerfully; but when the new departure in scientific doctrine which is associated with ever

the

name

to be accepted

by

intelligent beings. I will

of the great naturalist Charles

Darwin began,

it

was not only a reaction against a barbarous pseudo-evangelical

teleology intolerably obstructive to

gress, but

was accompanied,

as

it

all scientific

pro-

happened, by discoveries

of extraordinary interest in physics, chemistry, and that lifeless

method of evolution which

investigators called

its

Natural Selection. Howbeit, there was only one result possible in the ethical sphere, and that was the banishment of conscience from

mently put

it,

human

"of

affairs, or, as

mind from

Samuel Butler vehe-

the universe."

HYPOCHONDRIA

Now

Heartbreak House, with Butler and Bergson and Scott Haldane alongside Blake and the other major poets on its shelves (to say nothing of Wagner and the tone poets), was not so completely blinded by the doltish materialism of the laboratories as the uncultured world outside. But being an idle house it was a hypochondriacal house, always running after cures.

It

would stop eating meat, not on

valid

Shelleyan grounds, but in order to get rid of a bogey called Uric Acid;

and

it

would

teeth out to exorcize another

was

superstitious,

and addicted

actually

let

you

demon named

pull all

its

Pyorrhea.

It

to table-rapping, materiali-

zation seances, clairvoyance, palmistry, crystal-gazing and

the like to such an extent that

it

may

be doubted whether

Heartbreak House

448

ever before in the history of the world did soothsayers, astrologers,

and unregistered therapeutic

specialists of all

sorts flourish as they did during this half century of the drift to the abyss. The registered doctors and surgeons were hard put to it to compete with the unregistered. They were not clever enough to appeal to the imagination and socialibility of the Heartbreakers by the arts of the actor, the orator, the poet, the winning conversationalist They had to fall back coarsely on the terror of infection and death. They prescribed inoculations and operations. Whatever part of a human being could be cut out without necessarily killing him they cut out; and he often died (unnecessarily of course) in consequences. From such trifles as uvulas and tonsils they went on to ovaries and appendices until at last no one's inside was safe. They explained that the human intestine was too long, and that nothing could make a child of Adam healthy except short circuiting the pylorus by cutting a length out of the lower intestine and fastening it directly to the stomach. As their mechanist theory taught them that medicine was the business of the chemist's laboratory, and surgery of the carpenter's shop, and also that Science (by which they meant their practices) was so important that no consideration for the interests of any individual creature, whether frog or philosopher, much less the vulgar commonplaces of sentimental ethics, could weigh for a moment against the remotest off-chance of an addition to the body of scientific knowledge, they operated and vivisected and inoculated and lied on a stupendous scale, clamoring for and actually acquiring such legal powers over the bodies of their fellow-citizens as neither king, pope, nor parliament dare ever have claimed. The Inquisition itself was a Liberal institution compared to the Gen-

eral

Medical Council.

WHO DO NOT KNOW HOW TO MUST MAKE A MERIT OF DYING THOSE

LIVE

Heartbreak House was far too lazy and shallow to extricate itself from this palace of evil enchantment. It rhapsodized about love; but it believed in cruelty. It was afraid of the cruel people; and

it

saw

that cruelty

was

at least effec-

Heartbreak House tive.

449

Cruelty did things that

made money, whereas Love

did nothing but prove the soundness of Larochefoucauld's saying that very few people would fall in love if they had

never read about

Heartbreak House, in short, did not which point all that was left to it was the boast that at least it knew how to die: a melancholy accomplishment which the outbreak of war presently gave

know how

it

it.

to live, at

practically unlimited opportunities of displaying.

Thus

Heartbreak House smitten; and the young, the innocent, the hopeful expiated the folly and

were the

firstborn of

worthlessness of their elders.

WAR DELIRIUM Only those who have lived through a first-rate war, not home, and kept their heads, can possibly understand the bitterness of Shakespear and Swift, who both went through this experience. The horror of Peer Gynt in the madhouse, when the lunatics, exalted by illusions of splendid talent and visions of a dawning millennium, crowned him as their emperor, was tame in comparison. I do not know whether anyone really kept his head completely except those who had to keep it because they had to conduct the war at first hand. I should not have kept my own (as far as I did keep it) if I had not at once understood that as a scribe and speaker I too was under the most serious public obligation to keep my grip on realities; but this did not save me from a considerable degree of hyperaesthesia. There were of course some happy people to whom the war meant nothing: all political and general matters lying outside their little circle of interest. But the ordinary war-conscious civilian went mad, the main symptom being a conviction that the whole order of nature had been reversed. All foods, he felt, must now be adulterated. All schools must be closed. No advertisements must be sent to the newspapers, of which new editions must appear and be bought up every ten minutes. Travelling must be stopped, or, that being impossible, greatly hindered. All pretences about fine art and culture and the like must be flung off as an intolerable affectation; and the picture galleries and museums and schools at once occupied in the field, but at

Heartbreak House

450

by war workers. The British Museum itself was saved only by a hairsbreadth. The sincerity of all this, and of much more which would not be believed if I chronicled it, may be established by one conclusive instance of the general craziness. Men were seized with the illusion that they could win the war by giving away money. And they not only subscribed millions to Funds of all sorts with no discoverable object, and to ridiculous voluntary organizations for doing what was plainly the business of the civil and military authorities, but actually handed out money to any thief in the street who had the presence of mind to pretend that he (or she) was ^'collecting" it for the annihilation of the enemy. Swindlers were emboldened to take offices; label themselves Anti-Enemy Leagues; and simply pocket the money that was heaped on them. Attractively dressed young women found that they had nothing to do but parade the streets, collecting-box in hand, and live gloriously on the profits. Many months elapsed before, as a first sign of returning sanity, the police swept an Anti-Enemy secretary into prison pour encourager les autres, and the passionate penny collecting of the Flag Days was brought under some sort of regulation.

MADNESS

IN

COURT

The demoralization

did not spare the

Law

Courts. Sol-

were acquitted, even on fully proved indictments for wilful murder, until at last the judges and magistrates had to announce that what was called the Unwritten Law, which meant simply that a soldier could do what he liked with impunity in civil life, was not the law of the land, and that a Victoria Cross did not carry with it a perpetual diers

plenary indulgence. Unfortunately the insanity of the juries and magistrates did not always manifest itself in indulgence. No person unlucky enough to be charged with any sort of conduct, however reasonable and salutary, that did not smack of war delirium had the slightest chance of

There was in the country, too, a certain number of people who had conscientious objections to war as criminal or unchristian. The Act of Parliament introducing Compulsory Military Service thoughtlessly exempted these acquittal.

Heartbreak House

451

persons, merely requiring

them

prove the genuineness did so were very ill-advised to

of their convictions. Those who from the point of view of their own personal

interest; for

they were persecuted with savage logicality in spite of the law; whilst those

war

who made no

pretence of having any

and had not only had military trainhad proclaimed on public occasions that they were perfectly ready to engage in civil war on behalf of their political opinions, were allowed the benefit of the Act on the ground that they did not approve of this particular war. For the Christians there was no mercy. In cases where the evidence as to their being killed by ill treatment was so unequivocal that the verdict would certainly have been one of wilful murder had the prejudice of the coroner's jury been on the other side, their tormentors were gratuitously declared to be blameless. There was only one virtue, pugnacity: only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war; but the Government had not the courage to legislate accordingly; and its law was set aside for Lynch law. The climax of legal lawlessness was reached in France. The greatest Socialist statesman in Europe, Jaures, was shot and killed by a gentleman who resented his efforts to avert the war. M. Clemenceau was shot by another gentleman of less popular opinions, and happily came off no worse than objection to

at all,

ing in Officers' Training Corps, but

having to spend a precautionary couple of days in bed. The slayer of Jaures was recklessly acquitted: the would-be

M. Clemenceau was carefully found guilty. There no reason to doubt that the same thing would have happened in England if the war had begun with a successful attempt to assassinate Keir Hardie, and ended with an unsuccessful one to assassinate Mr Lloyd George. slayer of is

THE LONG ARM OF WAR which is the usual accompaniment of war was called influenza. Whether it was really a war pestilence or not was made doubtful by the fact that it did its worst in places remote from the battle-fields, notably on the west coast of North America and in India. But the moral pestilence, which was unquestionably a war pestilence, repro-

The

pestilence

Heartbreak House

452

phenomenon. One would have supposed that the war fever would have raged most furiously in the countries actually under fire, and that the others would be more reasonable. Belgium and Flanders, where over large districts literally not one stone was left upon another as the opposed armies drove each other back and forward over it after terrific preliminary bombardments, might have been pardoned for relieving their feelings more emphatically duced

this

than by shrugging their shoulders and saying "C'est guerre." England, inviolate for so

many

la

centuries that the

swoop of war on her homesteads had long ceased to be more credible than a return of the Flood, could hardly be expected to keep her temper sweet when she knew at last what tions,

it

was

or

lie

to hide in cellars

and underground railway

sta-

quaking in bed, whilst bombs crashed, houses

crumbled, and aircraft guns distributed shrapnel on friend

and foe formerly

alike full

until

certain

shop windows in London, filled with steel hel-

of fashionable hats, were

women and children, and burnt wrecked dwellings, and excuse a good deal of violent language, and produce a wrath on which many suns go down before it is appeased. Yet it was in the United States of America, where nobody slept the worse for the war, that the war fever went beyond all sense and reason. In European Courts there was vindictive illegality: in American Courts there was raving lunacy. It is not for me to chronicle the extravagances of an Ally: let some candid American do that. I can only say that to us sitting in our gardens in England, with the guns in France making themselves felt by a throb in the air as unmistakeable as an audible sound, mets. Slain and mutilated

or with tightening hearts studying the phases of the in

London

in their bearing

moon

on the chances whether our

houses would be standing or ourselves alive next morning, the newspaper accounts of the sentences

American Courts

girls and old men alike for the which were being uttered amid thundering applause before huge audiences in England, and the more private records of the methods by which the American War Loans were raised, were so amazing

were passing on young expression

of opinions

Heartbreak House

453

would put the guns and the possibilities of a raid moment.

that they

clean out of our heads for the

THE RABID WATCHDOGS OF LIBERTY

Not content with these rancorous abuses of the existing law, the war maniacs made a frantic rush to abolish all constitutional guarantees of liberty and well-being. The ordinary law was superseded by Acts under which news-

papers were seized and their printing machinery destroyed

by simple police raids a la Russe, and persons arrested and shot without any pretence of trial by jury or publicity of procedure or evidence. Though it was urgently necessary that production should be increased by the most scientific organization and economy of labor, and though no fact was better established than that excessive duration and intensity of toil

creasing

and

it,

women

efficiency

reduces production heavily instead of in-

and

the factory laws were suspended, recklessly

became too

overworked glaring

strances and warnings were

met

to

men

until the loss of their

be

ignored.

either with

Remon-

an accusation

pro-Germanism or the formula, "Remember that we are war now." I have said that men assumed that war had reversed the order of nature, and that all was lost unless we did the exact opposite of everything we had found necessary and beneficial in peace. But the truth was worse than that. The war did not change men's minds in any such impossible way. What really happened was that the impact of physical death and destruction, the one reality that every fool can understand, tore off the masks of education, art, science, and religion from our ignorance and barbarism, and left us glorying grotesquely in the license suddenly accorded to our vilest passions and most abject of at

terrors.

Ever since Thucydides wrote

on record

that

when

his history,

it

has been

the angel of death sounds his trumpet

blown from men's heads into the mud like hats in a gust of wind. But when this scripture was fulfilled among us, the shock was not the less appalling because a few students of Greek history were not the pretences of civilization are

surprised by

it.

Indeed these students threw themselves into

Heartbreak House

454 the orgy as shamelessly as the illiterate.

The

Christian priest

war dance without even throwing off his and the respectable school governor expelling the German professor with insult and bodily violence, and declaring that no English child should ever again be taught the language of Luther and Goethe, were kept in countenance by the most impudent repudiations of every decency of civilization and every lesson of political experience on the part of the very persons who, as university professors, historians, philosophers, and men of science, were the accredited custodians of culture. It was crudely natural, and perhaps necessary for recruiting purposes, that German militarism and German dynastic ambition should be painted by journalists and recruiters in black and red as European dangers (as in fact they are), leaving it to be inferred that our own militarism and our own political constitution are millennially democratic (which they cerjoining in the

cassock

first,

when it came to frantic denunciations German chemistry, German biology, German poetry, German music, German literature, German philosophy, and even German engineering, as malignant abominations tainly are not); but

of

standing towards British and French chemistry and so forth

heaven to hell, it was clear that the utterers of such barbarous ravings had never really understood or cared for the arts and sciences they professed and were profaning, and were only the appallingly degenerate descendants of the men of the seventh and eighteenth centuries who, recognizing no national frontiers in the great realm of the human mind, kept the European comity of that realm loftily and even ostentatiously above the rancors of the battle-field. Tearing the Garter from the Kaiser's leg, striking the German dukes from the roll of our peerage, changing the King's illustrious and historically appropriate surname for that of a traditionless locality, was not a very in the relation of

German names from and learning was a confession that in England the little respect paid to science and learning is only an affectation which hides a savage contempt for both. One felt that the figure of St George and the Dragon on our coinage should be replaced by that of the soldier dignified business; but the erasure of

the British rolls of science

Heartbreak House

455

driving his spear through Archimedes. But by that time there

was no coinage: only paper money in which ten pound as confidently as the people were disgracing their country called themselves

shillings called itself a

who

patriots.

THE SUFFERINGS OF THE SANE

The mental

distress of living amid the obscene din of all carmagnoles these and corobberies was not the only burden that lay on sane people during the war. There was also the emotional strain, complicated by the offended economic sense, produced by the casualty lists. The stupid, the selfish, the narrow-minded, the callous and unimaginative were spared a great deal. "Blood and destruction shall be so in use that mothers shall but smile when they behold their infants quartered by the hands of war," was a Shakespearean prophecy that very nearly came true; for when nearly every house had a slaughtered son to mourn, we should all have gone quite out of our senses if we had taken our own and our friends' bereavements at their peace value. It became necessary to give them a false value; to proclaim

the

young

life

worthily and gloriously sacrificed to redeem

the liberty of mankind, instead of to expiate the heedless-

ness and folly of their fathers, and expiate

it

in vain.

We

had even to assume that the parents and not the children had made the sacrifice, until at last the comic papers were driven to satirize fat old men, sitting comfortably in club chairs, and boasting of the sons they had "given" to their country.

No

one grudged these anodynes to acute personal

but they only embittered those

men were

having their teeth

who knew set

that the

grief;

young

on edge because

their

Then think of the young men themselves! Many of them had no illusions parents had eaten sour political grapes.

about the policy that led to the war: they went clear-sighted to a horribly

repugnant duty.

Men

essentially gentle

essentially wise, with really valuable work in hand, down voluntarily and spent months forming fours

and

laid

it

in the

barrack yard, and stabbing sacks of straw in the public eye, so that they might go out to

kill

and maim men as

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456

men, who were perhaps,

gentle as themselves. These class,

our most

as a

(Frederick Keeling, for

soldiers

efficient

example), were not duped for a moment by the hypocritical that consoled and stimulated the others. They

melodrama

left their creative

work

to

they would have

left

to take their turn at the

it

They did

drudge

at destruction, exactly as

pumps

in

some of the conscientious objectors, hold back because the ship had been neglected by its officers and scuttled by its wreckers. The ship had to be saved, even if Newton had to leave his fluxions and Michael Angelo his marbles to save it; so they threw away a sinking ship.

not, like

the tools of their beneficent and ennobling trades, and took

up the bloodstained bayonet and

the

murderous bomb,

forcing themselves to pervert their divine instinct for perfect artistic execution to the

diabolical things,

and

their

effective handling

of these

economic faculty for organizaand slaughter. For it gave

tion to the contriving of ruin

an ironic edge to their tragedy that the very talents they were forced to prostitute made the prostitution not only effective, but even interesting; so that some of them were rapidly promoted, and found themselves actually becoming artists in war, with a growing relish for it, like Napoleon and all the other scourges of mankind, in spite of themselves. For many of them there was not even this consolation. They "stuck it," and hated it, to the end. EVIL IN THE THRONE OF GOOD This distress of the gentle was so acute that those

shared their

it

in civil life, without

own

having to shed blood with

hands, or witness destruction with their

eyes, hardly cared to obtrude their

even when

who

own

own

woes. Nevertheless,

home

in safety, it was not easy for and speak about the war to throw highest conscience, and deliberately work to a sitting at

those

who had

away

their

to write

standard of inevitable

evil instead of the ideal of life

more

can answer for at least one person who found from the wisdom of Jesus and St Francis to the morals of Richard HI and the madness of Don Quixote extremely irksome. But that change had to be made; and abundant.

I

the change

Heartbreak House

we

are

all

the worse for

457 it,

except those for

whom

it

was

not really a change at

all, but only a relief from hypocrisy. Think, too, of those who, though they had neither to

write nor to fight, and had no children of their yet

knew

own

to lose,

the inestimable loss to the world of four years

life of a generation wasted on destruction. Hardly one of the epoch-making works of the human mind might not have been aborted or destroyed by taking their authors away from their natural work for four critical years. Not only were Shakespears and Platos being killed outright; but many of the best harvests of the survivors had to be

of the

sown in the barren soil of the trenches. And this was no mere British consideration. To the truly civilized man, to the good European, the slaughter of the German youth was as disastrous as the slaughter of the English. Fools exulted in "German losses." They were our losses as well. Imagine exulting in the death of Beethoven because Sykes dealt him his death blow!

Bill

STRAINING AT THE GNAT AND SWALLOWING THE CAMEL

But most people could not comprehend these sorrows. There was a frivolous exultation in death for its own sake, which was at bottom an inability to realize that the deaths were real deaths and not stage ones. Again and again, when an air raider dropped a bomb which tore a child and its mother limb from limb, the people who saw it, though they had been reading with great cheerfulness of thousands of such happenings day after day in their newspapers, suddenly burst into furious imprecations on "the

Huns"

as

murderers, and shrieked for savage and satisfying vengeance. At such moments it became clear that the deaths

them than the mimic deaths of the cinema screen. Sometimes it was not necessary that death should be actually witnessed: it had only to take place under circumstances of sufficient novelty and proximity to bring it home almost as sensationally and effectively as if it had been actually visible. For example, in the spring of 1915 there was an appalling they had not seen meant no

more

to

Heartbreak House

458 slaughter of our

young

the Gallipoli landing. civilians

I

soldiers at

Neuve Chapelle and

at

go so far as to say that our have such exciting news to read

will not

were delighted to But I cannot pretend that

at breakfast.

I

noticed either in

beyond cinema show at the front was going splendidly, and that our boys were the bravest of the brave. Suddenly there came the news that an Atlantic liner, the Lusitania, had been torpedoed, and that several well-known first class passengers, including a famous theatrical manager and the author of a popular farce, had been drowned, the papers, or in general intercourse, any feeling the usual one that the

among

others.

he had only

The

others included Sir

laid the

Hugh

Lane; but as

country under great obligations

in the

no great stress was laid on that loss. Immediately an amazing frenzy swept through the country. Men who up to that time had kept their heads now lost them utterly. "Killing saloon passengers! What next?" was the essence of the whole agitation; but it is far too trivial a phrase to convey the faintest notion of the rage which possessed us. To me, with my mind full of the hideous cost of Neuve Chapelle, Ypres, and the Gallipoli landing, the fuss about the Lusitania seemed almost a heartless impertinence, though I was well acquainted personally with the three best-known victims, and understood, better perhaps than most people, the misfortune of the death of Lane. I even found a grim satisfaction, very intelligible to all soldiers, in the fact that the civilians who found the war such splendid British sport should get a sharp taste of what it was to the actual combatants. I expressed my impatience very freely, and found that my very straightforward and natural feeling in the matter was received as a monstrous and heartless paradox. When I asked those who gaped at me whether they had anything to say about the holocaust of Festubert, they gaped wider than before, having totally forgotten it, or rather, having never realized it. They were not heartless any more than I was; but the big catastrophe was too big for them to grasp, and the little one had been just the right size for them. I was not surprised. Have I not seen a public body for just the same reason pass a vote for £30,000 without a word, and then spend three special sphere of the fine

arts,

Heartbreak House

459

meetings, prolonged into the night, over an item of seven shillings for

refreshments?

LITTLE MINDS AND BIG BATTLES

Nobody

will

be able to understand the vagaries of public

feeling during the

the war

war

unless they bear constantly in

mind

magnitude did not exist for the that in its average civilian. He could not conceive even a battle, much less a campaign. To the suburbs the war was nothing but a suburban squabble. To the miner and navvy it was only a series of bayonet fights between German champions and English ones. The enormity of it was quite beyond most of us. Its episodes had to be reduced to the dimensions of a railway accident or a shipwreck before it could produce any entire

effect on our minds at all. To us the ridiculous bombardments of Scarborough and Ramsgate were colossal tragedies, and the battle of Jutland a mere ballad. The words "after thorough artillery preparation" in the news from the front meant nothing to us; but when our seaside trippers learned that an elderly gentleman at breakfast in a week-end marine hotel had been interrupted by a bomb dropping into his egg-cup, their wrath and horror knew no bounds. They declared that this would put a new spirit into the army, and had no suspicion that the soldiers in the trenches roared with laughter over it for days, and told each other that it would do the blighters at home good to have a taste of what the army was up against. Sometimes the smallness of view was pathetic. A man would work at home regardless of the call "to make the world safe for democracy." His brother would be killed at the front. Immediately he would throw up his work and take up the war as a family blood feud against the Germans. Sometimes it was comic. A wounded man, entitled to his discharge, would return to the trenches with a grim determination to find the Hun who had wounded him and pay him

out for

it.

impossible to estimate what proportion of us, in khaki or out of it, grasped the war and its political antecedents as a whole in the light of any philosophy of history or It

is

knowledge of what war

is.

I

doubt whether

it

was

as high

Heartbreak House

460

our proportion of higher mathematicians. But there can be no doubt that it was prodigiously outnumbered by the comparatively ignorant and childish. Remember that these as

people had to be stimulated to

manded by

make

the sacrifices de-

done by appeals to a knowledge which they did not possess, and a comprehension of which they were incapable. When the the war, and that this could not be

armistice at last set

me

free to

tell

the truth about the

war

at the following general election, a soldier said to a candi-

whom

was supporting "If I had known all that in 1914, they would never have got me into khaki." And that, of course, was precisely why it had been necessary to stuff him with a romance that any diplomatist would have laughed at. Thus the natural confusion of ignorance was date

I

increased by a deliberately propagated confusion of nursery bogey stories and melodramatic nonsense, which at last overreached itself and made it impossible to stop the war before we had not only achieved the triumph of vanquishing the German army and thereby overthrowing its militarist monarchy, but made the very serious mistake of ruining the centre of Europe, a thing that no sane European State could afford to do.

THE DUMB CAPABLES AND THE NOISY INCAPABLES Confronted with folly, the critical

England

all this

this picture

of insensate delusion and

reader will immediately counterplead that

time was conducting a war which involved

the organization of several millions of fighting the workers

who were

men and

of

supplying them with provisions,

munitions, and transport, and that this could not have been

done by a mob of hysterical ranters. This is fortunately true. To pass from the newspaper offices and political platforms and club fenders and suburban drawing-rooms to the Army and the munition factories was to pass from Bedlam to the busiest and sanest of workaday worlds. It was to rediscover England, and find solid ground for the faith of those who still believed in her. But a necessary condition of this efficiency was that those who were efficient should give all their time to their business and leave the rabble raving to its heart's content. Indeed the raving was useful to the efficient,

'

461

'

Heartbreak House

diswas always wide of the mark, it often from operations that tracted attention very conveniently publicity. A would have been defeated or hindered by popularize early in precept which I endeavored vainly to do go and do it: if not, the war, "If you have anything to was only half carried for heaven's sake get out of the way," went and did it; but the out. Certainly the capable people of the way: they incapables would by no means get out prevented from getting fussed and bawled and were only blessed fact that they very seriously into the way by the Thus whilst all the efficinever knew where the way was. invisible, all its imbecility ency of England was silent and clamor and blotting out was deafening the heavens with its unfortunately intmiidating the sun with its dust. It was also

because, as

it

blusterings into using the irresistible sensible people, thus powers of the State to intimidate the would-be lynchers to enabling a despicable minority of

the

Government by

its

any time have been up a reign of terror which could at responsible minister. broken by a single stern word from a of courage, neither But our ministers had not that sort had bred it, much Heartbreak House nor Horseback Hall set

less the

suburbs.

When

matters at

last

came

to the looting

patriotic pretexts, it was the of shops by criminals under that put its foot down^ police force and not the Government subdeplorable moment, during the

There was even one Government yielded to a marine scare, in which the

naval prisoners of war, childish cry for the maltreatment of was forced by the enemy to and, to our great disgrace,

this public blundering behave itself. And yet behind all the effective England and misconduct and futile mischief, formidable capacity and was carrying on with the most was maKing the empire activity. The ostensible England

sick with

its

ignorances, its ferocities its lied of endless and intolerable blarings

incontinences,

and its national anthems

panics,

was proceeding

in season

irresistibly

THE PRACTICAL BUSINESS

From

its

A

and

out.

The

esoteric

MEN up a shriek for they meant men who had

set the beginning the useless people

-practical business

England

to the conquest of Europe.

men." By

this

Heartbreak House

462

become

by placing their personal interests before those of the country, and measuring the success of every activity by the pecuniary profit it brought to them and to those on whom they depended for their supplies of capital. The pitiable failure of some conspicuous samples from the first batch we tried of these poor devils helped to give the whole rich

war an

monstrous and hopeless farce. They proved not only that they were useless for public work, but that in a well-ordered nation they would never have been allowed to control private enterprise. public side of the

HOW THE

air of

FOOLS SHOUTED THE WISE

Thus, like a

shewed no

fertile

MEN DOWN

country flooded with mud, England

sign of her greatness in the days

putting forth

all

when she was

her strength to save herself from the worst

consequences of her littleness. Most of the men of action, occupied to the last hour of their time with urgent practical work, had to leave to idler people, or to professional rhetoricians, the presentation of the war to the reason and imag-

and the world in speeches, poems, manifestos, picture posters, and newspaper articles. I have had the privilege of hearing some of our ablest commanders talking about their work; and I have shared the common lot of reading the accounts of that work given to the world by the newspapers. No two experiences could be more different. But in the end the talkers obtained a dangerous ascendancy over the rank and file of the men of action; for though the great men of action are always inveterate talkers and often very clever writers, and therefore cannot have their minds formed for them by others, the average man of action, like the average fighter with the bayonet, can give no account of himself in words even to himself, and is apt to pick up and accept what he reads about himself and other people in the papers, except when the writer is rash enough to commit himself on technical points. It was not uncommon during the war to hear a soldier, or a civilian engaged on war work, describing events within his ination of the country

own

experience that reduced to utter absurdity the ravings

and maunderings of

his

daily

paper, and yet echo the

opinions of that paper like a parrot. Thus, to escape from

Heartbreak House

463

the prevailing confusion and folly

was not enough to seek the company of the ordinary man of action: one had to get into contact with the master spirits. This was a privilege which only a handful of people could enjoy. For the unprivileged citizen there was no escape. To him the whole country seemed mad, futile, silly, incompetent, with no hope of victory except the hope that the enemy might be just as mad. Only by very resolute reflection and reasoning could he reassure himself that if there was nothing more solid beneath these appalling appearances the war could not possibly have gone on for a single day without a total breakdown of its organization. it

THE MAD ELECTION

Happy were in those days.

the fools and the thoughtless

The worst

of

it

men

of action

was that the fools were very

strongly represented in parliament, as fools not only elect

can persuade men of action to elect them too. The election that immediately followed the armistice was perhaps the maddest that has ever taken place. Soldiers who had done voluntary and heroic service in the field were defeated by persons who had apparently never run a risk or spent a farthing that they could avoid, and who even had in the course of the election to apologize publicly for bawling Pacifist or Pro-German at their opponent. Party leaders seek such followers, who can always be depended on to walk tamely into the lobby at the party fools, but

whip's orders, provided the leader will safe for

them by

the process

which was

make

their seats

called, in derisive

reference to the war rationing system, "giving

them the

coupon." Other incidents were so grotesque that I cannot mention them without enabling the reader to identify the parties, which would not be fair, as they were no more to blame than thousands of others who must necessarily be nameless. The general result was patently absurd; and the electorate, disgusted at its own work, instantly recoiled to the opposite extreme, and cast out all the coupon candidates at the earliest bye-elections by equally silly majorities. But the mischief of the general election could not be undone: and the Government had not only to pretend to abuse its

Heartbreak House

464

European victory as it had promised, but actually to do it by starving the enemies who had thrown down their arms. It

had, in short,

thriftlessly it

won

wicked, cruel, and vindictive; and

as easy to escape

ones.

The

the election by pledging itself to be

end, as

from

this

pledge as

I write, is

we

shall

did not find

had from nobler

not yet; but

this thoughtless savagery will recoil

Allies so severely that

it

it

it

is

clear that

on the heads of the

be forced by the sternest

necessity to take up our share of healing the Europe we have wounded almost to death instead of attempting to complete her destructioEL

THE YAHCX) AND THE ANGRY APE Contemplating this picture of a state of mankind so recent that no denial of its truth is possible, one understands Shakespear comparing Man to an angry ape, Swift describing him as a Yahoo rebuked by the superior virtue of the horse, and Wellington declaring that the British can behave themselves neither in victory nor defeat. Yet none of the three had seen war as we have seen it. Shakespear blamed great men, saying that "Could great men thunder as Jove himself does Jove would ne'er be quiet; for every

would use his heaven for thunder: nothing but thunder." What would Shakespear have said if he had seen something far more destructive than thunder in the hand of every village laborer, and found on the pelting petty officer

Messines Ridge the craters of the nineteen volcanoes that were let loose there at the touch of a finger that might

have been a less

child's finger

ruinous? Shakespear

without the result being a whit

may have

seen a Stratford cot-

tage struck by one of Jove's thunderbolts, and have helped to extinguish the lighted thatch and clear

away the

bits

of

What would he have said if he had now, or returned to Stratford, as French

the broken chimney.

seen Ypres as

it is

homes today, to find the "To Stratford, 1 mile,'' and at the end of the mile nothing but some holes in the ground and a fragment of a broken churn here and there? Would not the spectacle of the angry ape endowed with powers of

peasants are returning to their old familiar signpost inscribed

Heartbreak House

465

destruction that Jove never pretended to, have beggared

even

his

command

of words?

And yet, what is there to say except that war puts a strain on human nature that breaks down the better half of it, and makes the worse half a diabolical virtue? Better for us if broke it down altogether; for then the warlike way out of our difficulties would be barred to us, and we should it

take greater care not to get into them. In truth,

Byron

it

is,

as

and enormously difficult to live: that explains why, at bottom, peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous. Did any hero of the said,

"not

difficult to die,"

war face

the glorious risk of death more bravely than the Bolo faced the ignominious certainty of it? Bolo taught us all how to die: can we say that he taught us all how to live? Hardly a week passes now without some soldier who braved death in the field so recklessly that he was decorated or specially commended for it, being haled before our magistrates for having failed to resist the paltriest temptations of peace, with no better excuse than the old one that "a man must live." Strange that one who, sooner than do honest work, will sell his honor for a bottle of wine, traitor

a

visit to

all

the theatre, and an hour with a strange

woman,

obtained by passing a worthless cheque, could yet stake

his life

Does

it

on the most desperate chances of the battle-field! not seem as if, after all, the glory of death were

cheaper than the glory of

why do

life? If

it is

not easier to attain,

many more men

attain it? At all events it is kingdom of the Prince of Peace has not yet become the kingdom of this world. His attempts at invasion have been resisted far more fiercely than the Kaiser's. Successful as that resistance has been, it has piled up a sort of National Debt that is not the less oppressive because we have no figures for it and do not intend to pay it. A blockade that cuts off "the grace of our Lord" is in the long run less bearable than the blockades which merely cut oif raw materials; and against that blockade our Armada is im-

so

clear that the

potent. In the blockader's house, he has assured us, there are

many mansions;

either

but

I

am

afraid they

do not include

Heartbreak House or Horseback Hall.

Heartbreak House

466

PLAGUE ON BOTH YOUR HOUSES! Meanwhile the Bolshevist picks and petards are at work on the foundations of both buildings; and though the Bol-

may

be buried in the ruins, their deaths will not save the edifices. Unfortunately they can be built again. shevists

Like Doubting Castle, they have been demolished

many

times by successive Greathearts, and rebuilt by Simple,

and Presumption, by Feeble Mind and Much Afraid, and by all the jurymen of Vanity Fair. Another generation of "secondary education" at our ancient public schools and the cheaper institutions that ape them will be quite sufficient to keep the two going until the next war. For the instruction of that generation I leave these pages as a record of what civilian life was during the war: a matter on which history is usually silent. Fortunately it was a Sloth,

very short war.

It is

true that the people

who

thought

it

more than six months were very signally refuted by the event. As Sir Douglas Haig has pointed out,

could not

last

its Waterloos lasted months instead of hours. But there would have been nothing surprising in its lasting thirty years. If it had not been for the fact that the blockade achieved the amazing feat of starving out Europe, which it could not possibly have done had Europe been properly organized for war, or even for peace, the war would have lasted until the belligerents were so tired of it that they could no longer be compelled to compel themselves to go on with it. Considering its magnitude, the war of 1914-18 will certainly be classed as the shortest in history. The end

came over

so suddenly that the combatants literally stumbled it;

and yet

it

came a

full

year later than

it

should

have come if the belligerents had not been far too afraid of one another to face the situation sensibly. Germany, having failed to provide for the war she began, failed again to surrender before she was dangerously exhausted. Her opponents, equally improvident, went as much too close to bankruptcy as Germany to starvation. It was a bluff at which both were bluffed. And, with the usual irony of war, it remains doubtful whether Germany and Russia, the defeated, will not be the gainers; for the victors are already

Heartbreak House

467

busy fastening on themselves the chains they have struck

from the limbs of the vanquished,

HOW THE THEATRE Let us

now

FARED

contract our view rather violently from the

European theatre of war sham fights, and the

are

to the theatre in slain, rising the

which the

moment

fights

the cur-

go comfortably home to supper after washtheir rosepink wounds. It is nearly twenty years since

tain has fallen,

ing off

was last obliged to introduce a play in the form of a book for lack of an opportunity of presenting it in its proper mode by a performance in a theatre. The war has thrown me back on this expedient. Heartbreak House has not yet reached the stage. I have withheld it because the war has completely upset the economic conditions which formerly enabled serious drama to pay its way in London. The change is not in the theatres nor in the management of them, nor in the authors and actors, but in the audiences. For four years the London theatres were crowded every night with thousands of soldiers on leave from the front. These soldiers were not seasoned London playgoers. A I

childish experience of

When

my own

gave

me

a clue to their

was a small boy I was taken to the opera. I did not then know what an opera was, though I could whistle a good deal of opera music. I had seen in my mother's album photographs of all the great opera singers, mostly in evening dress. In the theatre I found myself condition.

I

before a gilded balcony

whom

filled

with persons in evening dress

took to be the opera singers. I picked out one massive dark lady as Alboni, and wondered how soon she would I

stand up and sing.

was puzzled by the fact that I was made to sit with my back to the singers instead of facing them. When the curtain went up, my astonishment and delight were unbounded. I

THE SOLDIER AT THE THEATRE FRONT In 1915 I saw in the theatres men in khaki in just the same predicament. To everyone who had my clue to their state of mind it was evident that they had never been in a

Heartbreak House

468 theatre before and did not

great variety theatres

I

know what

sat beside a

a rough specimen, who, even

all

it

was.

young

when

At one of our officer,

not at

the curtain rose and

enlightened him as to the place where he had to look for entertainment, found the dramatic part of

his

He

incomprehensible.

He

of the game.

did not

know how

it

utterly

to play his part

could understand the people on the stage

singing and dancing and performing gymnastic feats.

not only understood but intensely enjoyed an

artist

He who

imitated cocks crowing and pigs squeaking. But the people

who

pretended that they were somebody

painted picture behind them was his

presence

man

I

realized

how

real,

else,

and that the

bewildered him. In

very sophisticated the natural

has to become before the conventions of the theatre

can be

easily acceptable, or the purpose of the

drama

obvi-

ous to him.

moment when

Well, from the

the routine of leave for

our soldiers was established, such novices, accompanied by damsels (called flappers) often as innocent as themselves,

crowded the theatres

was hardly possible at first to find stuff crude enough to nurse them on. The best music-hall comedians ransacked their memories for the older quips and the most childish antics to avoid carrying to the doors. It

the military spectators out of their depth.

was a mistake

as far as the novices

pear, or the dramatized histories of

I

believe that this

were concerned. ShakesGeorge Barnwell, Maria

Demon

Barber of Fleet Street, would probably have been quite popular with them. But the novices were only a minority after all. The cultivated soldier, who Martin, or the

in time of peace

would look

at

nothing theatrical except

the most advanced post-Ibsen plays in the most artistic set-

found himself, to his own astonishment, thirsting for and brainlessly sensuous exhibitions of pretty girls. The author of some of the most grimly serious plays of our time told me that after enduring the trenches for months without a glimpse of the female of his species, it gave him an entirely innocent but delightful pleasure merely to see a flapper. The reaction from the battle-field produced a condition of hyperaesthesia in which all the theatrical values were altered. Trivial things gained intensity tings, silly

jokes, dances,

Heartbreak House

469

and stale things novelty. The actor, instead of having to coax his audiences out of the boredom which had driven them to the theatre in an ill humor to seek some sort of distraction, had only to exploit the bliss of smiling men who were no longer under fire and under military discipline, but actually clean and comfortable and in a mood to be pleased with anything and everything that a bevy of pretty girls and a funny man, or even a bevy of girls pretending to be pretty and a man pretending to be funny, could do for them. Then could be seen every night in the theatres old-fashioned farcical comedies, in which a bedroom, with four doors on each side and a practicable window in the middle, was understood to resemble exactly the bedroom in the flats beneath and above, all three inhabited by couples consumed with jealousy. When these people came home drunk at night; mistook their neighbors' flats for their own; and in due course got into the wrong beds, it was not only the novices who found the resulting complications and scandals exquisitely ingenious and amusing, nor their equally verdant flappers

who

could not help squealing in a manner

when the gentleman drunk through the window precome in tended to undress, and allowed glimpses of his naked person to be descried from time to time. Men who had just read the news that Charles Wyndham was dying, and were thereby sadly reminded of Pink Dominos and the torrent of farcical comedies that followed it in his heyday until every trick of that trade had become so stale that the laughter they provoked turned to loathing: these veterans also, when they returned from the field, were as much pleased by what they knew to be stale and foolish as the novices by what they thought fresh and clever. that astonished the oldest performers

who had

just

COMMERCE

IN

THE THEATRE

Wellington said that an army moves on a London theatre. Before a

man

acts he

he performs plays he must pay rent. In

its

belly.

must

eat.

So does Before

London we have no

theatres for the welfare of the people: they are

all

for the

sole purpose of producing the utmost obtainable rent for

470

Heartbreak House

the proprietor. If the twin flats and twin beds produce a

guinea more than Shakespear, out goes Shakespear, and in come the twin flats and the twin beds. If the brainless bevy of pretty girls and the funny

man

outbid Mozart, out goes

Mozart,

UNSER SHAKESPEAR Before the war an effort was

made

to

remedy

this by*

establishing a national theatre in celebration of the tercen-

tenary

of

the

formed; and

all

death of Shakespear. sorts of illustrious

A

and

committee was

influential persons

names to a grand appeal to our national culture. The Dark Lady of The Sonnets, was one of the incidents of that appeal. After some years of effort the result was a single handsome subscription from a German lent their

My

play,

gentleman. Like the celebrated swearer in the anecdote

when

the cart containing

all

tailboard at the top of the

his

hill

household goods

and

let its

contents

lost its roll in

I can only say, "I cannot do justice situation," and let it pass without another word.

ruin to the bottom, to this

THE HIGHER DRAMA PUT OUT OF ACTION

The

effect of the

war on the London

theatres

may now

be imagined. The beds and the bevies drove every higher

form of art out of it. Rents went up to an unprecedented At the same time prices doubled everywhere except at the theatre payboxes, and raised the expenses of management to such a degree that unless the houses were quite full every night, profit was impossible. Even bare solvency could not be attained without a very wide popularity. Now what had made serious drama possible to a limited extent before the war was that a play could pay its way even if the theatre were only half full until Saturday and three-quarters full then. A manager who was an enthusiast and a desperately hard worker, with an occasional grant-inaid from an artisticaly disposed millionaire, and a due proportion of those rare and happy accidents by which plays of figure.

the higher sort turn out to be potboilers as well, could hold

some

by which time a relay might arrive in the person of another enthusiast. Thus and not otherwise out for

years,

Heartbreak House

471

occurred that remarkable revival of the beginning of the century which

British,

made my own

playwright possible in England. In America established

drama

I

at the

career as a

had already

myself, not as part of the ordinary theatre

system, but in association with the exceptional genius of

Richard Mansfield. In Germany and Austria I had no difficulty: the system of publicly aided theatres there, Court and Municipal, kept drama of the kind I dealt in alive; so

Emperor of Austria for magnificent productions of my works at a time when the sole that

I

was indebted

official

to the

me by

attention paid

the British Court

was the

announcement to the English-speaking world that certain plays of mine were unfit for public performance, a substantial set-off against this being that the British Court, in

the course of

its

private playgoing, paid

bad character given

me

by the chief

no regard

officer of

its

to the

household.

my plays effected a lodgment on and were presently followed by the plays of Granville Barker, Gilbert Murray, John Masefield, St John Rankin, Laurence Housman, Arnold Bennett, John Galsworthy, John Drinkwater, and others which would in the nineteenth century have stood rather less chance of proHowbeit, the fact that

the

London

duction

stage,

at a

London

theatre than the Dialogues of Plato,

not to mention revivals of the ancient Athenian drama, and a restoration to the stage of Shakespear's plays as he wrote

them, was made economically possible solely by a supply of

which could hold nearly twice as much money as it cost to rent and maintain them. In such theatres work appealing to a relatively small class of cultivated persons, and

theatres

therefore attracting only from half to three-quarters as

many

more popular pastimes, could neverthe hands of young adventurers who

spectators as the

keep going in were doing it for its own sake, and had not yet been forced by advancing age and responsibilities to consider the commercial value of their time and energy too closely. The war struck this foundation away in the manner I have just theless

The expenses of running the cheapest west-end theatres rose to a sum which exceeded by twenty-five per cent the utmost that the higher drama can, as an ascertained matter of fact, be depended on to draw. Thus the higher described.

Heartbreak House

472

drama, which has never

really

been a commercially sound

now became an impossible one. Accordingly, made to provide a refuge for it in suburban theatres in London and repertory theatres in the provinces. But at the moment when the army has at last speculation,

attempts are being

disgorged the survivors of the gallant band of dramatic pioneers

whom

it

swallowed, they find that the economic

conditions which formerly

precarious

now

as the west

end of London

put

it

made

their

work no worse than

out of the question altogether, as far is

concerned.

CHURCH AND THEATRE I

do not suppose many people care

particularly.

We

are

not brought up to care; and a sense of the national importance of the theatre is not born in mankind: the natural

many of the soldiers at the beginning of the war, does not know what a theatre is. But please note that all these soldiers who did not know what a theatre was, knew what a church was. And they had been taught to respect churches. Nobody had ever warned them against a church as a place where frivolous women paraded in their man,

like so

best clothes;

where

stories of

improper females

like Poti-

phar's wife, and erotic poetry like the Song of Songs, were

read aloud; where the sensuous and sentimental music of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Gounod, and

Brahms was more

popular than severe music by greater composers; where the prettiest sort of pretty pictures of pretty saints asthe imagination and senses through stained-glass windows; and where sculpture and architecture came to the help of painting. Nobody ever reminded them that these things had sometimes produced such developments of erotic idolatry that men who were not only enthusiastic amateurs of literature, painting, and music, but famous practitioners of them, had actually exulted when mobs and even regular troops under express command had mutilated church statues, smashed church windows, wrecked church organs, and torn up the sheets from which the church music was read and sung. When they saw broken statues in churches, they were told that this was the work of wicked godless sailed

rioters,

instead of, as

it

was, the work partly of zealots

Heartbreak House

473

bent on driving the world, the

flesh,

and the

devil out of

men who had become

the temple, and partly of insurgent

had become a den of thieves. But all the sins and perversions that were so carefully hidden from them in the history of the Church were laid on the shoulders of the Theatre: that stuffy, uncomfortable place of penance in which we suffer so much inconvenience on the slenderest chance of gaining a scrap intolerably poor because the temple

of food for our starving souls. the Cathedral of the sacrilege.

Rheims

When

When

the

Germans bombed

the world rang with the horror of

they

bombed

the Little Theatre in the

and narrowly missed bombing two writers of plays who lived within a few yards of it, the fact was not even mentioned in the papers. In point of appeal to the senses no theatre ever built could touch the fane at Rheims: no actress could rival its Virgin in beauty, nor any operatic

Adelphi,

tenor look otherwise than a fool beside

its

David,

Its pic-

was glorious even to those who had seen the glass of Chartres. It was wonderful in its very grotesques: who would look at the Blondin Donkey after seeing its leviathans? In spite of the Adam-Adelphian decoration on which Miss Kingston had lavished so much taste and care, the Little Theatre was in comparison with Rheims the ture glass

gloomiest of

little

conventicles: indeed the cathedral must,

from the Puritan point of view, have debauched a million voluptuaries for every one whom the Little Theatre had sent

home

thoughtful to a chaste bed after

Mr

Chesterton's

Avaries. Perhaps that

is the real Magic or Brieux's Les reason why the Church is lauded and the Theatre reviled. Whether or no, the fact remains that the lady to whose

public spirit and sense of the national value of the theatre I

owed

the

mine had

first

regular public performance of a play of

to conceal her action as

if it

had been a crime,

whereas if she had given the money to the Church she would have worn a halo for it. And I admit, as I have always done, that this state of things may have been a very sensible one. I have asked Londoners again and again why they pay half a guinea to go to a theatre when they can go to St Paul's or Westminster Abbey for nothing. Their only possible reply is that they want to see something new and

Heartbreak House

474

possibly something wicked; but the theatres mostly disap-

point both hopes. If ever a revolution I

shall

establish

makes me

Dictator,

heavy charge for admission to our who pays at the church door shall

a

churches. But everyone

him or her to free admission to any theatre he or she prefers. Thus shall the sensuous charms of the church service be made to subsidize the sterner virtue of the drama. receive a ticket entitling

one performance

at

THE NEXT PHASE

The present paper

I

situation will not last.

Although the news-

read at breakfast this morning before writing these

words contains a calculation that no less than twenty-three wars are at present being waged to confirm the peace, England is no longer in khaki; and a violent reaction is setting in against the crude theatrical fare of the four terrible years.

Soon

the rents of theatres will once

more be

on the assumption that they cannot always be full, nor even on the average half full week in and week out. Prices will change. The higher drama will be at no greater

fixed

was before the war; and it may benefit, first, by the fact that many of us have been torn from the fools' paradise in which the theatre formerly traded, and thrust upon the sternest realities and necessities until we have lost both faith in and patience with the theatrical pretences that had no root either in reality or necessity; second, by the startling change made by the war in the distribution of income. It seems only the other day that a millionaire was a man with £50,000 a year. Today, when he has paid his income tax and super tax, and insured his disadvantage than

it

for the amount of his death duties, he is lucky if his income is £10,000, though his nominal property remains the same. And this is the result of a Budget which is called "a respite for the rich." At the other end of the scale millions of persons have had regular incomes for the first time in their lives; and their men have been regularly clothed, fed, lodged, and taught to make up their minds life

net

that certain things have to be done, also for the

first

time

Hundreds of thousands of women have been taken out of their domestic cages and tasted both discipline in their lives.

Heartbreak House

475

and independence. The thoughtless and snobbish middle classes have been pulled up short by the very unpleasant "

experience of being ruined to an unprecedented extent.

have

all

had a tremendous

jolt;

and although the widespread

notion that the shock of the war would automatically a

new heaven and

a

new

We

earth,

and

that the

make

dog would

never go back to his vomit nor the sow to her wallowing in the mire, is already seen to be a delusion, yet we more conscious of our condition than we were, and

disposed to submit to

it.

are far far less

Revolution, lately only a sensa-

tional chapter in history or a

demagogic claptrap,

is

now

a possibility so imminent that hardly by trying to suppress it

in

other countries by arms and defamation, and calling

the process anti-Bolshevism, can our off at

Government

stave

it

home.

Perhaps the most tragic figure of the day

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 is

the

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

we, the new conquerors, forgetting everything

sees that

we professed

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." He led his people to destroy the militarism of Zabern; and the army they rescued is busy in Cologne imprisoning every German who does not salute a British officer; whilst the Government at home, to fight for, are sitting

Heartbreak House

476 asked whether

approves, repHes that

it

it

does not propose

Zabernism when the Peace is conmaking Germans salute British officers until the end of the world. That is what war makes of men and women. It will wear off; and even to discontinue

this

cluded, but in effect looks forward to

the worst

it

threatens

already proving impracticable; but

is

before the humble and contrite heart ceases to be despised, the President and

I,

being of the same age, will be dotards.

In the meantime there

comedy

for me, another

what wars are are for. If in blood,

for,

men

is,

for him, another history to write; to stage. Perhaps, after

all,

that

is

and what historians and playwrights

will not learn until their lessons are written

why, blood they must have, their own for prefer-

ence,

THE EPHEMERAL THRONES AND THE ETERNAL THEATRE

To

the theatre

it

Whatever Bastilles fall, Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed;

will not matter.

the theatre will stand.

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

perhaps alive

more summary method of murder, or perhaps dead: nobody cares more than a

is 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 as closely on

one another's heels as the descendants of Banquo; but Euripides and Aristophanes, Shakespear 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

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 shew their lovers and

plays about the

Heartbreak House

477

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 bloodthirsts that love war because it opens their prison doors, and sets

For unless

them

in the thrones of

power and popularity.

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 and indeed cannot, be militarily expedient to reveal them whilst the issue is still in the balance. Truth telling is

not,

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'rC* sooner than deceive or be deceived; and thus becomes in time of war a greater military danger than poison, steel, or trinitrotoluene. 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, June 1919

Heartbreak House

478

HEARTBREAK HOUSE ACT The

I

country

middle of the north edge of Sussex, looking very pleasant on a fine evening at the end of Sephilly

in the

seen through the windows of a room which has been built so as to resemble the after part of an old-fash-

tember,

is

ioned high-pooped ship with a stern gallery; for the winare ship built with heavy timbering, and run right

dows

across the

room

as continuously as the stability of the wall

A row

of lockers under the windows provides an unupholstered window-seat interrupted by twin glass doors,

allows.

respectively halfway between the stern post

Another door

strains the illusion a

little

and the

sides.

by being apparently

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 in the ship's port side,

doors

in the stern gallery.

carpenter's bench. floor

and yet

is

The

Against the starboard wall

vice has a

littered with shavings,

paper basket.

A

leading, not to the

board

in its jaws;

and

is

a

the

overflowing from a waste-

couple of planes and a centrebit are on

same wall, between the bench and the windows, is a narrow doorway with a half door, above which a glimpse of the room beyond shews that it is a the bench. In the

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, straightedges, set squares, 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

the floor at the end of the table, on his right, fire

bucket.

shelves,

is

mahogany

On

hand. is

On

a ship's

the port side of the room, near the bookits back to the windows. It is a sturdy oddly upholstered in sailcloth, including

a sofa with article,

the bolster, with a couple of blankets hanging over the back.

Heartbreak House

479

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, 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 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 at the view. One hand props her chin: the other hangs down with a volume of the Temple Shakespear in it, and her finger stuck in the page she has been reading.

A

clock strikes

six.

The young lady turns and looks at her watch. She rises who waits and is almost at the end of her patience. She is a pretty girl, slender, fair, and intelligent with an air of one

looking, nicely but not expensively dressed, evidently not a

smart idler. With a sigh of weary resignation she comei> to the draughtsman's chair; sits down; and begins to read Shakespear. 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 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,

three

THE WOMANSERVANT. God up the book and places

blcss us! it

on the

[The young lady picks table]. Sorry to wake

Heartbreak House

480

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 shew some signs of knowing that I have been invited here. THE woMANSERVANT. Oh, youre invited, are you? And has nobody come? Dear! Dear! wild-looking old gentleman came and THE YOUNG LADY. 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

A

nurse?

THE WOMANSERVANT. Ycs, 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, dont 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, wont it? THE YOUNG LADY. It has been a very unpleasant surprise to me to find that nobody expects me. NURSE GUINNESS. YouU get uscd to it, miss: this house is full of surprises for them that dont 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 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

of house, by heavens! invited here.

A

Her luggage

is

a pretty sort

young and attractive lady is on the steps for hours;

is left

Heartbreak House

481 deposited in the poop and abandoned,

and she herself 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. is

tired

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 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 my wretched children, whom you have brought up in ignorance of the commonest decencies of social address

intercourse?

NURSE GUINNESS. Never mind him,

[Quite uncon-

doty.

cerned, 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. Dunu! I had a boatswain whose name was Dunn. He was

believe he stole

you

He set up as a have every reason to doubt he became rich. Are

originally a pirate in China.

chandler with stores which

ship's

his

from me.

No

I

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

THE CAPTAIN. He must be

have ever known. greatly changed. Has I

he

attained the seventh degree of concentration?

ELLIE.

I

dont 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.

tration:

I

desire to attain the seventh degree of concen-

she invites visitors and leaves

me

to entertain

Heartbreak House

482

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.

my

As a

child she thought 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 figure-head of

own

ship, the Dauntless, the

daughter again after

THE CAPTAIN.

these years.

all

am

not glad. The natural term of the human animal for its offspring is six My daughter Ariadne was born when I was fortyam now eighty-eight. If she comes, I am not at I

affection of the years. six.

I

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. Thats no talk to offer to a young lady. Here, ducky, have some tea; and dont 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! have been glad of anything.

NURSE GUINNESS. Oh, what

I

am

a thing to do!

so tired.

I

should

The poor lamb

is

ready to drop.

THE CAPTAIN. You

shall

that fly-blown cake:

[He disappears

havc some of

nobody

eats

it

my tea. Do

not touch

here except the dogs.

into the pantry].

NURSE GUINNESS. Thcrcs

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!

Heartbreak House

Nurse! Papa!

483

Do

come, somebody; and take

my

in

luggage.

Thumping heard, as of an umbrella, on the wainscot. NURSE GUINNESS. My gracious! It's Miss Addie, 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 Utter^ word,

who

blonde,

is

precipitate

much

Lady Utterword, a very handsome, very well dressed, and so in speech and action that the first impression bursts in

flustered.

one of comic silliness. LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, is that you. Nurse? How are you? You dont look a day older. Is anybody at home? Where is Hesione? Doesnt she expect me? Where are the servants? Whose luggage is that on the steps? Wheres 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, (erroneous)

is

darling.

ELLIE. I'm only a visitor.

NURSE GUINNESS.

I'll

It is

my

luggage on the steps.

go get you some fresh

tea,

ducky. [She

takes up the tray].

ELLIE. But the old gentleman said he would

make some

himself.

NURSE GUINNESS.

Blcss you! hc's forgotten what he

for already. His

mind wanders from one

LADY UTTERWORD. Papa, I SUppOSC? NURSE GUINNESS. YcS, MisS. LADY UTTERWORD [vehemently] Dont be call

me

went

thing to another,

silly,

nurse.

Dont

Miss.

NURSE GUINNESS

[placidly]

No, lovey

[she goes out with the

tea-tray].

LADY UTTERWORD [sitting down with a flounce on the sofa] I know what you must feel. Oh, this house, this house! I come back to it after twenty-three years; and it is just the same: the luggage lying on the steps, the servants spoilt and impossible, nobody at home to receive anybody, no regular meals, nobody ever hungry because they are always gnawing bread and butter or munching apples,

Heartbreak House

484 and, what

is

worse, the same disorder in ideas, in talk, in

When

I was used to it: I had never though I was unhappy, and longed all the time oh, how I longed! to be respectable, to be a lady, to live as others did, not to have to think of everything for myself. I married at nineteen to escape from it. My husband is Sir Hastings Utterword, who has been governor of all the crown colonies in succession. I have always been the mistress of Government House. I have been so happy: I had forgotten that people could live like this. I wanted to see my father, my sister, my nephews and nieces (one ought to, you know), and I was looking forward to it. And now the state of the house! the way I'm received! the casual impudence of that woman Guinness, our old nurse! really Hesione might at least have been here: some preparation might have been made for me. You must excuse my going on in this way; but I am really very much hurt and annoyed and disillusioned: and if I had realized it was to be like this, I wouldnt have come. I have a great mind to go away without another word [she is on the point of

feeling.

I

known anything

was a

child

better,

—

—

weeping].

ELLiE

me can

[also very miserable] either. I I,

thought

I

Lady Utterword?

Nobody has been here

to receive

ought to go away too. But how My luggage is on the steps; and

the station fly has gone.

The Captain emerges from the pantry with a tray of Chinese lacquer and a very fine tea-set on it. He rests it provisionally on the end of the table; snatches away the drawing-board, which he stands on the floor against the table legs; and puts the tray in the space thus cleared. pours out a cup greedily. THE CAPTAIN. Your tea, young lady. What! another lady! I must fetch another cup [he makes for the pantry]. Ellie

LADY UTTERWORD

[rising

from

the

sofa,

suffused

with

emotion] Papa! Dont you know me? I'm your daughter. THE CAPTAIN. Nonscnsc! my daughter's upstairs asleep. [He vanishes through the half door].

Lady Utterword tears.

retires to the

window

to conceal

her

Heartbreak House

485

ELLiE [going to her with the cup] Dont be so distressed. Have this cup of tea. He is very old and very strange: he has been just like that to me. I know how dreadful it must be: my own father is all the world to me. Oh, I'm sure he didnt

mean

it.

The Captain returns with another cup, THE CAPTAIN. Now wc are complete. [He places

it

on the

tray].

LADY UTTERWORD [hysterically] Papa: you cant have forgotten me. I am Ariadne. I'm little Paddy Patkins. Wont you kiss me? [She goes to him and throws her arms round his neck].

THE CAPTAIN [woodenly enduring her embrace] be Ariadne?

You

are a middle-aged

madam, but no longer young. LADY UTTERWORD. But think of all the

How can you

woman:

well pre-

served,

have been away, Papa.

I

years and years I

have had to grow

old, like other

people.

THE CAPTAIN [disengaging himself] You should grow out of kissing strange men: they may be striving to attain the seventh degree of concentration.

LADY UTTERWORD. But I'm your daughter. You havnt seen

me

for years.

THE CAPTAIN. So much at home, we have to

the worse!

When

our relatives are

think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices. That is how I have come to think my absent daughter Ariadne a perfect fiend; so do not try to ingratiate yourself here by impersonating her [he walks firmly away to the other side of the room], LADY UTTERWORD. Ingratiating myself indeed! [With dignity] Very well, papa. [She sits down at the drawing-table and pours out tea for herself],

THE CAPTAIN. I am neglecting my social duties. You remember Dunn? Billy Dunn? LADY UTTERWORD. Do you mean that villainous sailor who robbed you?

THE CAPTAIN [introducing on the

sofa].

Ellie]

His daughter. [He

sits

down

•

Heartbreak House

435

—

ELLIE [protesting] No Nurse Guinness returns with fresh tea, THE CAPTAIN. Take that hogwash away. Do you hear? NURSE. Youve actually remembered about the tea! [To Ellie]

O, miss, he didnt forget you after

made an impression. THE CAPTAIN [gloomily] Youth,

all!

You have

beauty! novelty!

They

are

Hesione badly wanted in this house. I am excessively old. children are not youthful. is only moderately young. Her LADY UTTERWORD. How can children be expected to be we youthful in this house? Almost before we could speak very all been have filled with notions that might

were

certainly well for pagan philosophers of fifty, but were quite unfit for respectable people of any age.

NURSE.

You were

always for respectability, Miss Addy.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nursc: will you please remember that Miss Addy, nor lovey, nor I am Lady Utterword, and not darling, nor doty? Do you hear? call NURSE. Yes, ducky: all right. I'll tell them all they must

you

my

lady. [She takes her tray out with undisturbed

placidity],

LADY UTTERWORD. What comfort? what sense is there in having servants with no manners? her ELLIE [rising and coming to the table to put down Hushabye empty cup] Lady Utterword: do you think Mrs really expects

me?

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh, dont ask me. You can self that Ive just arrived;

her only

sister,

see for yourafter twenty-

seems that / am not expected. THE CAPTAIN. What docs it matter whether the young lady There are beds: there is expected or not? She is welcome. myself [he makes for the is food. I'll find a room for her three years absence! and

it

door].

goes ELLIE [following him to stop him] Oh please— [/i^ to do. Your out]. Lady Utterword: I dont know what father persists in believing that

my

father

is

some

sailor

who robbed him. LADY UTTERWORD. You had

My

father

things;

is

better pretend not to notice it. a very clever man; but he always forgot

and now that he

is

old, of course

he

is

worse.

And

Heartbreak House I

437

must warn you that

it

is

sometimes very hard

to feel

quite sure that he really forgets.

Mrs Hushaby e bursts into the room tempestuously, and embraces Ellie. She is a couple of years older than Lady Utterword and even better looking. She has magnificent black hair, eyes like the fishpools of Heshbon, and a nobly modelled neck, short at the back and low

between her shoulders in front. Unlike her sister she is uncorseted and dressed anyhow in a rich robe of black pile that

shews

off her white skin

and statuesque con-

tour.

MRS HUSHABYE. Ellie, my darling, my pettikins [kissing her]: how long have you been here? Ive been at home all the time:

and when

I

was putting flowers and things

down

in

your room;

moment to try how comwas I went off to sleep. Papa woke me and told me you were here. Fancy you finding no one, and being neglected and abandoned. [Kissing her again]. I just sat

for a

fortable the armchair

My poor love!

[She deposits Ellie on the sofa. Meanwhile

Ariadne has left the table and come over to claim her share of attention]. Oh! youve brought someone with you. Introduce me.

LADY utterword: Hcsionc:

is

it

possible that

know me? MRS HUSHABYE

[conventionally] Of course face quite well. Where have we met?

I

you

dont

remember your

LADY UTTERWORD. Didnt Papa tell you I was here? Oh! this is really too much. [She throws herself sulkily into the big chair].

MRS HUSHABYE. Papa! LADY UTTERWORD. Ycs: Papa. wretch. [Rising angrily]

MRS HUSHABYE

Our

papa, you unfeeling

go straight to a hotel. by the shoulders] My goodness

I'll

[seizing her

gracious goodness, you dont

mean

to say that

youre

Addy! LADY UTTERWORD. I Certainly am Addy; and I dont think I can be so changed that you would not have recognized me if you had any real affection for me. And Papa didnt think

me

even worth mentioning!

MRS HUSHABYE. What

a lark! Sit

down

[she pushes her back

Heartbreak House

488

and posts herself Youre much handsomer

into the chair instead of kissing her,

behind it]. You do look a swell. than you used to be. Youve made the acquaintance of Ellie, of course. She is going to marry a perfect hog of a millionaire for the sake of her father, who is as poor as a church mouse; and you must help me to stop her. ELLIE. Oh please, Hesione. MRS HUSHABYE. My pcttikins, the man's coming here today with your father to begin persecuting you; and everybody will see the state of the case in ten minutes; so

the use of making a secret of

He

ELLIE.

is

grateful I

it?

not a hog, Hesione.

wonderfully good he was to

am

MRS HUSHABYE

whats

my

You father,

know how and how deeply

dont

to him.

Lady Utterword] Her father is a very remarkable man, Addy. His name is Mazzini Dunn. Mazzini was a celebrity of some kind who knew Ellie's grandparents. They were both poets, like the Brownings; and when her father came into the world Mazzini said "Another

[to

soldier

born for freedom!" So they christened

him Mazzini; and he has been fighting for freedom quiet way ever since. Thats why he is so poor. ELLIE.

I

am

proud of

MRS HUSHABYE. Of

in his

his poverty.

coursc you are, pettikins.

Why

not

him in it, and marry someone you love? UTTERW^ORD. [rising suddenly and explosively] Hesione: are you going to kiss me or are you not? MRS HUSHABYE. What do you want to be kissed for? LADY UTTERWORD. I dont Want to be kissed; but I do want you to behave properly and decently. We are sisters. We have been separated for twenty-three years. You ought to kiss me. MRS HUSHABYE. Tomorrow morning, dear, before you make up. I hate the smell of powder. LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! you Unfeeling [she is interrupted by the return of the captain]. THE CAPTAIN [to Ellie] Your room is ready. [Ellie rises]. The sheets were damp; but I have changed them [he makes for the garden door on the port side]. LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! What about my sheets? leave

LADY

—

Heartbreak House

THE CAPTAIN

489

[halting at the door]

them; or take them sleep in

and Ariadne's old room. off

Take

my

advice: air

sleep in blankets.

You

shall

LADY UTTERWORD. Indeed I shall do nothing of the sort. That little hole! I am entitled to the best spare room. THE CAPTAIN [continuing unmoved] She married a numskull. She told me she would marry anyone to get away from home. LADY UTTERWORD. You are pretending not to know me on purpose.

I will

leave the house.

Dunn enters from the hall. He is a little elderly man with bulging credulous eyes and an earnest manner. He is dressed in a blue serge jacket suit with an Mazzini

unbuttoned mackintosh over

it,

and

carries a soft black

hat of clerical cut. ELLiE.

At

last!

Captain Shotover: here

is

my

father.

THE CAPTAIN. This! Nouseuse! not a bit like him [he goes away through the garden, shutting the door sharply behind him].

LADY UTTERWORD. be somebody instant.

I will

not be ignored and pretended to

else. I will

[To Mazzini]

have it out with papa now, this Excuse me. [She follows the

Captain out, making a hasty

bow

to Mazzini,

who

returns

itl

MRS HUSHABYE

How

good of you to come, Mr Dunn! You dont mind papa, do you? He is as mad as a hatter, you know, but quite harmless, and extremely clever. You will have some delightful talks [hospitably, shaking hands]

with him. I hope so. [To Ellie] So here you are, Ellie dear. [He draws her arm affectionately through his]. I must thank you, Mrs Hushabye, for your kindness to my daughter. I'm afraid she would have had no holiday if you had not invited her. MRS HUSHABYE. Not at all. Very nice of her to come and attract young people to the house for us. MAZZINI [smiling] I'm afraid Ellie is not interested in young men, Mrs Hushabye. Her taste is on the graver, solider

MAZZINI.

side.

MRS HUSHABYE

[with a

suddcu rather hard brightness

in

her

——

—

Heartbreak House

490

manner] Wont you take oflf your overcoat, Mr Dunn? You will find a cupboard for coats and hats and things in the corner of the hall.

MAZZiNi better

—thank you—

I

had

[he goes out].

MRS HUSHABYE ELLIE.

Yes

releasing Ellie]

[hastily

—

[emphatically]

The

old brute!

Who?

MRS HUSHABYE. Who! Him. He.

It

[pointing after Mazzini].

"Graver, solider tastes," indeed!

You

ELLIE [aghast] that of

my

dont

mean

you were speaking

that

like

father!

MRS HUSHABYE.

I

was.

ELLIE [with dignity]

You know

I

will leave

I

was.

your house

at once. [She

turns to the door].

MRS HUSHABYE.

If

you attempt

ELLIE [turning again] Oh! this,

it, I'll

How

tell

can you

your father why, treat a visitor like

Mrs Hushabye?

MRS HUSHABYE.

thought you wcre going to

I

call

me

Hesione.

now? MRS HUSHABYE. Very well:

ELLIE. Certainly not

I'll tell

ELLIE [distressed] Oh!

MRS HUSHABYE.

your

—

father,

you take his part against me and against your own heart for a moment, I'll give that born soldier of freedom a piece of my mind that will stand him on his selfish old head for a week. ELLIE. Hesione! My father selfish! How little you know She is interrupted by Mazzini, who returns, excited and If

you turn a hair

if

perspiring.

MAZZiNL Ellie: Mangan has come: I thought youd know. Excuse me, Mrs Hushabye: the strange old

like to

gentle-

man MRS HUSHABYE. Papa. Quite

so.

beg your pardon: of course: I was a little confused by his manner. He is making Mangan help him with something in the garden; and he wants me too

MAZZINI. Oh,

A

I

powerful whistle

is

heard.

THE captain's VOICE. Bosun ahoy! MAZZINI [flustered] Oh dear! [He hurries out].

I

[the whistle

believe he

is

is

repeated],

whistling for me.

— Heartbreak House

MRS HUSHABYE.

491

Now my

father

is

man

a wonderful

if

you

like.

me. You dont understand. My father and Mr Mangan were boys together. Mr Ma MRS HUSHABYE. I dont care what they were: we must sit down if you are going to begin as far back as that [She snatches at Ellie's waist, and makes her sit down on the ELLiE. Hesione:

listen to

Now, pettikins: tell me all about Mr Mangan. They call him Boss Mangan, dont they? He is

sofa beside her]. a

Napoleon of industry and disgustingly

Why

rich, isn't

he?

your father rich? poor father should never have been in business. His parents were poets; and they gave him the noblest isnt

My

ELLIE.

him a

ideas; but they could not afford to give

MRS HUSHABYE. Fancy your in fine frenzy rolling! And

profession.

grandparents, with their eyes so your poor father

Hasnt he succeeded in it? always used to say he could succeed

had

to

go

into business.

He

ELLIE.

if

he only

had some capital. He fought his way along, to keep a roof over our heads and bring us up well; but it was always a

same

struggle: always the

enough.

I

dont

know how

MRS HUSHABYE. Poor

EUic!

I

difficulty of

to describe

not having capital

it

to you.

know. Pulling the

devil

by the

tail.

Oh

Not like that. It was MRS HUSHABYE. That made it all the ELLIE [hurt]

no.

at least dignified.

harder, didnt

it?

/

shouldnt have pulled the devil by the tail with dignity. I [between her teeth] hard. should have pulled hard

—

Well? ELLIE.

Go

At

on.

last

it

Mr Mangan

seemed

pure friendship for acter.

gave

that

all

our troubles were

my

to him.

he invested present of

it

it.

an end.

father and respect for his char-

He asked him how much it

at

did an extraordinarily noble thing out of

I

dont

mean

that he lent

in his business.

Wasnt

MRS HUSHABYE. On

capital he wanted,

He

it

to him, or that

just simply

that splendid of

and

made him a

him?

Condition that you married him?

was when I was a child. He had never even seen me: he never came to our house. It was

ELLIE.

Oh

no, no, no. This

absolutely disinterested. Pure generosity.

Heartbreak House

492

MRS HUSHABYE, Oh!

I bcg the gentleman's pardon. Well, what became of the money? ELLiE. We all got new clothes and moved into another house. And I went to another school for two years. MRS HUSHABYE. Only two years? ELLIE. That was all; for at the end of two years my father was utterly ruined. MRS HUSHABYE. HoW? ELLIE. I dont know. I never could understand. But it was dreadful. When we were poor my father had never been in debt. But when he launched out into business on a large scale, he had to incur liabilities. When the business went into liquidation he owed more money than Mr Mangan had given him. MRS HUSHABYE. Bit off more than he could chew, I suppose. ELLIE. I think you are a little unfeeling about it. MRS HUSHABYE. My pcttikinsi you musnt mind my way of talking. I was quite as sensitive and particular as you once; but I have picked up so much slang from the

children that I am really hardly presentable. I suppose your father had no head for business, and made a mess

of

it.

ELLIE. Oh, that just shews

how

you are mistaken

entirely

about him. The business turned out a great success. It now pays forty-four per cent after deducting the excess profits tax.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then why

arnt

you

rolling in

money?

seems very unfair to me. You see, my father was made bankrupt It nearly broke his heart, because he had persuaded several of his friends to put money into the business. He was sure it would succeed; and events proved that he was quite right. But they all lost their money. It was dreadful. I dont know what we

ELLIE.

I

dont know.

It

should have done but for

Mr Mangan.

MRS HUSHABYE. What! Did again, after all his money ELLIE.

He

father.

the Boss

come

to the rescue

being thrown away?

did indeed, and never uttered a reproach to

He

bought what was

left of the business

—from

buildings and the machinery and things

my

—the

the official

—

—

Heartbreak House

493

enough money to enable my father to pay six and eightpence in the pound and get his discharge. Everyone pitied papa so much, and saw so plainly that he was an honorable man, that they let him off at six-and-eighttrustee for

Then Mr Mangan started a take up the business, and made my father a it to save us from starvation; for I wasnt

pence instead of ten

company

to

manager

in

shillings.

earning anything then.

MRS HUSHABYE,

And when

Quite a romance.

did the Boss

develop the tender passion? ELLiE, Oh, that was years after, quite lately. chair one night at a sort of people's concert. there.

As an amateur, you know:

He I

my

was singing

half a guinea for ex-

penses and three songs with three encores. pleased with

took the

He was

so

singing that he asked might he walk

home with me. I never saw anyone so taken aback as he was when I took him home and introduced him to my father: his own manager. It was then that my father told me how nobly he had behaved. Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And and we drifted into a sort of understanding I suppose

—

I

should

call

it

an engagement

—

—

[she

is

distressed

and

cannot go on].

and marching about] You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with. ELLIE [hopelessly] No: it's no use. I am bound in honor and

MRS HUSHABYE

[rising

gratitude. I will

MRS HUSHABYE

go through with

it.

[behind the sofa, scolding

down

at her]

You

know, of course, that it's not honorable or grateful to marry a man you dont love. Do you love this Mangan

man? ELLIE. Yes.

At

least

MRS HUSHABYE. I dont Want to know about "the least**: I want to know the worst. Girls of your age fall in love with ELLIE.

all sorts

I like

of impossible people, especially old people.

Mr Mangan

very much; and

I

shall

always

be— MRS HUSHABYE

[impatiently completing the sentence

and

Heartbreak House

494

prancing away intolerantly to starboard]

him

for his kindness to dear father.

—

grateful to

know. Anybody

I

else?

What do you mean? MRS HUSHABYE. Anybody else? Are you

ELLIE.

body

in love

with any-

else?

ELLIE. Of course not. MRS HUSHABYE. Humph! [The book on

the drawing-table

it up, and evidently finds the She looks at Ellie, and asks, quaintly]. Quite sure youre not in love with an actor? ELLIE. No, no. Why? What put such a thing into your head? MRS HUSHABYE. This is yours, isnt it? Why else should you

catches her eye. She picks title

very

unexpected.

be reading Othello? ELLIE.

My father taught me to

MRS HUSHABYE

[flinging the

love Shakespear.

book down on

the table] Really!

your father does seem to be about the limit. ELLIE [naively] Do you never read Shakespear, Hesione? That seems to me so extraordinary. I like Othello. MRS HUSHABYE. Do you indeed? He was jealous, wasnt he? ELLIS. Oh, not that. I think all the part about jealousy is horrible. But dont you think it must have been a wonderful experience for Desdemona, brought up so quietly at home, to meet a man who had been out in the world doing all sorts of brave things and having terrible adventures, and yet finding something in her that made him love to sit and talk with her and tell her about them? MRS HUSHABYE. Thats your idea of romance, is it? ELLIE. Not romance, exactly. It might really happen. Ellie's eyes shew that she is not arguing, but in a daydream. Mrs Hushabye, watching her inquisitively, goes deliberately back to the sofa and resumes her seat beside her.

MRS HUSHABYE.

Ellie darling:

have you noticed that some

of those stories that Othello told

Desdemona couldnt

have happened? ELLIE.

Oh

no.

Shakespear

thought

they

could

have

happened.

MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Dcsdcmona thought happened. But they didnt.

they could have

— Heartbreak House

495

Why

do you look so enigmatic about it? You are such a sphinx: I never know what you mean. MRS HUSHABYE. Dcsdcmona would have found him out if she had lived, you know. I wonder was that why he ELLIE.

strangled her!

ELLIE. Othello was not telling

MRS HUSHABYE.

lies.

How do you know? would have

ELLIE. Shakespear

said

if

he was. Hesione:

there are

men who have done wonderful

Othello,

only,

about him.

I

Now

knew

men

like

and very handsome,

of course, white,

and MRS HUSHABYE. Ah!

things:

We're coming to

it.

Tell

me

there must be somebody, or

all

youd

never have been so miserable about Mangan: youd have

thought it quite a lark to marry him. ELLIE [blushing vividly] Hesione: you are dreadful. But I dont want to make a secret of it, though of course I dont

know him. MRS HUSHABYE. Dont know him! What does that mean? ELLIE. Well, of course I know him to speak to. MRS HUSHABYE. But you Want to know him ever so much tell

everybody. Besides,

more

I

dont

intimately, eh?

—

No no: I know him quite almost intimately. MRS HUSHABYE. You dout know him; and you know him ELLIE.

almost intimately. ELLIE.

I

mean

How lucid!

that he does not call

on

us. I

—

I

got into con-

him by chance at a concert. MRS HUSHABYE. You sccm to havc rather a gay time versation with

at

your

concerts, Ellie.

ELLIE.

Not

at all:

we

talk to everyone in the

waiting for our turns.

I

green-room

thought he was one of the

artists:

he looked so splendid. But he was only one of the comhappened to tell him that I was copying a pic-

mittee. I

ture at the National Gallery. I

way.

I

cant paint much; but as

ture I can

do

it

make it's

pretty quickly

a

little

money

that

always the same pic-

and get two or three

pounds for it. It happened that he came to the National Gallery one day. MRS HUSHABYE. One studcnt's day. Paid sixpence to stumble about through a crowd of easels, when he might have

— — Heartbreak House

496

come

in next

day for nothing and found the

floor clear!

Quite by accident? ELLiE [triumphantly] No. On purpose. He liked talking to me. He knows lots of the most splendid people. Fashionable women who are all in love with him. But he ran away from them to see me at the National Gallery and persuade me to come with him for a drive round Richmond Park in a taxi. MRS HUSHABYE. My pcttikius, you have been going it. It's wonderful what you good girls can do without anyone saying a word. ELLIE. I am not in society, Hesione. If I didnt make acquaintances in that way I shouldnt have any at all.

MRS HUSHABYE.

you know how to take care of yourself. May I ask his name? ELLIE [slowly and musically] Marcus Darnley. MRS HUSHABYE [echoing the music] Marcus Darnley! What a splendid name! ELLIE. Oh, I'm so glad you think so. I think so too; but I was afraid it was only a silly fancy of my own. MRS HUSHABYE. Hm! Is he one of the Aberdeen Darnleys? ELLIE. Nobody knows. Just fancy! He was found in an Well, no

harm

if

antique chest

MRS HUSHABYE. ELLIE.

An

A what?

antique chest, one

summer morning

in a rose

garden, after a night of the most terrible thunderstorm.

MRS HUSHABYE. What ou

was he doing in the chest? Did he get into it because he was afraid of the lightning? ELLIE. Oh no, no: he was a baby. The name Marcus Darnley was embroidered on his babyclothes. And five hundred pounds in gold. MRS HUSHABYE [looking hard at her] Elliel ELLIE. The garden of the Viscount— MRS HUSHABYE. dc Rougemcut? ELLIE [innocently] No: de Larochejaquelin. A French family. A vicomte. His life has been one long romance, earth

—

A tiger MRS HUSHABYE. ELLIE.

Oh

Slain

by

his

own hand?

no: nothing vulgar like that.

He

saved the

life

of the tiger from a hunting party: one of King Edward's

Heartbreak House

497

hunting parties in India.

why he

The King was

was

furious: that

never had his military services properly recog-

nized. But he doesnt care.

He

a Socialist and despises

is

on the

rank, and has been in three revolutions fighting barricades.

MRS

HUSiiABYE.

You,

Ellie,

of

How

can you

people!

all

sit

And

fectly simple, straightforward,

there telling I

me

such

lies?

thought you were a per-

good

girl.

[rising, dignified but very angry] Do you mean to say you dont believe me? MRS HUSHABYE. Of coursc I dont believe you. Youre inventing every word of it. Do you take me for a fool?

ELLIE

Ellie stares at her.

Her candor

Hushabye is puzzled. ELLIE. Goodbye, Hesione. I'm very sounds very improbable as

I tell

is

so obvious that

sorry, I see

it.

But

I

now

cant stay

think that way about me. MRS HUSHABYE [catching her dress] You shant go. be so mistaken: I know too well what liars Somebody has really told you all this.

I

Mrs

that

it

you

if

couldnt

are like.

ELLIE [flushing] Hesione: dont say that you dont believe h i m. I couldnt bear that. MRS HUSHABYE [soothing her] Of course I believe him, dear-

But you shouldnt have broken [Drawing her back to the seat] Now Are you in love with him? est.

ELLIE.

Oh

me by degrees. me all about him.

to

no, I'm not so foolish. I dont fall in love with

people. I'm not so

MRS HUSHABYE. give

it

tell

some

you

think.

Only Something to think about and pleasure to life.

I scc.

interest

ELLIE. Just so. Thats

MRS HUSHABYE.

silly as

It

all,

—

to

really.

makes the hours go

fast,

doesnt

it?

No

tedious waiting to go to sleep at nights and wondering whether you will have a bad night. How delightful it makes waking up in the morning! How much better than the happiest dream! All life transfigured! No more wishing one had an interesting book to read, because life is so much happier than any book! No desire but to be alone and not have to talk to anyone: to be alone and just think about it.

Heartbreak House

498

ELLiE [embracing her] Hesione: you are a witch. How do you know? Oh, you are the most sympathetic woman in the world.

MRS HUSHABYE

[caressing her] Pettikins,

my

pettikins:

how

envy you! and how I pity you! ELLIE. Pity me! Oh, why? I

A

very

handsome man of

with

fifty,

moiisquetaire

moustaches, wearing a rather dandified curly brimmed hat,

the

and carrying an elaborate walking-stick, comes into room from the hall, and stops short at sight of the

women on

the sofa.

ELLIE [seeing him and rising

in

Mr Marcus Darnley. MRS HUSHABYE [rising] What a this

glad surprise]. Oh! Hesione:

is

ELLIE. But

how

—

lark!

He

is

my

husband.

[she stops suddenly; then turns pale

and

sways].

MRS HUSHABYE

[catching her

the sofa] Steady,

THE MAN

my

and

sitting

down

with her on

pettikins.

and effrontery, deand stick on the teak table] M\y real name, Miss Dunn, is Hector Hushabye. I leave you to judge whether that is a name any sensitive man would care to confess to. I never use it when I can possibly help it. I have been away for nearly a month; and I had no idea you knew my wife, or that you were coming here. I am none the less delighted to find you in our little house. ELLIE [in great distress] I dont know what to do. Please, [with a mixture of confusion

positing his hat

may

I

speak to papa?

MRS HUSHABYE. Be

off,

Do

leave me.

I

cant bear

it.

HcctOF.

HECTOR. I MRS HUSHABYE. Quick, quick. Get out. HECTOR. If you think it better [he goes out, taking his hat with him but leaving the stick on the table]. MRS HUSHABYE [laying Ellie down at the end of the sofa] Now, pettikins, he is gone. Theres nobody but me. You can let yourself go. Dont try to control yourself. Have a good cry. ELLIE [raising her head] Damn! MRS HUSHABYE. Splendid! Oh, what a relief! I thought you

—

Heartbreak House

499

were going to be broken-hearted. Never mind me.

him ELLiE.

Damn

again. I

am

not damning him:

being such a fool. [Rising]

I

am damning

How

could

I

let

myself for myself be

taken in so? [She begins prowling to and fro, her bloom gone, looking curiously older and harder].

MRS HUSHABYE

Why

Very few young women can resist Hector. I couldnt when I was your age. He is really rather splendid, you know. ELLIE [turning on her] Splendid! Yes: splendid looking, of course. But how can you love a liar? MRS HUSHABYE. I dont know. But you can, fortunately. [cheerfully]

Otherwise there wouldnt be ELLIE. But to

lie like that!

MRS HUSHABYE

[rising in

you courage he will go

you

please. If

not, pettikins?

much

love in the world.

To

be a boaster! a coward! alarm] Pettikins: none of that,

if

hint the slightest doubt of Hector's

straight off and do the most horribly dangerous things to convince himself that he isnt a coward. He has a dreadful trick of getting out of one third-floor window and coming in at another, just to test his nerve. He has a whole drawerful of Albert Medals for

saving people's ELLIE.

He

lives.

never told

me

that.

MRS HUSHABYE. He ncvcr

boasts of anything he really did;

makes him shy if anyone else does. All his stories are made-up stories. ELLIE [coming to her] Do you mean that he is really brave, and really has adventures, and yet tells lies about things that he never did and that never happened? MRS HUSHABYE. Ycs, pcttikins, I do. People dont have their virtues and vices in sets: they have them anyhow: all he cant bear

it;

and

it

mixed.

ELLIE [staring at her thoughtfully] Thcres something odd about this house, Hcsione, and even about you. I dont

know why I'm fear that like

what

my I

thought

MRS HUSHABYE pettikins.

talking to

heart

it

you so calmly.

must

have a horrible

do you

feel

is

not

be.

[fondling her]

How

I

broken, but that heartbreak

is

It's

only

about Boss

life

educating you,

Mangan now?

— Heartbreak House

500

ELLIE [disengaging herself with an expression of distaste] Oh, how can you remind me of him, Hesione?

MRS HUSHABYE. Sorry, dear. I think I hear Hector coming back. You dont mind now, do you, dear? ELLIE.

Not

in the least. I

am

quite cured.

Mazzini Dunn and Hector come in from the halL HECTOR [as he opens the door and allows Mazzini to pass in] One second more, and she would have been a dead

woman! MAZZiNL Dear! dear! what an escape! Ellie, my love: Mr Hushabye has just been telling me the most extraordinary ELLIE. Yes: Ive heard

it

[She crosses to the other side of the

room].

HECTOR [following dinner.

I

her]

Not

think youll like

one:

this

The

it.

you after made it up for

I'll tell it

truth

is, I

to

was looking forward to the pleasure of telling it to you. But in a moment of impatience at being turned out of the room, I threw it away on your father.

you, and

I

ELLIE [turning at bay with her back to the carpenter's bench, scornfully self-possessed] It was not thrown away.

He

believes

it.

I

should not have believed

MAZZINI [benevolently]

Ellie

is

it.

very naughty,

Mr

Hushabye.

Of course she does not really think that. [He goes to the bookshelves, and inspects the titles of the volumes]. Boss Mangan comes in from the hall, followed by the Captain. Mangan, carefully frock-coated as for church or for a directors' meeting,

is

about

fifty-five,

worn, mistrustful expression, standing a

with a care'

little

on an en*

tirely imaginary dignity, with a dull complexion, straight,

lustreless hair, it is

and features so

entirely

commonplace

that

impossible to describe them.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [to Mrs Hushabye, introducing the new* comer] Says his name is Mangan. Not ablebodied. MRS HUSHABYE [graciously] How do you do, Mr Mangan?

MANGAN

[shaking hands] Very pleased.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Dunn's lost his muscle, but recovered his nerve. Men seldom do after three attacks of delirium tremens [he goes into the pantry]. MRS HUSHABYE, I Congratulate you, Mr Dunn.

-

Heartbreak House

501

MAZziNi [dazed] I am a lifelong teetotaler, MRS HUSHABYE. You will find it far less trouble to let papa have his own way than try to explain, MAZZINI. But three attacks of delirium tremens, really! MRS HUSHABYE [to Mangan] Do you know my husband, Mr

Mangan [she MANGAN [going

indicates Hector], to Hector,

who meets him

with outstretched

hand] Very pleased. [Turning to Ellie] I hope, Miss Ellie, you have not found the joyrney down too fatiguing, [They shake hands], MRS HUSHABYE. Hcctor: shew Mr Dunn his room. HECTOR. Certainly. Come along, Mr Dunn. [He takes Maf zini out].

ELLIE.

You

havnt shewn

MRS HUSHABYE, How

me my room

yet,

Hesione.

me! Come Mr Mangan. Papa

stupid of

yourself quite at home,

along.

Make

will entertain

you. [She calls to the Captain in the pantry] Papa:

come

and explain the house to Mr Mangan. She goes out with Ellie, The Captain comes from the pantry,

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. YouFC going to marry Dunn's daughter, Dont. Youre too old. MANGAN [staggered] Well! Thats fairly blunt. Captain, CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's trUC, MANGAN. She doesnt think so, CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. She docs. MANGAN. Older men than I have— CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [finishing the sentence for him} made

—

fools of themselves. That, also,

MANGAN

is

true.

[asserting himself] I dont see that this

is

any busi-

ness of yours.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.

It is

everybody's business.

The

stars in

shaken when such things happen, MANGAN. I'm going to marry her all the same, CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. How do you kuow? their courses are

MANGAN See?

I

[playing the strong

never

made up my

man] mind

I

to

intend to.

do

I

mean

to.

a thing yet that I

Thats the sort of man I am; and there will be a better understanding between us when you make up your mind to that, Captain, didnt bring

it

off.

Heartbreak House

502

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You frequent picture palaces, MANGAN. Perhaps I do. Who told you? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Talk like a man, not like a movy. You mean that you make a hundred thousand a year. MANGAN. I dont boast. But when I meet a man that makes a hundred thousand a year, I take off my hat to that man, and stretch out my hand to him and call him brother. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Then you also make a hundred thousand a year, hey? MANGAN. No. I cant say that. Fifty thousand, perhaps. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. His half brother only [he turns away from Mangan with his usual abruptness, and collects the empty tea-cups on the Chinese tray'\. MANGAN [irritated] See here, Captain Shotover. I dont quite understand my position here. I came here on your daughter's invitation. Am I in her house or in yours? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You are beneath the dome of heaven, in the house of God. What is true within these walls is

true outside them.

Go

out on the seas; climb the

mountains; wander through the valleys. She

is

still

too

young.

MANGAN [weakening] But I'm very little over fifty. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You are still less under sixty. Boss Mangan: you will not marry the pirate's child [he carries the tray

MANGAN

away

into the pantry].

him to the half door] What pirate's child? What are you talking about? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [in the pantry] Ellie Dunn. You will not marry her. MANGAN. Who will stop me? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [emerging] My daughter [he makes for [following

the door leading to the hall].

MANGAN

[following him]

say she brought

Mrs Hushabye! Do you mean

me down

here to break

it

to

off?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [stopping and turning on him] I know nothing more than I have seen in her eye. She will break it off. Take my advice: marry a West Indian negress: they make excellent wives. I was married to one myself for two years.

MANGAN. Well,

I

am damned!

Heartbreak House

503

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. years.

The

MANGAN

I

thoiight SO.

I

was, too, for

many

negress redeemed me.

[feebly] This

is

queer.

I

ought to walk out of

this

house.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.

Why?

MANGAN. Well, many men would be offended by your

style

of talking.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Nonsense! that

makes

quarrels.

It's

Nobody

the other sort of talking

ever quarrels with me.

A gentleman, whose first rate tailoring and frictionless manners proclaim the wellbred West Ender, comes in from the hall. He has an engaging air of being young and unmarried, but on close inspection is found to be at least over forty.

THE GENTLEMAN. Excuse my intruding in this fashion; but there is no knocker on the door; and the bell does not seem to ring. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.

Why

should there be a knocker?

should the bell ring? The door

is

Why

open.

THE GENTLEMAN. Precisely. So I ventured to come in. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Quite right. I will see about a room for you [he makes for the door]. THE GENTLEMAN [stopping him] But I'm afraid you dont know who I am. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Do you supposc that at my age I make distinctions between one fellowcreature and another? [He goes out. Mangan and the newcomer stare at one another].

MANGAN. Strange character, Captain Shotover, sir. THE GENTLEMAN. Very. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [shoutlng outside] Hesione: another person has arrived and wants a room. well dressed,

Man

about town,

fifty.

THE GENTLEMAN. Fancy Hesione's feelings! May I ask are you a member of the family? MANGAN. No. THE GENTLEMAN. I am. At Icast a connexion. Mrs Hushabye comes back. MRS HUSHABYE. How do you do? How good of you to come!

—

—

Heartbreak House

504

THE GENTLEMAN.

am

I

Very glad indeed to

make your

acquaintance, Hesione. [Instead of taking her hand he

At

kisses her.

when

Captain,

same moment

the

You

the doorway].

will

I tell

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.

you

excuse

the Captain appears in

my

kissing your daughter,

that

Stuff!

Everyone

my

kisses

daughter.

Kiss her as much as you like [he makes for the pantry]. THE GENTLEMAN. Thank you. One moment. Captain. [The Captain halts and turns. The gentleman goes to him but probably you affably]. Do you happen to remember

—

dont, as

it

occurred

many

years ago

—

that

your younger

daughter married a numskull.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ycs. She said she'd marry anybody to get away from this house. I should not have recognized you: your head is no longer like a walnut. Your aspect is softened. You have been boiled in bread and milk for years and years, like other married men. Poor devil! [He disappears into the pantry].

MRS HUSHABYE

[going past

Mangan

scrutinizing him] I dont believe

to the

gentleman and

you are Hastings Utter-

word.

THE GENTLEMAN. I am not. MRS HUSHABYE. Then what business had you to kiss me? THE GENTLEMAN. I thought I would like to. The fact is,

am

I

Randall Utterword, the unworthy younger brother of

Hastings.

was abroad diplomatizing when he was

I

married.

LADY UTTERWORD [dashing in] Hesione: where is the key of the wardrobe in my room? My diamonds are in my dressing-bag: I must lock it up [recognizing the stranger with a shock] Randall:

marches joins

at

how

dare you? [She

him past Mrs Hushabye, who

Mangan

retreats

and

near the sofa].

How dare I what? I am not doing anything. UTTERWORD. Who told you I was here?

RANDALL.

LADY

RANDALL. Hastings. at Claridge's; so I

You had

when I called on you down here. You are look-

just left

followed you

ing extremely well.

LADY UTTERWORD. Dont prcsumc

to tell

me

so.

Heartbreak House

505

MRS HUSHABYE. What IS wfong with Mr Randall, Addy? LADY UTTERWORD [recoUecting herself] Oh, nothing. But he has no right to come bothering you and papa without being invited [she goes to the window-seat and

sits down, away from them ill-humoredly and looking into garden, where Hector and Ellie are now seen strolling

turning the

together],

MRS HUSHABYE.

I

think you have not met

Mr Mangan,

Addy. LADY UTTERWORD [turning her head and nodding coldly to Mangan] I beg your pardon. Randall: you have flustered

me

so:

I

made

a perfect fool of myself.

MRS HUSHABYE. Lady Utterword.

My

sister.

My

younger

sister.

MANGAN [bowing] Pleased to meet you, Lady Utterword. LADY UTTERWORD [with marked interest] Who is that gentle* man walking in the garden with Miss Dunn? MRS HUSHABYE. I dout know. She quarrelled mortally with my husband only ten minutes ago; and I didnt know anyone

else

had come.

It

must be a

visitor.

[She goes to

window to look]. Oh, it i s Hector. Theyve made it up. LADY UTTERWORD. Your husband! That handsome man? the

MRS HUSHABYE. Well, why handsome man? RANDALL

them

shouldnt

my

husband be a

window] One's husband never is, Ariadne [he sits by Lady Utterword, on her right]. MRS HUSHABYE. Onc's sistcr's husband always is, Mr. [joining

at the

Randall.

LADY UTTERWORD. Dont be vulgar, Randall. And you, Hesione, are just as bad. Ellie and Hector come in from the garden by the star" board door. Randall rises, Ellie retires into the corner near the pantry. Hector comes forward; and Lady Utter"

word

rises

looking her very best.

MRS HUSHABYE. Hcctor: HECTOR [apparently LADY UTTERWORD

HECTOR [looking

this is

surprised]

[smiling]

Addy.

Not

Why

this lady.

not?

at her with a piercing glance of deep but

respectful admiration, his

moustache

bristling] I

thought

— Heartbreak House

506

—

[pulling himself together]

I

beg your pardon, Lady

Utterword. I am extremely glad to welcome you at last under our roof [he offers his hand with grave courtesy], MRS HUSHABYE. She wauts to be kissed, Hector. LADY UTTERWORD. Hesionc! [but she still smiles]. MRS HUSHABYE. Call her Addy; and kiss her like a good brother-in-law; and have done with it. [She leaves them to themselves],

HECTOR. Behave yourself, Hesione. Lady Utterword titled

is

en-

not only to hospitality but to civilization.

LADY UTTERWORD [gratefully] Thank you, Hector. [They shake hands cordially]. Mazzini Dunn is seen crossing the garden from starboard to port. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [coming from the pantry and addressing Ellie] Your father has washed himself. ELLiE [quite self-possessed]

He

often does, Captain Shot-

over.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A Strange conversion! I saw him through the pantry window. Mazzini Dunn enters through the port window door, newly washed and brushed, and stops, smiling benevolently, between Mangan and Mrs Hushabye. MRS HUSHABYE [introducing] Mr Mazzini Dunn, Lady Ut oh, I forgot: youve met. [Indicating Ellie] Miss

—

Dunn. MAZZINI [walking across the room to take Ellie's hand, and beatning at his own naughty irony] I have met Miss Dunn also. She is my daughter. [He draws her arm through his caressingly].

MRS HUSHABYE. Of sister's

—

course:

how

stupid!

Utterword,

my

brother-in-law,

Mr

Mr

er

RANDALL [shaking hands agreeably] Her Dunn. How do you do?

MRS HUSHABYE. This

is

my husband.

HECTOR. We have met, dear. Dont introduce us any more. [He moves away to the big chair, and adds] Wont you sit down, Lady Utterword? [She does so very graciously], MRS HUSHABYE. Sorry. I hate it: it's like making people shew their tickets.

— Heartbreak House

507

MAZZiNi [sententiously]

How

little it tells

us, after all!

The

great question is, not who we are, but what we are. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ha! What are you? MAZZINI [taken aback] What am I? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER, A thief, a pirate, and a murderer. MAZZINI. I assure you you are mistaken. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. An adventurous life; but what does it end in? Respectability. A ladylike daughter. The language and appearance of a city missionary. Let it be a warning to all of you [he goes out through the garden], DUNN. I hope nobody here believes that I am a thief, a pirate, or a murderer. Mrs Hushabye: will you excuse me a moment? I must really go and explain. [He follows the

Captain].

MRS HUSHABYE [as he goes] It's no use. Youd [but Dunn has vanished]. We had better

really better all

go out and

tea. We never have regular tea; but you can always get some when you want: the servants keep it

look for some stewing ask.

all

day.

The kitchen veranda

May I shew you?

is

the best place to

[She goes to the starboard door].

RANDALL [going with her] Thank you, I dont think I'll take any tea this afternoon. But if you will shew me the garden

—

?

MRS HUSHABYE. Thcrcs nothing

to see in the garden except

papa's observatory, and a gravel pit with a cave where he

keeps dynamite and things of that pleasanter out of doors; so

come

sort.

However,

it's

along.

RANDALL. Dynamite! Isn't that rather risky? MRS HUSHABYE. Well, wc dout sit in the gravel

pit

when

theres a thunderstorm.

LADY UTTERWORD. Thats Something new. What

is

the dyna-

mite for?

HECTOR. To blow up the human race is

if it

goes too

far.

trying to discover a psychic ray that will explode

explosives at the will

all

He the

of a Mahatma.

The Captain's tea is delicious, Mr Utterword. MRS HUSHABYE [stopping in the doorway] Do you mean to say that youve had some of my father's tea? that you got round him before you were ten minutes in the house?

ELLiE.

ELLIE.

I

did.

"

»

Heartbreak House

'

g

MRS HUSHABYE. You

little

devil!

l^he

with

goes out

Randall].

MANGAN. Wont you come, Miss Ellie? up ELLIE. I'm too tired. I'll take a book a

little.

MANGAN.

to

my room

and

rest

[She goes to the bookshelf]. disappomted. Right You cant do better. But I'm

[He follows Randall and Mrs Hushaby e]. Utterword are left. Hector is Ellie, Hector, and Lady look at Ellie, waiting for close to Lady Utterword. They her to go.

ELLIE [looking at the title of a book] adventure, Lady Utterword?

LADY UTTERWORD ELLIE.

Then

I'll

through the

[patronizingly]

leave

you

to

Of

Mr

Do you

.

•

like stones

^f of

course, dear.

Hushabye. [She goes out

hall].

The

lies

adventure. HECTOR. That girl is mad about tales of I have to tell her! Ellie] When you saw LADY UTTERWORD [not interested in thought, and me what did you mean by saying that you think? then stopping short? What did you

HECTOR Uolding cally]

May

arms and looking down you?

his

I tell

LADY UTTERWORD. Of

at her magnetic

COUrse.

was on the point ot HECTOR. It will not sound very civil. I woman." saying "I thought you were a plain What right had LADY UTTERWORD. Oh for shamc. Hector!

you to notice whether I am plain or not? today I have seen HECTOR. Listen to me, Ariadne. Until photograph can give the only photographs of you; and no

of that supernatural strange fascination of the daughters them that quality old man. There is some damnable

m

them beyond

carries destroys men's moral sense, and dont you? honor and dishonor. You know that, But let me warn LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps I do. Hector. woman. conventional you once for all that I am a rigidly that I'm a You may think because I'm a Shotover But Bohemian. Bohemian, because we are all so horribly Bohemianism. No child I'm not I hate and loathe household ever suffered brought up in a strict Puritan Bohemianism. from Puritanism as I suffered from our

i

Heartbreak House

(if'''

HECTOR- Our children are

'

^

"'V

like that.

"

•';

' '

I

509

They spend

their holi-

days in the houses of their respectable schoolfellows*

LADY UTTERWORD.

I shall invitc

them for Christmas,

HECTOR. Their absence leaves us both without our natural chaperons.

LADY UTTERWORD. Children are

certainly very inconvenient

sometimes. But intelligent people can always manage, unless they are Bohemians.

You

no Bohemian; but you are no Puritan either: your attraction is alive and powerful. What sort of woman do you count yourself? LADY UTTERWORD. I am a woman of the world, Hector; and I can assure you that if you will only take the trouble always to do the perfectly correct thing, and to say the perfectly correct thing, you can do just what you like. An ill-conducted, careless woman gets simply no chance. An

HECTOR-

are

man is never allowed within arm's woman worth knowing. HECTOR. I see. You are neither a Bohemian woman nor a Puritan woman. You are a dangerous woman. LADY UTTERWORD. On the Contrary, I am a safe woman. HECTOR. You are a most accursedly attractive woman. Mind: I am not making love to you. I do not like being ill-conducted, careless

length of any

attracted.

But you had better know how

I

feel if

you are

going to stay here.

LADY UTTERWORD. You are an exceedingly clever ladykiller, Hector. And terribly handsome. I am quite a good player, myself, at that game. Is

we

it

quite understood that

are only playing?

HECTOR. Quite.

am

I

deliberately playing the fool, out of

sheer worthlessness.

LADY UTTERWORD

[rising brightly] Well,

Hesione asked you to

you are

my brother-

me. [He seizes her in his arms, and kisses her strenuously]. Oh! that was a little more than play, brother-in-law. [She pushes him suddenly in-law.

away].

You

HECTOR. In I

kiss

do that again. you got your claws deeper

shall not

effect,

into

me

than

intended.

from the garden] Dont let me only want a cap to put on daddiest. The

MRS HUSHABYE [coming disturb you:

I

in

Heartbreak House

510

sun

is

and

setting;

he'll

catch cold [she

makes for

the

door leading to the hall]. LADY UTTERWORD. YouF husband is quite charming, darling. He has actually condescended to kiss me at last. I shall go into the garden: it's cooler now [she goes out by the port door].

MRS HUSHABYE. Take care, dear child. man can kiss Addy without falling in goes into the

HECTOR

I

dont believe any

love with her. [She

hall].

on the chest] Fool! Goat! Mrs Hushabye comes back with the Captain's cap. HECTOR. Your sister is an extremely enterprising old girl. Wheres Miss Dunn! MRS HUSHABYE. Mangan says she has gone up to her room for a nap. Addy wont let you talk to Ellie: she marked you for her own. HECTOR. She has the diabolical family fascination. I began making love to her automatically. What am I to do? I cant fall in love; and I cant hurt a woman's feelings by telling her so when she falls in love with me. And as women are always falling in love with my moustache I get landed in all sorts of tedious and terrifying flirtations in which I'm not a bit in earnest. MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, neither is Addy. She has never been in love in her life, though she has always been trying to fall in head over ears. She is worse than you, because you had one real go at least, with me. HECTOR. That was a confounded madness. I cant believe that such an amazing experience is common. It has left its mark on me. I believe that is why I have never been [striking himself

able to repeat

MRS HUSHABYE

it.

[laughing and caressing his arm]

We

were

one another, Hector. It was such an enchanting dream that I have never been able to grudge it to you or anyone else since. I have invited all sorts of pretty women to the house on the chance of giving you another turn. But it has never come off. HECTOR. I dont know that I want it to come off. It was damned dangerous. You fascinated me; but I loved you; frightfully in love with

1

Heartbreak House so I

it

51

was heaven. This

hate her; so

it is

sister of

yours fascinates me; but

hell. I shall kill

MRS HUSHABYE. Nothing

will kill

Now / am

a horse. [Releasing him]

her

she persists.

if

Addy: she

is

as strong as

going off to fascinate

somebody. HECTOR. The Foreign Office toff? Randall? MRS HUSHABYE. Goodncss gracious, no! Why should I fascinate him? HECTOR. I presume you dont mean the bloated capitalist,

Mangan? MRS HUSHABYE. Km!

me

than by

Ellie.

I

think he had better be fascinated by

[She

is

going into the garden when the

some

Captain comes

in

What have you

got there, daddiest?

from

it

with

sticks in his hand].

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Dynamite. MRS HUSHABYE. Youvc been to the gravel pit. Dont drop it about the house: theres a dear. [She goes into the garden, where the evening light is now very red]. HECTOR. Listen, O sage. How long dare you concentrate on a feeling without risking having it fixed in your consciousness all the rest of your life? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ninety minutes. An hour and a half. [He goes into the pantry]. Hector,

left

alone, contracts his brows,

and

falls into

a

He

does not move for some time. Then he folds his arms. Then, throwing his hands behind him, and gripping one with the other, he strides tragically once

daydream.

and

Suddenly he snatches his walking-stick from the teak table, and draws it; for it /^ a sword-stick. He fights a desperate duel with an imaginary antagonist, and after many vicissitudes runs him through the body up to the hilt. He sheathes his sword and throws it on the sofa, falling into another reverie as he does so. He looks straight into the eyes of an imaginary woman; seizes her *• by the arms; and says in a deep and thrilling tone "Do you love me!" The Captain comes out of the pantry at this moment; and Hector, caught with his arms stretched out and his fists clenched, has to account for his attitude by going through a series of gymnastic exercises. to

fro.

Heartbreak House

512

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That soit of Strength is no good. You will never be as strong as a gorilla. HECTOR. What is the dynamite for? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. To kill fellows like Mangan. HECTOR. No use. They will always be able to buy more dynamite than you. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I will make a dynamite that he cannot explode.

HECTOR. And that you can, eh? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ycs: wheu

I

have attained the seventh

degree of concentration.

HECTOR. Whats the use of that? You never do attain it. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What then is to be done? Are we to be kept for ever in the mud by these hogs to whom the universe is nothing but a machine for greasing their bristles and filling their snouts? HECTOR. Are Mangan's bristles worse than Randall's lovelocks?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.

Wc

must wiu powcrs of

and death

life

over them both. I refuse to die until I have invented the means. HECTOR. Who are we that we should judge them? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What are they that they should judge us? Yet they do, unhesitatingly. There is enmity between our seed and their seed. They know it and act on it, strangling our souls. They believe in themselves. When we believe in ourselves, we shall kill them. HECTOR. It is the same seed. You forget that your pirate has a very nice daughter. Mangan's son may be a Plato:

What was my father? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The damndcst scoundrel I [He replaces the drawing-board; sits down at Randall's a Shelley.

and begins to mix a wash of color]. HECTOR. Precisely. Well, dare you kill

ever met. the table;

his innocent grand-

children?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They are mine also. HECTOR. Just so. We are members one of another. [He throws himself carelessly on the sofa]. I tell you I have often thought of this killing of

have thought of

it,

Decent

human

men

vermin.

Many men

are like Daniel in the

— Heartbreak House lion's

513

den: their survival

always survive.

is

a miracle; and they do not

We live among the Mangans and Randalls

poor devils, live among the disease germs and the doctors and the lawyers and the parsons and the restaurant chefs and the tradesmen and the servants and all the rest of the parasites and blackmailers. What are our terrors to theirs? Give me the power to kill them; and I'll spare them in sheer CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [cutting in sharply] Fellow feeling? HECTOR. No. I should kill myself if I believed that. I must believe that my spark, small as it is, is divine, and that the red light over their door is hell fire. I should spare them

and

Billie

in simple

Dunns

as they,

magnanimous

pity.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You caut Spare them until you have the power to kill them. At present they have the power to kill you. There are millions of blacks over the water for them to train and let loose on us. Theyre going to do it. Theyre doing it already. HECTOR. They are too stupid to use their power. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [throwing down his brush and coming to the end of the sofa] Do not deceive yourself: they do use it. We kill the better half of ourselves every day to propitiate them. The knowledge that these people are there to render all our aspirations barren prevents us having the aspirations. And when we are tempted to seek their destruction they bring forth

demons

to delude us, dis-

guised as pretty daughters, and singers and poets and the

whose sake we spare them. up and leaning towards him] May not Hesione be such a demon, brought forth by you lest I should slay you? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. That is possiblc. She has used you up, and left you nothing but dreams, as some women do. HECTOR. Vampire women, demon women. like, for

HECTOR

[sitting

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Men think the world well lost for them, and lose it accordingly. Who are the men that do things? The husbands of the shrew and of the drunkard, the men with the thorn in the flesh. [Walking distractedly away towards the pantry] I must think these things out. [Turning suddenly] But I go on with the dynamite none the

Heartbreak House

514

any X-ray: a ammunition in the belt of my adversary before he can point his gun at me. And I must hurry. I am old: I have no time to waste in talk [he is about to go into the pantry, and Hector is making for the hall, when Hesione comes back], MRS HUSHABYE. Daddiest: you and Hector must come and help me to entertain all these people. What on earth were you shouting about? less.

I

will discover a ray mightier than

mind ray

that will explode the

HECTOR [stopping in the is madder than usual.

act of turning the doorhandle]

He

MRS HUSHABYE. We all are. HECTOR. I must change [he resumes his door opening]. MRS HUSHABYE. Stop, stop. Comc back, both of you. Come back.

[They

return,

reluctantly].

Money

is

running

short.

HECTOR. Money! Where are my April dividends? MRS HUSHABYE. Where is the snow that fell last year? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Where is all the money you had for that patent lifeboat

MRS HUSHABYE.

I

invented?

Fivc hundred pounds; and

have made

I

it

last since Easter!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Sincc Eastcr! Monstrous extravagance! I could

Barely

four months!

live for

seven years on

£500. MRS HUSHABYE. Not keeping open house

as

we do

here,

daddiest.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Only £500 for that lifeboat! I got twelve thousand for the invention before that. MRS HUSHABYE. Ycs, dear; but that was for the ship with the magnetic keel that sucked up submarines. Living at the rate we do, you cannot afford life-saving inventions. Cant you think of something that will murder half Europe at one bang? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. I am ageing fast. My mind does not dwell on slaughter as it did when I was a boy. Why doesnt your husband invent something? He does nothing but

tell lies

to

women.

HECTOR. Well, that is a form of invention, is it not? However, you are right: I ought to support my wife.

Heartbreak House

515

MRS HUSHABYE. Indeed you should never see

shall do nothing of the sort: I you from breakfast to dinner. I want my

husband.

HECTOR

might as well be your lapdog. MRS HUSHABYE. Do you want to be my breadwinner, like the other poor husbands? HECTOR. No, by thunder! What a damned creature a husband is anyhow! MRS HUSHABYE [to the Captain] What about that harpoon cannon? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No use. It kills whales, not men. MRS HUSHABYE. Why uot? You fire the harpoon out of a [bitterly] I

cannon.

It sticks in

the enemy's general;

you wind him

in;

and there you are. HECTOR. You are your father's daughter, Hesione. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is something in it. Not to wind in generals: they are not dangerous. But one could fire a grapnel and wind in a niachine gun or even a tank. I will think

it

out.

MRS HUSHABYE

[squeezing the Captain's

arm

affectionately]

Saved! You area darling, daddiest. Now we must go back to these dreadful people and entertain them. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. They have had no dinner. Dont forget that.

HECTOR. Neither have I. And it is dark: it must be all hours. MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, Guiuness will produce some sort of dinner for them. The servants always take jolly good care that there is food in the house. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [raising a strange wail in the darkness]

What a house! What a daughter! MRS HUSHABYE [raving] What a father! HECTOR [following suit] What a husband! CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is there no thunder in heaven? HECTOR. Is there no beauty, no bravery, on earth? MRS HUSHABYE. What do men want? They have their food, their firesides, their clothes mended, and our love at the end of the day. Why are they not satisfied? Why do they envy us the pain with which we bring them into the world, and make strange dangers and torments for themselves to be even with us?

Heartbreak House

^j.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [weirdly chanting] my daughters, and opened the I builded a house for doors thereof,

and That men might come for their choosing, betters spring from their love; But one of them married a numskull; HECTOR [taking up the rhythm]

The

other a liar wed;

MRS HUSHABYE [completing the stanza] And now must she lie beside him, even

^

[calling

from

made

as she

her bed.

LADY UTTERWORD

their

,

tt

•

the garden] Hesione! Hesi-

Where are you? HECTOR. The cat is on the tiles. MRS HUSHABYE. Coming, darling, coming one!

[she goes quickly

into the garden]. table,

The Captain goes back to his place at the the lights for HECTOR [going into the hall] Shall I turn up _ . you? darkness. Money deeper me Give No. SHOTOVER. CAPTAIN ,

is

not

ACT

made

in the light.

II

and the curtains The same room, with the lights turned up Mangan. Both are drawn. Ellie comes in, followed by drawing-table. dressed for dinner. She strolls to the chair. comes between the table and the wicker

MANGAN. What a

dinner!

I

dont

call

it

a dinner:

He

I call it

a meal.

very accustomed to meals, Mr Mangan, and cooked some maclucky to get them. Besides, the captain aroni for me. such liverishly] Too rich: I cant eat

ELLIE.

I

am

MA^G^^. [shuddering

with suppose it's because I have to work so much business: of my brain. Thats the worst of being a man By the way, you are always thinking, thinking, thinking. to opportunity are alone, may I take the

things. I

now that we come to a little

understanding with you?

Heartbreak House

517

ELLiE [settling into the draughtsman's seat] Certainly. I should like to, MANGAN [taken aback] Should you? That surprises me; for I thought I noticed this afternoon that you avoided me

you could. Not for the first time either. ELLIE. I was very tired and upset. I wasnt used to the ways of this extraordinary house. Please forgive me. MANGAN. Oh, thats all right: I dont mind. But Captain Shotover has been talking to me about you. You and me, you know. ELLIE [interested] The Captain! What did he say? MANGAN. Well, he noticed the difference between our ages. all

He notices everything. MANGAN. You dont mind, then?

ELLIE.

Of course I know quite well that our engagement— MANGAN. Oh! you call it an engagement,

ELLIE.

ELLIE. Well, isnt

MANGAN. Oh,

it?

no doubt It is if you hold to it. This is the first time youve used the word; and I didnt quite know where we stood: thats all. [He sits down in the wicker chair; and resigns himself to allow her to lead the conversation]. You were saying ? ELLIE. Was I? I forget. Tell me. Do you like this part of the country? I heard you ask Mr Hushabye at dinner whether there are any nice houses to let down here. MANGAN. I like the place. The air suits me. I shouldnt be yes, yes:

—

surprised

if I

settled

down

ELLIE. Nothing would please

•

here.

me

better.

And I want to be near Hesione. MANGAN [with growing uneasiness] The

The

air suits

me

too.

the question

is,

should

we

suit

air

may

suit us;

but

one another? Have you

thought about that?

Mr Mangan: we

mustnt we? It's no use pretending that we are Romeo and Juliet. But we can get on very well together if we choose to make the

ELLIE.

best of

it.

must be

Your kindness of

sensible,

heart will

make

it

easy for

me.

MANGAN

[leaning forward, with the beginning of something

like deliberate unpleasantness in his voice]

heart, eh? I ruined

your father, didnt I?

Kindness of

Heartbreak House

518 ELLiE. Oh, not intentionally,

MANGAN. Yes ELLIE.

On

I

did.

Ruined him on purpose.

purpose!

you know. And youll admit that I kept a job for him when I had finished with him. But business is business; and I ruined him as a matter of

MANGAN. Not out

of ill-naturc,

business.

dont understand how that can be. Are you trying to make me feel that I need not be grateful to you, so that I may choose freely?

ELLIE.

I

MANGAN

[rising aggressively]

No.

I

mean what

I

say.

ELLIE. But how could it possibly do you any good my father? The money he lost was yours.

MANGAN Ellie,

[with a sour laugh]

and

all

the

money

Wa

s

mine!

It

i

s

to ruin

mine, Miss

the other fellows lost too. [He

shoves his hands into his pockets and shews his teeth]. I just smoked them out like a hive of bees. What do you say to that? A bit of a shock, eh? ELLIE. It would have been, this morning. Now! you cant think how little it matters. But it's quite interesting. Only,

you must explain it to me. I dont understand it. [Propping her elbows on the drawing-board and her chin on her hands, she composes herself to listen with a combination which of conscious curiosity with unconscious contempt and an unpleasantness, provokes him to more and more attempt at patronage of her ignorance]. MANGAN. Of course you dont understand: what do you

and business was a new business; and

know about father's

business?

You

just listen

learn. I

dont

Your start

businesses: I let other fellows start them. They put their money and their friends' money into starting

new all

them. They wear out their souls and bodies trying to make a success of them. Theyre what you call enthusiasts. But the first dead lift of the thing is too much for them;

and they havnt enough financial experience. In a year or so they have either to let the whole show go bust, or ordisell out to a new lot of fellows for a few deferred anyget to nary shares: that is, if theyre lucky enough thing at all. As likely as not the very same thing happens to the

new

lot.

They put

in

more money and a couple

Heartbreak House

more work; and then perhaps they have

of years

out to a third

have to

will

519

a big thing the third lot

If it's really

lot.

sell

to sell

their work and

out too, and leave

money behind them. And thats where the real man comes in: where I come in. But I'm cleverer than some: I dont mind dropping a little money to start

their

business

the process.

I

took your father's measure.

saw that

I

he had a sound idea, and that he would work himself for

it

if

he got the chance.

in too great a

some

for

I

Your

expenses

his

way to ruin a money is to give him some.

I

explained

I

my

idea

money; my own.

friends in the city, and they found the

when

theyre

father and the friends that ventured their

with him were no more to

me

Youve been wasting your

heart

all

rot.

at

me

wallowing

I'm sick of

money

than a heap of squeezed

lemons. is

in

knew man who doesnt know how

take no risks in ideas, even

beaming

silly

was a child

that he

hurry to wait for his market.

that the surest to handle

to

saw

and was dead certain to outrun

business,

and be

I

it.

my

gratitude:

When

kind

see your father

I

with his moist, grateful eyes, regularly

in gratitude, I

the truth or burst.

sometimes

What

stops

me

feel is

I

must

that

I

tell

him

know he

wouldnt believe me. He'd think it was my modesty, as you did just now. He'd think anything rather than the truth, which is that he's a blamed fool, and I am a man that knows how to take care of himself. [He throws himself back into the big chair with large seJf-approval]. Now what do you think of me, Miss Ellie? ELLIE [dropping her hands] How strange! that my mother, who knew nothing at all about business, should have been quite right about you! She always said not before papa, of course, but to us children that you were just that sort of man. MANGAN [sitting up, much hurt] Oh! did she? And yet she'd have let you marry me. ELLIE. Well, you see, Mr Mangan, my mother married a very good man for whatever you may think of my father as a man of business, he is the soul of goodness and she is not at all keen on my doing the same.

—

—

—

—

Heartbreak House

520

MANGAN. Anyhow, you dont want

to

marry me now, do

you? ELLIE [very calmly] Oh,

MANGAN ELLIE.

I

[rising aghast]

dont see

I

think so.

Why

why we

MANGAN. Well, but look

Why

not?

not!

shouldnt get on very well together. here,

you know

—

[he stops, quite

at a loss].

ELLIE [patiently] Well?

MANGAN. Well,

I

thought you were rather particular about

people's characters.

we women were particular about men's characwe should never get married at all, Mr Mangan. MANGAN. A child like you talking of "we women"! What

ELLIE. If ters,

Youre not in earnest? ELLIE. Yes I am. Arnt you? MANGAN. You mean to hold me to it? ELLIE. Do you wish to back out of it? MANGAN. Oh no. Not exactly back out of next!

it.

ELLIE. Well?

He

has nothing to say. With a long whispered whistle,

he drops into the wicker chair and stares before him like a beggared gambler. But a cunning look soon comes into his face. He leans over towards her on his right elbow, and speaks in a low steady voice. MANGAN. Suppose I told you I was in love with another

woman! ELLIE [echoing him] Suppose

I

told

you

I

was

in love with

another man!

MANGAN

[bouncing angrily

out

of

his

I'm

chair]

not

joking.

Who

you / was? MANGAN. I tell you I'm serious. Youre too young to be serious; but youll have to believe me. I want to be near your friend Mrs Hushabye. I'm in love with her. Now

ELLIE.

told

the murder's out.

ELLIE.

I

want

to be near your friend

Mr

Hushabye. I'm

love with him. [She rises and adds with a frank

we

are in one

friends.

another's confidence,

Thank you

for telling me.

we

air]

shall

in

Now

be real

Heartbreak House

MANGAN

521

[almost beside himself]

Do you

think

I'll

be

made

a convenience of like this?

Come, Mr Mangan! you made a business conven* my father. Well, a woman's business is marriage. Why shouldnt I make a domestic convenience of

ELLiE.

ience of

you?

MANGAN. Because

I dont choose, see? Because I'm not a your father. Thats why. ELLIE [with serene contempt] You are not good enough to clean my father's boots, Mr Mangan; and I am paying you a great compliment in condescending to make a convenience of you, as you call it. Of course you are free to throw over our engagement if you like; but, if you do, youll never enter Hesione's house again: I will silly gull like

take care of that.

MANGAN

[gasping]

You

little devil,

youve done

me [On

the

point of collapsing into the big chair again he recovers himself] Wait a bit, though: youre not so cute as you

You

think.

pose

I

cant beat Boss

Mangan

as easy as that.

go straight to Mrs Hushabye and

tell

Sup^

her that

youre in love with her husband.

knows it. MANGAN. You told her!!! ELLIE. She

ELLIE. She told me.

MANGAN

[clutching at his bursting temples] Oh, this

crazy house.

Or

else

I'm going clean off

—

is

my chump.

a Is

she making a swop with you she to have your husband and you to have hers? ELLIE. Well, you dont want us both, do you?

MANGAN

[throwing himself into the chair distractedly]

brain wont stand

My

My

Help! Help Save me. [Ellie comes behind his chair; claps his head hard for a moment; then begins to draw her hands from his fore-head back to his ears]. Thank you. [Drowsily] Thats very refreshing. [Waking a little] Dont you hypnotize me, though. Ive seen men made fools of by hypnotism. ELLIE [steadily] Be quiet. Ive seen men made fools of with-

me

to hold

it.

it.

head's going to

Quick: hold

out hypnotism.

it:

squeeze

split.

it.

— Heartbreak House

522

MANGAN [humbly] You dont dislike touching me, You never touched me before, I noticed. ELLIE. nice

Not since you woman, who

fell in

will

never expect you to

And I will never expect him MANGAN. He may, though.

to

make

ELLIE [making her passes rhythmically] Hush.

you hear? You are

to

hope.

love naturally with a grown-up

to her.

Do

I

go

to sleep,

go to

make

love

love to me.

Go

to sleep.

sleep,

go to

sleep; be quiet, deeply deeply quiet; sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep, sleep.

He

falls asleep. Ellie steals

away; turns the

light out;

and goes into the garden. Nurse Guinness opens the door and is seen in the light which comes in from the hall. GUINNESS [speaking to someone outside] Mr Mangan's not here, ducky: theres no one here. It's all dark. MRS HUSHABYE [without] Try the garden. Mr Dunn and I will be in my boudoir. Shew him the way. GUINNESS. Yes, ducky. [She makes for the garden door in the dark; stumbles over the sleeping Mangan; and screams] Ahoo! Oh Lord, sir! I beg your pardon, I'm sure: I didnt see you in the dark. Who is it? [She goes back to the door and turns on the light]. Oh, Mr Mangan, sir, I hope I havnt hurt you plumping into your lap like that. [Coming to him] I was looking for you, sir. Mrs Hushabye says will you please [noticing that he remains quite insensible] Oh, my good Lord, I hope I havnt killed him. Sir! Mr Mangan! Sir! [She shakes him; and he is rolling inertly off the chair on the floor when she holds him up and props him against the cushion]. Miss Hessy! Miss Hessy! Quick, doty darling. Miss Hessy!

[Mrs Hushabye comes in from the hall, followed by Mazzini Dunn]. Oh, Miss Hessy, Ive been and killed him. Mazzini runs round the back of the chair to Mangan's right hand, and sees that the nurse's words are apparently only too true.

What tempted you to commit such a crime, woman? MRS HUSHABYE [trying not to laugh] Do you mean you did

MAZZINI.

it

on purpose?

Heartbreak House

523

GUINNESS. Now is it likely I'd kill any man on purpose. I fell over him in the dark; and I'm a pretty tidy weight. He never spoke nor moved until I shook him; and then he would have dropped dead on the floor. Isnt it tire-

some? MRS HUSHABYE [going past the nurse to Mangan's side, and inspecting him less credulously than Mazzini] Nonsense! he is not dead: he is only asleep. I can see him breathing. GUINNESS. But why wont he wake? MAZZINI [speaking very politely into Mangan's ear] Mangan! My dear Mangan! [he blows into Mangan's ear], MRS HUSHABYE. Thats no good [she shakes him vigorously]. Mr Mangan: wake up. Do you hear? [He begins to roll over]. Oh! Nurse, nurse: he's falling: help me. Nurse Guinness rushes to the rescue. With Mazzini's assistance, Mangan is propped safely up again. GUINNESS [behind the chair; bending over to test the case with her nose] Would he be drunk, do you think, pet? MRS HUSHABYE. Had he any of papa's rum? MAZZINI. It cant be that: he is most abstemious. I am afraid he drank too much formerly, and has to drink too little now. You know, Mrs Hushabye, I really think he has been hypnotized. GUINNESS. Hip no what, sir? MAZZINI. One evening at home, after we had seen a hypnotizing performance, the children began playing at it; and Ellie stroked

my

head.

I

assure

you

I

went

off

dead

and they had to send for a professional to wake after I had slept eighteen hours. They had to carry me upstairs; and as the poor children were not very strong, they let me slip; and I rolled right down the whole flight and never woke up. [Mrs Hushabye splutters]. Oh, you may laugh, Mrs Hushabye; but I might have been killed. MRS HUSHABYE. I couldnt have helped laughing even if you had been, Mr Dunn. So Ellie has hypnotized him. What asleep;

me up

fun!

Oh no, no, no. It was such a terrible lesson to her: nothing would induce her to try such a thing again.

MAZZINI.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then who

did

it? /

didnt.

— Heartbreak House

524 MAZZiNi. it

thought perhaps the Captain might have done

I

unintentionally.

vibrations

He

whenever he comes close

GUINNESS, The Captain

back him for

I'll

so fearfully magnetic: I feel

is

to

me.

him out of it anyhow, sir: go fetch him [she makes for the

will get

that.

I'll

pantry].

MRS HUSHABYE. Wait

a

bit.

[To Mazzlni]

You

say he

is all

right for eighteen hours?

was asleep for eighteen hours, the worse for it? MAZZINI. I dont quite remember. They had poured brandy down my throat, you see; and MRS HUSHABYE. Quite. Anyhow, you survived. Nurse, darling: go and ask Miss Dunn to come to us here. Say I want to speak to her particularly. You will find her with Mr Hushabye probably. GUINNESS. I think not, ducky: Miss Addy is with him. But I'll find her and send her to you. [She goes out into the MAZZINI. Well,

/

MRS HUSHABYE. Were you any

garden].

MRS HUSHABYE [calling Mazzini's attention to the figure on the chair] Now, Mr Dunn, look. Just look. Look hard.

Do

you

still

intend to sacrifice your daughter to that

thing?

MAZZINI [troubled] You have completely upset me, Mrs Hushabye, by all you have said to me. That anyone could imagine that

dom,

if I

may

I

—

say so

or anyone, or that

I

/,

a consecrated soldier of free-

—could

sacrifice Ellie to

ing her inclinations in any way, to

my

—

well, I

anybody

should ever have dreamed of forcis

a most painful blow

suppose you would say to

my

good opin-

ion of myself.

MRS HUSHABYE

[rather stolidly] Sorry.

MAZZINI [looking forlornly at the body] What is your objection to poor Mangan, Mrs Hushabye? He looks all right to me. But then I am so accustomed to him, MRS HUSHABYE, Have you no heart? Have you no sense? Look at the brute! Think of poor weak innocent Ellie in the clutches of this slavedriver,

who spends his life makworkmen bend to his

ing thousands of rough violent will

and sweat for him: a man accustomed

to

have great

Heartbreak House

525

masses of iron beaten into shape for him by steamhammers! to fight with women and girls over a halfpenny an hour ruthlessly! a captain of industry, I think you call him, dont you? Are you going to fling your delicate, sweet, helpless child into such a beast's claws just because he will keep her in an expensive house and

make her wear diamonds MAZZiNi

to

shew how rich he is? amazement] Bless you,

[staring at her in wide-eyed

dear Mrs Hushabye, what romantic ideas of business

you have! Poor dear Mangan isnt a bit like that. MRS HUSHABYE [scornfuUy] Poor dear Mangan indeed! MAZZINI. But he doesnt know anything about machinery. He never goes near the men: he couldnt manage them: he is afraid of them. I never can get him to take the least interest in the works: he hardly knows more about them than you do. People are cruelly unjust to Mangan: they think he is all rugged strength just because his manners are bad.

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you mean enough

to crush

poor

MAZZINI. Of course will turn out; but

it's

little

to

tell

me

he

isnt strong

Ellie?

very hard to say

how any

speaking for myself,

I

marriage

should say that

he wont have a dog's chance against Ellie. You know, Ellie has remarkable strength of character. I think it is because I taught her to like Shakespear when she was very young.

MRS HUSHABYE

[contemptuously]

me

Shakespear!

The next

you could have made a great deal more money than Mangan. [She retires to the sofa, and sits down at the port end of it in the worst of

thing

you

will tell

is

that

humors].

MAZZINI [following her and taking the other end] No: I'm no good at making money. I dont care enough for it, somehow. I'm not ambitious! that must be it. Mangan is wonderful about money: he thinks of nothing else. He is

so dreadfully afraid of being poor. I

am

always think-

ing of other things: even at the works I think of the

what they cost. And the worst of it is, poor Mangan doesnt know what to do with his money when he gets it. He is such a baby that he things

we

are doing and not of

Heartbreak House

526 doesnt

know even what

his liver eating

to eat

and drink: he has ruined wrong things; and now

and drinking the

he can hardly eat at all. EUie will diet him splendidly. You will be surprised when you come to know him better: he

is

really the

most helpless of mortals. You get

quite a protective feeling towards him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Then who manages his business, pray? MAZziNi. I do. And of course other people like me. MRS HUSHABYE. Footling people, you mean. MAZZINI.

I

suppose youd think us

so.

MRS HUSHABYE. And pray why dont you do without him if youre all so much cleverer? MAZZINI. Oh, we couldnt: we should ruin the business in a year. I've tried; and I know. We should spend too much on

We

everything.

should improve the quality of the

goods and make them too dear. We should be sentimental about the hard cases among the workpeople. But Mangan keeps us in order. He is down on us about every extra halfpenny. We could never do without him. You see, he will sit up all night thinking of how to save sixpence. Wont Ellie make him jump, though, when she takes his house in hand! MRS HUSHABYE. Then the creature is a fraud even as a captain of industry! I am afraid all the captains of industry are what you call frauds, Mrs Hushabye. Of course there are some manufacturers who really do understand their own

MAZZINI.

works; but they dont

Mangan

fellow in his

I

MRS HUSHABYE. He youth,

is

make

as high a rate of profit as

you Mangan way. He means well.

does.

assure

docsut look well.

He

good

is

quite a

is

not in his

first

he?

no husband is in his first youth for very long, Mrs Hushabye. And men cant afford to marry in their first youth nowadays. MRS HUSHABYE. Now if / Said that, it would sound witty. Why cant you say it wittily? What on earth is the matter with you? Why dont you inspire everybody with

MAZZINI. After

all,

confidence? with respect?

MAZZINI [humbly]

I

think that what

is

the matter with

me

is

— Heartbreak House

527

am poor. You

dont know what that means

home. Mind: I dont say they have ever complained. Theyve all been wonderful: theyve been proud of my poverty. Theyve even joked about it quite often. But my wife has had a very poor time of it. She has been quite resigned MRS HUSHABYE [shuddering invoIuntanly]\\ MAZziNi. There! You see, Mrs Hushabye. I dont want Ellie to live on resignation. MRS HUSHABYE. Do you Want her to have to resign herself that

I

to living with a

MAZZINI

[wistfully]

living with

a

man

she doesnt love?

Are you sure

man

at

would be worse than he was a footling per-

that

she did love,

if

son?

MRS HUSHABYE

contemptuous attitude, quite interested in Mazzini now] You know, I really think you must love Ellie very much; for you become quite clever when you talk about her. MAZZINI. I didnt know I was so very stupid on other [relaxing her

subjects.

MRS HUSHABYE. You are, sometimes. MAZZINI [turning his head away; for his eyes are wet] I have learnt a good deal about myself from you, Mrs Hushabye; and I'm afraid I shall not be the happier for your plain speaking. But if you thought I needed it to make me think of Ellie's happiness you were very much mistaken.

MRS HUSHABYE

[leaning towards

him

kindly]

Have

I

been

a beast? MAZZINI [pulling himself together] It doesnt matter about me, Mrs Hushabye. I think you like Ellie; and that is

enough for me.

MRS HUSHABYE. I'm beginning fectly

loathed you

odious, self-satisfied,

at

first.

you a little. I perthought you the most

to like I

boresome elderly prig

I

ever met.

MAZZINI [resigned, and now quite cheerful] I daresay I am all that. I never have been a favorite with gorgeous women like you. They always frighten me. MRS HUSHABYE [pleased] Am I a gorgeous woman, Mazzini? I shall fall in love with you presently. MAZZINI [with placid gallantry] No you wont, Hesione. But

Heartbreak House

528

you would be a lot of

quite safe.

women

have

Would you

flirted

safe? But they get tired of

MRS HUSHABYE so safe as

Oh

[mischievously]

you

with

me

believe

me

because

I

that quite

am

quite

same reason.

for the

Take

it

care.

You may

not be

think.

You

have been in love really: the sort of love that only happens once. [Softly] Thats why Ellie is such a lovely girl. MRS HUSHABYE. Well, really, you are coming out. Are you quite sure you wont let me tempt you into a second grand passion? MAZZINI. Quite. It wouldnt be natural. The fact is, you dont strike on my box, Mrs Hushabye; and I certainly dont strike on yours. MRS HUSHABYE. I See. YouF marriage was a safety match. MAZZINI. What a very witty application of the expression I MAZZiNi.

used!

I

Ellie

yes, quite safe.

see, I

should never have thought of

comes

in

it.

from the garden, looking anything but

happy,

MRS HUSHABYE

[rising] Oh! here is Ellie at last. [She goes behind the sofa]. ELLIE [on the threshold of the starboard door] Guinness said you wanted me: you and papa. MRS HUSHABYE. You have kept us waiting so long that it almost came to well, never mind. Your father is a very wonderful man [she ruffles his hair affectionately]: the only one I ever met who could resist me when I made myself really agreeable. [She comes to the big chair, on

—

Mangan's

left].

Come

you. [Ellie strolls

Look. ELLIE [contemplating is

only asleep.

here. I have something to

listlessly to the

Mangan

We

had a

asleep in the middle of

MRS HUSHABYE. You

did

shew

other side of the chair].

know. dinner; and he

without interest]

talk after

I

He fell

it.

it,

Ellie.

You

put him asleep.

MAZZINI [rising quickly and coming to the back of the chair] Oh, I hope not. Did you, Ellie? ELLIE [wearily] He asked me to, MAZZINI. But it's dangerous. You know what happened to me.

Heartbreak House

529

ELLiE [utterly indifferent] Oh, not,

somebody

I

daresay

I

can wake him.

If

else can.

MRS HUSHABYE.

It doesnt matter, anyhow, because I have persuaded your father that you dont want to marry him. ELLIE [suddenly coming out of her listlessness, much vexed] But why did you do that, Hesione? I d o want to marry him. I fully intend to marry him.

at

last

MAZziNL Are you

made me selfish

feel

about

quite sure, Ellie?

that I

Mrs Hushabye has

may have been

thoughtless and

it.

When Mrs Hushabye you what I think or dont think, shut your ears tight; and shut your eyes too. Hesione knows nothing about me: she hasnt the least notion of the sort of person I am, and never will. I promise you I wont do anything I dont want to do and mean to do for my own sake. MAZZINL You are quite, quite sure? ELLIE. Quite, quite sure. Now you must go away and leave me to talk to Mrs Hushabye. MAZZINL But I should like to hear. Shall I be in the way? ELLIE [inexorable] I had rather talk to her alone. MAZZiNi [affectionately] Oh, well, I know what a nuisance parents are, dear. I will be good and go. [He goes to the garden door]. By the way, do you remember the address of that professional who woke me up? Dont you think I had better telegraph to him. MRS HUSHABYE [moving towards the sofa] It's too late to ELLIE [very clearly and steadily] Papa. takes

it

on

herself to explain to

telegraph tonight.

MAZZINL

I

suppose

so. I

do hope

he'll

wake up

in the course

of the night. [He goes out into the garden]. ELLIE [turning vigorously on Hesione the moment her father is out of the room] Hesione: what the devil do you mean by making mischief with my father about Mangan? MRS HUSHABYE [promptly losing her temper] Dont you dare speak to me like that, you little minx. Remember that

you are

in

ELLIE. Stuff! is it

to

my house. Why dont you mind

you whether

I

your own business? What

choose to marry

Mangan

or not?

—

— Heartbreak House

530

MRS HUSHABYE. Do you supposc you can miserable

little

woman who

ELLiE. Every

monial adventurer. never

known what

up men as

if

bully me,

you

matrimonial adventurer? It's it is

hasnt any

money

is

a matri-

easy for you to talk: you have

want money; and you can pick I am poor and respect-

to

they were daisies.

able

MRS HUSHABYE [interrupting] Ho! pick up Mangan? How did you have the audacity to tell ELLIE. A siren. So you are. the nose:

respectable!

How

did you

pick up my husband? You me that I am a a a You were born to lead men by

——

you werent, Marcus would have waited for

if

me, perhaps.

MRS HUSHABYE poor

Ellie,

[suddenly melting and half laughing] Oh,

my

my unhappy

pettikins,

sorry about Hector. But what can I'd give

ELLIE.

I

him

to

you

if I

I

do?

darling! I It's

not

my

am

my so

fault:

could.

dont blame you for

that.

MRS HUSHABYE. What

a brute I was to quarrel with you and you names! Do kiss me and say youre not angry with me. ELLIE [fiercely] Oh, dont slop and gush and be sentimental. Dont you see that unless I can be hard as hard as nails I shall go mad. I dont care a damn about your calling me names: do you think a woman in my situation can feel a few hard words? MRS HUSHABYE. Poor little woman! Poor little situation! ELLIE. I suppose you think youre being sympathetic. You are just foolish and stupid and selfish. You see me getting a smasher right in the face that kills a whole part of my life: the best part that can never come again; and you think you can help me over it by a little coaxing and kissing. When I want all the strength I can get to lean on: something iron, something stony, I dont care how cruel it is, you go all mushy and want to slobber over me. I'm not angry; I'm not unfriendly; but for God's sake do pull yourself together; and dont think that because youre on velvet and always have been, women who are in hell can call

—

—

take

it

as easily as you.

MRS HUSHABYE

[shrugging her shoulders] Very well. [She

Heartbreak House

531

down on the sofa in her old place]. But I warn you that when I am neither coaxing and kissing nor laughing, I am just wondering how much longer I can stand living in this cruel, damnable world. You object to the siren: well, I drop the siren. You want to rest your wounded sits

bosom is

against a grindstone. Well [folding her arms], here

the grindstone.

down beside her, appeased] Thats better: you have the trick of falling in with everyone's mood; but you dont understand, because you are not the sort of woman for whom there is only one man and only one

ELLiE

[sitting

really

chance. I certainly dont understand how your marrying that object [indicating Mangan] will console you for not being able to marry Hector. ELLIE. Perhaps you dont understand why I was quite a nice girl this morning, and am now neither a girl nor particu-

MRS HUSHABYE.

larly nice.

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh

yes I do. It's because you have made do something despicable and wicked. dont think so, Hesione. I must make the best of

up your mind ELLIE. I

my ruined

to

house.

MRS HUSHABYE. Pooh! Youll

get ovcr

it.

Your house

isnt

ruined.

Of course I shall get over it. You dont suppose I'm sit down and die of a broken heart, I hope, or be an old maid living on a pittance from the Sick and

ELLIE.

going to

Indigent Roomkeepers' Association.

broken,

all

the same.

What

I

mean by

But that

my is

heart

that I

is

know

what has happened to me with Marcus will not happen to me ever again. In the world for me there is Marcus and a lot of other men of whom one is just the same as another. Well, if I cant have love, thats no reason why I should have poverty. If Mangan has nothing else, he has money. MRS HUSHABYE. And are there no young men with money? ELLIE. Not within my reach. Besides, a young man would have the right to expect love from me, and would perhaps leave me when he found I could not give it to him. Rich young men can get rid of their wives, you know, pretty that

Heartbreak House

532

cheaply. But this object, as you call him, can expect noth-

ing

more from me than

MRS HUSHABYE. He buys you, he you.

ELLIE

Ask your father. and strolling

You need

have more

the bargain pay

to the chair to

him and not

contemplate their

not trouble on that score, Hesione. I

to give Boss

who am buying

prepared to give him.

be your owner, remember. If he

make

[rising

subject]

is I

will

will

am

I

Mangan than he

has to give me:

him, and at a pretty good price too,

it

I

Women

are better at that sort of bargain than have taken the Boss's measure; and ten Boss Mangans shall not prevent me doing far more as I please as his wife than I have ever been able to do as a poor girl. [Stooping to the recumbent figure] Shall they, Boss? I think not. [She passes on to the drawing-table, and leans against the end of it, facing the windows]. I shall not have to spend most of my time wondering how long my gloves will last, anyhow. MRS HUSHABYE [rising superbly] Ellie: you are a wicked think.

men.

I

sordid

little

beast.

And

to think that I actually condes-

cended to fascinate that creature there to save you from him! Well, let me tell you this: if you make this disgusting match, you will never see Hector again

if

I

can help it. ELLIE [unmoved] I nailed Mangan by telling him that if he did not marry me he should never see you again [she lifts herself on her wrists and seats herself on the end of the table].

MRS HUSHABYE

[recoiUng]

MRS HUSHABYE

[flaming]

Oh! ELLIE. So you see I am not unprepared for your playing that trump against me. Well, you just try it: thats all. I should have made a man of Marcus, not a household pet,

You

dare!

ELLIE [looking almost dangerous] Set him thinking about

you dare, MRS HUSHABYE. Well, of

me

if

all

ever met! Hector says there

the impudent is

only answer you can give to a

man who

is

to

fiends I

breaks

knock him down. What would you say box your ears?

rules

to

little

a certain point at which the all

if I

the

were

— Heartbreak House

533

ELLiE [calmly]

I

MRS HUSHABYE

[mischievously] That wouldnt hurt me. Per^

haps

it

comes

should pull your hair, off at night.

taken aback that she drops off the table and runs to her] Oh, you dont mean to say, Hesione, that your

ELLIE

[so

beautiful black hair

MRS HUSHABYE in

is

[patting

false? it]

Dont

tell

Hector.

He

believes

it.

ELLIE [groaning] Oh! Even the hair that ensnared him false!

Everything

false!

MRS HUSHABYE. Pull it and try. Other women can snare men in their hair; but I can swing a baby on mine. Aha! you cant do

that,

Goldylocks.

You have stolen my babies. HUSHABYE. Pettikins: dont make me cry. You know, MRS what you said about my making a household pet of him is a little true. Perhaps he ought to have waited for you. Would any other woman on earth forgive you? ELLIE. Oh, what right had you to take him all for yourself! ELLIE [heartbroken] No.

[Pulling herself together] There!

neither of us could help

say anything more:

I

it.

He

cant bear

You

couldnt help

couldnt help it.

Let us

it.

wake

it:

No: dont the object.

[She begins stroking Mangan's head, reversing the move* ment with which she put him to sleep]. Wake up, wake up, wake MANGAN [bouncing out of the chair in a fury and turning on them] Wake up! So you think Ive been asleep, do you? [He kicks the chair violently out of his way, and

You throw me

gets between them].

move hand

— —

into a trance so that

I might have been buried wasnt and then you think I was only asleep. If youd let me drop the two times you rolled me about, my nose would have been flattened for life against the floor. But Ive found you all out, anyhow. I know the sort of people I'm among now. Ive heard every word youve said, you and your precious father, and [to Mrs Hushabye] you too. So I'm an object, am I? I'm a thing, am I? I'm a fool that hasnt sense enough to feed myself properly, am I? I'm afraid of the men that would starve if it werent for the wages I give them.

I cant alive!

it's

a mercy

or foot

I

— Heartbreak House

534

am

I?

made

Fm

nothing but a disgusting old skinflint to be a convenience of by designing women and fool

my

managers of

MRS HUSHABYE

am

works,

[with the

I?

I'm

most elegant aplomb] Sh-sh-sh-sh-

Mr Mangan: you are bound in honor to obliterate from your mind all you heard while you were pretending to be asleep. It was not meant for you to hear. MANGAN. Pretending to be asleep! Do you think if I was sh!

only pretending that I'd have sprawled there helpless,

and listened to such unfairness, such lies, such injustice and plotting and backbiting and slandering of me, if I could have up and told you what I thought of you! I

wonder

I

didnt burst.

MRS HUSHABYE

We were only your

in

saying

That was

sleep.

Mr Mangan, mind in the

You dreamt how beautifully

[sweetly]

all

wasnt

all,

all,

it

Mr Mangan.

peaceful you looked

it,

EUie? Believe me,

those unpleasant things

came

into

your

last half second before you woke. Ellie rubbed your hair the wrong way; and the disagreeable sensation suggested a disagreeable dream.

MANGAN [doggedly] I believe in dreams. MRS HUSHABYE. So do I. But they go by

contraries, dont

they?

MANGAN

[depths of emotion suddenly welling up in him] I shant forget, to my dying day, that when you gave me the glad eye that time in the garden, you were making a fool

of me. That was a dirty low

no

right to let

me come

mean

near you

thing to do. if I

You had

disgusted you.

It

my fault if I'm old and havnt a moustache like a bronze candlestick as your husband has. There are things isnt

no decent woman would do a

woman

to a

Hesione, utterly shamed,

sits

covers her face with her hands.

on

and begins

his chair

them. takes

man

—

like a

man

hitting

in the breast.

down on the sofa and Mangan sits down also

to cry like a child, Ellie stares at

Mrs Hushaby e, at the distressing sound he makes, down her hands and looks at him. She rises and

runs to him.

MRS HUSHABYE. Dont your heart?

I

didnt

cry: I cant bear

know you had

it.

one.

Have

How

I

broken

could I?

!

Heartbreak House

535

MANGAN. I'm a man aint I? MRS HUSHABYE [half cvaxing,

Oh

erly]

that

no: not what

and nothing

else.

I

half rallying, altogether tend-

call a

What

man. Only a Boss:

just

business has a Boss with a

heart?

MANGAN. Then youre not a bit sorry for what you did, nor ashamed? MRS HUSHABYE. I was ashamed for the first time in my life when you said that about hitting a woman in the breast, and

I

found out what

I'd

done.

My

very bones blushed

Youve had your revenge, Boss. Arnt you satisfied? MANGAN. Serve you right! Do you hear? Serve you right! Youre just cruel. Cruel. MRS HUSHABYE. Ycs: cruclty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didnt really hurt. By the way [sitting down beside him on the arm of the chair], whats your name? It's not really Boss, is it? red.

MANGAN [shortly] If you want to know," my name's Alfred. MRS HUSHABYE [springing up] Alfred!! Ellie: he was christened after Tennyson!!! MANGAN [rising] I was christened after my uncle, and never had a penny from him, damn him! What of it? MRS HUSHABYE. It comcs to me suddenly that you are a real person: that you had a mother, like anyone else. [Putting her hands on his shoulders and surveying him] Little Alf MANGAN. Well, you have a nerve. MRS HUSHABYE. And you have a heart, AIfy, a whimpering

little

Now

heart, but a real one. [Releasing

run and

make

it

him suddenly]

up with EUie. She has had time to

think what to say to you, which

is

more than

I

had [she

goes out quickly into the garden by the port door]. a pair of hands that go right

MANGAN. That woman has through you. ELLIE.

Still in

love with her, in spite of

all

we

said about

you?

women like you two? Do they never think anything about a man except what they can get out him? You werent even thinking that about me. You

MANGAN. Are of of

all

were only thinking whether your gloves would last

— Heartbreak House

536 ELLiE.

shall not

I

have to think about that when we are

married.

MANGAN. And you think what ELLIE.

I

am

going to marry you after

heard there!

I

You

heard nothing from

me

that

I

did not

tell

you

before.

MANGAN. Perhaps you think ELLIE. after

I

coming

MANGAN

I

cant do without you.

think you would feel lonely without us to

know

now,

all

us so well.

[with something like a yell of despair]

Am

I

never

to have the last word? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [appearing at the starboard garden door] There is a soul in torment here. What is the matter? MANGAN. This girl doesnt want to spend her life wondering

how

long her gloves will

last.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [passing through] Dont wear any.

I

never do [he goes into the pantry].

LADY UTTERWORD [appearing at the port garden door, handsome dinner dress] Is anything the matter? ELLIE. This gentleman wants to the last

know

is

in

a

he never to have

word?

LADY UTTERWORD [coming forward to the sofa] I should let him have it, my dear. The important thing is not to have the last word, but to have your

MANGAN. She wants both. LADY UTTERWORD. She wont idence always has the

MANGAN

[desperately]

last

own way.

get them,

Mr Mangan.

Prov-

word.

Now you

are going to

come

religion

house a man's mind might as well be a [He makes for the hall, but is stopped by a hail from the Captain, who has just emerged from over me. In

this

football. I'm going.

his pantry].

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Whither away, Boss Mangan? MANGAN. To hell out of this house: let that be enough for you and all here, CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You wcre welcome to come: you are free to go. The wide earth, the high seas, the spacious skies are waiting for you outside. LADY UTTERWORD. But your things, Mr Mangan. Your bags, your comb and brushes, your pyjamas

Heartbreak House

537

HECTOR [who has just appeared in the port doorway in a handsome Arab costume] Why should the escaping slave take his chains with him?

Hushabye. Keep the pyjamas, my lady; and much good may they do you. HECTOR [advancing to Lady Utterword's left hand] Let us all go out into the night and leave everything behind us. MANGAN. You Stay where you are, the lot of you. I want no company, especially female company. ELLiE. Let him go. He is unhappy here. He is angry with

MANGAN. Thats

right,

us.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Go, Boss Mangan; and when you have found the land where there is happiness and where there are no women, send me its latitude and longitude; and I will join you there. LADY UTTERWORD. You will Certainly not be comfortable without your luggage, Mr Mangan. ELLiE [impatient] Go, go: why dont you go? It is a heavenly night: you can sleep on the heath. Take my waterproof to lie on: it is hanging up in the hall. HECTOR. Breakfast at nine, unless you prefer to breakfast with the Captain at six. ELLIE,

Good

night, Alfred.

HECTOR. Alfred! [He runs back to the door and calls into the garden] Randall: Mangan's Christian name i s Alfred,

RANDALL [appearing in the starboard doorway in evening dress] Then Hesione wins her bet. Mrs Hushabye appears in the port doorway. She throws her left arm round Hector's neck; draws him with her to the back of the sofa; and throws her right arm round Lady Utterword's neck. MRS HUSHABYE. They wouldnt believe me, Alf. They contemplate him. MANGAN. Is there any more of you coming in to look at me, as if I was the latest thing in a menagerie,

MRS HUSHABYE. You are the latest thing Before Mangan can retort, a fall of from

upstairs; then a pistol shot,

and a

in this menagerie.

furniture

is

staring group breaks up in consternation. MAZZiNi's VOICE [from above] Help! burglar! Help!

A

heard

yell of pain.

The

Heartbreak House

538

HECTOR [his eyes blazing] A burglar!!! MRS HUSHABYE. No, Hector: youll be shot [but it is too late: he has dashed out past Mangan, who hastily moves towards the bookshelves out of his way]. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [blowing his whistle] All hands aloft! [He strides out after Hector]. LADY UTTERWORD. My diamonds! [She follows the Captain].

RANDALL [rushing after her] No, Ariadne. Let me. ELLiE. Oh, is papa shot? [she runs out]. MRS HUSHABYE. Are you frightened, Alf? MANGAN. No. It aint my house, thank God.

MRS HUSHABYE.

If

they catch a burglar, shall

go into court as witnesses, and be asked

we have all

to

sorts of

questions about our private lives?

MANGAN. You wont be

believed

if

you

tell

the truth.

Mazzini, terribly upset, with a dueling pistol in his

hand, comes from the

hall,

and makes

his

way

to the

drawing-table.

MAZZiNL Oh, my dear Mrs Hushabye, I might have killed him [He throws the pistol on the table and staggers round to the chair]. I hope you wont believe I really intended to.

Hector comes

marching an old and villainous looking man before him by the collar. He plants him in the middle of the room and releases him. Ellie follows, and immediately runs across to the back of her father's chair, and pats his shoulders. RANDALL [entering with a poker] Keep your eye on this door,

Mangan.

in,

I'll

look after the other [he goes to the

starboard door and stands on guard there].

Lady Utterword comes in after Randall, and goes between Mrs Hushabye and Mangan. Nurse Guinness brings up the rear, and waits near the door, on Mangan's

left.

MRS HUSHABYE. What has happened? MAZZINL Your housekeeper told me

there

was somebody Hushabye had

and gave me a pistol that Mr been practising with. I thought it would frighten him; but it went off at a touch.

upstairs,

Heartbreak House

539

THE BURGLAR. Yes, and took

my

the skin off

my

ear.

Precious

Why

dont you have a proper revolver instead of a thing hke that, that goes near took the top

off

much

as

off if

you

as

HECTOR. One of MAZZiNi.

He

my

head.

blow on

it?

duelling pistols. Sorry.

put his hands up and said

it

was a

fair cop.

THE BURGLAR. So it was. Send for the police. HECTOR. No, by thunder! It was not a fair cop.

We

were

solitary.

Ten

four to one.

MRS HUSHABYE. What will they do to him? THE BURGLAR. Ten years. Beginning with years off see

me

my

life. I

shant serve

it all:

I'm too old.

It will

out.

LADY UTTERWORD. You should have thought of that before you stole my diamonds. THE BURGLAR. Well, youve got them back, lady: havnt you? Can you give me back the years of my life you are going to take from me? MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, we cant bury a man alive for ten years for a few diamonds. THE BURGLAR. Ten little shining diamonds! Ten long black years!

LADY UTTERWORD. Think of what

it is for us to be dragged through the horrors of a criminal court, and have all our family affairs in the papers! If you were a native, and Hastings could order you a good beating and send you away, I shouldnt mind; but here in England there is no

any respectable person. THE BURGLAR. I'm too old to be giv a hiding, lady. Send for the police and have done with it. It's only just and right you should. RANDALL [who has relaxed his vigilance on seeing the bur" glar so pacifically disposed, and comes forward swinging the poker between his fingers like a well-folded umbrella] It is neither just nor right that we should be put to a lot of inconvenience to gratify your moral enthusiasm, my friend. You had better get out, while you have the real protection for

chance.

THE BURGLAR

[inexorably]

No.

I

must work

my

sin off

my

Heartbreak House

540 conscience. This has

come

me

spend the rest of my have my reward above.

MANGAN

\exasperated\

as a sort of call to

life

The very

repenting in a

me. Let

cell. I shall

burglars cant behave na-

turally in this house.

My good sir: you must work out your salvation somebody else's expense. Nobody here is going to

HECTOR. at

charge you,

THE BURGLAR. Oh, you wont charge me, wont you? HECTOR. No. I'm sorry to be inhospitable; but will you kindly leave the house? THE BURGLAR. Right. I'll go to the police station and give myself up. \He turns resolutely to the door; but Hector stops him],

HECTOR. RANDALL,

\

/

I

1

> s

MRS HUSHABYE.

I

I

Oh

no. You mustnt do that. No, no. Clear out, man, cant you; and dont be a fool. Dont be so silly. Cant you repent at

J ^ home? LADY UTTERWORD. You will have to do as you are told. THE BURGLAR. It's Compounding a felony, you know. MRS HUSHABYE. This is utterly ridiculous. Are we to be forced to prosecute this man when we dont want to? THE BURGLAR. Am I to be robbed of my salvation to save you the trouble of spending a day justice? Is

it

right? Is

it

fair to

at the sessions? Is that

me?

MAZZiNi [rising and leaning across the table persuasively as if it were a pulpit desk or a shop counter] Come, come! let me shew you how you can turn your very crimes to account. Why not set up as a locksmith? You must know more about locks than most honest men? THE BURGLAR. Thats truc, sir. But I couldnt set up as a locksmith under twenty pounds. RANDALL. Well, you can easily steal twenty pounds. You will find

it

THE BURGLAR

in the nearest

[horrified]

bank.

Oh what

a thing for a gentleman

head of a poor criminal scrambling out of it were! Oh, shame on you, sir! Oh, forgive you! [He throws himself into the big chair

to put into the

the bottomless pit as

God

and covers

his face as

if in

prayer].

Heartbreak House

541

LADY UTTERWORD. Really, Randall! HECTOR. It seems to me that we shall have to take up a collection for this inopportunately contrite sinner.

LADY UTTERWORD. But twenty pounds is ridiculous. THE BURGLAR [looking up quickly] I shall have to buy a of

tools.,

lot

lady.

LADY UTTERWORD. Nonscnsc: you have your burgling kit. THE BURGLAR. Whats a jemmy and a centrebit and an acetylene welding plant and a bunch of skelton keys? I shall want a forge, and a smithy, and a shop, and fittings. I cant hardly do it for twenty. HECTOR. My worthy friend, we havnt got twenty pounds. THE BURGLAR [now master of the situation] You can raise it among you, cant you? MRS HUSHABYE. Givc him a

sovereign, Hector; and get rid

of him.

HECTOR [giving him a pound] There! Off with you. THE BURGLAR [rising and taking the money very ungratefully] I wont promise nothing. You have more on you than a quid:

all

the lot of you,

I

mean.

LADY UTTERWORD [vigorously] Oh, let us prosecute him and have done with it. I have a conscience too, I hope; and I do not feel at all sure that we have any right to let him go, especially if he is going to be greedy and impertinent. THE BURGLAR [quickly] All right, lady, all right. I've no wish to be anything but agreeable. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen; and thank you kindly.

He

is

hurrying out when he

is

confronted in the door-

way by Captain Shotover. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [fixing the burglar with a piercing regard] What's this? Are there two of you? THE BURGLAR [falling on his knees before the Captain in abject terror] Oh my good Lord, what have I done? Dont tell me it's your house Ive broken into. Captain Shotover.

The Captain seizes him by the collar; drags him to and leads him to the middle of the group, Hector falling back beside his wife to make way for them. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [turning him towards Ellie] Is that your daughter? [He releases him]. his feet;

Heartbreak House

542

THE BURGLAR. the sort of

how do I know, Captain? You know me has led. Any young lady of

Well, life

you and

that age might be

my

daughter anywhere

wide

in the

world, as you might say.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER

[to

Mazzini]

You

are not Billy

Dunn.

Why

have you imposed on me? THE BURGLAR [indignantly to Mazzini] Have you been giving yourself out to be me? You, that nigh blew my head off! Shooting yourself, in a manner of speaking! This

is

MAZZiNL

Billy

My

this

house

you

that

I

Dunn.

dear Captain Shotover, ever since I

have done hardly anything

am

not

Mr

I

else

came

into

but assure

William Dunn, but Mazzini Dunn,

a very different person.

THE BURGLAR. He dont belong Theres two

to

my

the drinking Dunns, each going their

drinking

branch, Captain.

sets in the family: the thinking

Dunn:

he's a thinking

own

Dunn. But

Dunns and ways. I'm a

that didnt give

him any right to shoot me. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. So youvc tumcd burglar, have you? THE BURGLAR. No, Captain: I wouldnt disgrace our old sea calling by such a thing. I am no burglar. LADY UTTERWORD. What wcrc you doing with my diamonds? GUINNESS.

What

did you break into the house for

if

youre

no burglar? RANDALL. Mistook the house for your own and came in by the wrong window, eh? THE BURGLAR. Well, it's no use my telling you a lie: I can take in most captains, but not Captain Shotover, because he sold himself to the devil in Zanzibar, and can divine water, spot gold, explode a cartridge in your pocket with a glance of his eye, and see the truth hidden in the heart of man. But I'm no burglar. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Are you an honest man? THE BURGLAR. I dont Set up to be better than my fellowcreatures, and never did, as you well know, Captain. But what I do is innocent and pious. I enquire about for houses where the right sort of people live. I work it on them same as I worked it here. I break into the house;

Heartbreak House

543

put a few spoons or diamonds in my pocket; make a noise; get caught; and take up a collection. And you it is to get caught when youre knocked over all the chairs in a room without a soul paying any attention to me. In the end I have had to walk out and leave the job. RANDALL. When that happens, do you put back the spoons and diamonds? THE BURGLAR. Well, I dont fly in the face of Providence, if thats what you want to know. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Guinncss: you remember this man? GUINNESS. I should think I do, seeing I was married to him,

wouldnt believe how hard

actually trying to. I have

the blackguard!

exclaiming | Married to him! HESiONE I (Guinness!! LADY UTTERWORD) together THE BURGLAR. It wasut legal. Ive been married to no end of women. No use coming that over me. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Take him to the forecastle [he flings him to the door with a strength beyond his years\ GUINNESS. I suppose you mean the kitchen. They wont have him there. Do you expect servants to keep company with thieves and all sorts? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Land-thicvcs and water-thieves are the same flesh and blood. I'll have no boatswain on my quarter-deck. Off with you both. THE BURGLAR. Ycs, Captain. [He goes out humbly]. MAZziNi. Will it be safe to have him in the house like that? GUINNESS. Why didnt you shoot him, sir? If I'd known who he was, I'd have shot him myself. {She goes out]. MRS HUSHABYE. Do sit down, everybody. [She sits down on the sofd\.

move except Ellie. Mazzini resumes his seat. Randall sits down in the window seat near the starboard They

all

door, again making a ing

it

pendulum of

his poker,

as Galileo might have done. Hector

sits

and studyon his left,

in the middle. Mangan, forgotten, sits in the port corner. Lady Utterword takes the big chair. Captain Shotover goes mto the pantry in deep abstraction. They all look after him; and Lady Utterword coughs unconsciously.

Heartbreak House

544

MRS HUSHABYE. So Billy Duiui was poor nurse's mance. I knew there had been somebody.

little

ro-

RANDALL. They will fight their battles over again and enjoy themselves immensely. LADY UTTERWORD [irritably] You are not married; and you know nothing about it, Randall. Hold your tongue. RANDALL. Tyrant! MRS HUSHABYE. Well, we have had a very exciting evening. Everything will be an anticlimax after it. We'd better all go to bed. RANDALL. Another burglar may turn up. MAZZiNL Oh, impossible! I hope not. RANDALL. Why not? There is more than one burglar in England.

MRS HUSHABYE. What do you say, Alf? MANGAN [huffily] Oh, I dont matter. I'm

my

nose out of corner and have done with me. burglar has put

joint.

forgotten.

Shove

me

The

into a

MRS HUSHABYE [jumping up mischievously, and going to him] Would you like a walk on the heath, Alfred? With me? ELLiE. Go,

Mr

Mangan.

It will

do you good. Hesione

will

soothe you.

MRS HUSHABYE [slipping her arm under his and pulling him upright] Come, Alfred. There is a moon: it's like the night in Tristan and Isolde. [She caresses his arm and draws him

MANGAN

to the port

garden door].

face-the heart

—

How

you can have the [he breaks down and is heard sobbing

[writhing but yielding]

as she takes him out.] LADY UTTERWORD. What an extraordinary way to behave!

What

is

the matter with the

man?

a strangely calm voice, staring into an imaginary distance] His heart is breaking: that is all. [The Captain

ELLIE

[in

appears at the pantry door,

a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats listening]. It

are burned: nothing matters any more.

happiness and the beginning of peace.

is

It is

the end of

Heartbreak House

545

LADY UTTERWORD [suddenly rising in a rage, to the astonish^ ment of the rest\ How dare you? HECTOR. Good heavens! Whats the matter? RANDALL [in u Warning whisper^ Teh tch tch! Steady, ELLiE [surprised and haughty] I was not addressing you particularly. Lady Utterword. And I am not accustomed

— —

to be asked

how

dare

I.

LADY UTTERWORD. Of coursc not. Anyone can see how badly you have been brought up. MAZZiNL Oh, I hope not, Lady Utterword. Really! LADY UTTERWORD. I know vcry well what you meant. The impudence!

What on

earth do you mean? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [advancing to the table] She means that her heart will not break. She has been longing all her life for someone to break it. At last she has become afraid she has none to break". LADY UTTERWORD [flinging herself on her knees and throwing her arms round him] Papa: dont say you think Ive ELLIE.

no

heart.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [raising her with grim tenderness] If you had no heart how could you want to have it broken, child?

HECTOR

[rising with

to be trusted.

a bound]

Lady Utterword: you

You have made

are not

a scene [he runs out into

the garden through the starboard door].

LADY UTTERWORD. Oh! Hcctor, Hcctor!

[she runs out after

him],

RANDALL. Only nerves, I assure you. [He rises and foU lows her, waving the poker in his agitation] Ariadne! Ariadne! For God's sake be careful. You will [he is

—

gone].

MAZziNi [rising] How distressing! Can I do anything, I wonder? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [promptly taking his chair and setting to

work at the drawing-board] No. Go to bed. Goodnight. MAZZINI [bewildered] Oh! Perhaps you are right.

Good night, dearest. [She kisses him], MAZZINI Good night, love. [He makes for the ELLIE.

door,,

but

Heartbreak House

546 turns aside to the bookshelves].

I'll

just take

a book [he

takes one]. Goodnight. [He goes out, leaving Ellie alone

with the Captain].

The Captain

is

intent

on

his drawing. Ellie, standing

sentry over his chair, contemplates

ELLIE.

Does nothing ever

him for a moment.

disturb you, Captain Shotover?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ive stood on the bridge for eighteen hours in a typhoon. Life here is stormier; but I can stand it.

Do you think I ought to marry Mr Mangan? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [never looking up] One rock is as good as another to be wrecked on.

ELLIE.

ELLIE.

I

am

not in love with him.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. ELLIE.

You

Who

Said

you were?

are not surprised?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Surprised! At m y age! It seems to me quite fair. He wants thing: I want him for another. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Mouey?

ELLIE.

me

for one

ELLIE. Yes.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Well, one turns the cheek; the other kisses

it.

One

provides the cash: the other spends

it.

Who will have the best of the bargain, I wonder? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You. Thcsc fcllows livc in an office all day. You will have to put up with him from dinner to breakfast; but you will both be asleep most of that time. All day you will be quit of him; and you will be shopping with his money. If that is too much for you, marry a seafaring man: you will be bothered with him only three weeks in the year, perhaps. ELLIE. That would be best of all, I suppose. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's a daugcrous thing to be married right up to the hilt, like my daughter's husband. The

ELLIE.

*

man ELLIE.

is

I

at

home

all

day, like a

damned

soul in hell.

never thought of that before.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. If yourc marrying for business, you cant be too businesslike. ELLIE. Why do women always want other women's husbands?

Heartbreak House

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. that

is

547

Why

ELLiE [with a short laugh] it

I

is

wild?

suppose

so.

What

a vile world

is!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. of

do hoFse-thievcs prefer a horse

broken-in to one that

It

doesnt concern me. I'm nearly out

it.

ELLIE.

And

I'm only just begmmng.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Ycs; SO look ahead. ELLIE. Well,

I

think

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. ELLIE.

Whats

I I

am

being very prudent.

didnt say prudent.

I

said look ahead,

the difference?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It's prudcnt to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. But dont forget that your soul sticks to you if you stick to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your fingers. ELLIE [wearily, leaving him and beginning to wander restlessly about the room] I'm sorry, Captain Shotover; but it's no use talking like that to me. Old-fashioned people are no use to me. Old-fashioned people think you can have a soul without money. They think the less money

you have, the more soul you have. Young people now-

know better. A soul is a very expensive thing to keep: much more so than a motor car. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Is It? How much docs your soul adays

eat?

music and pictures and books and mountains and lakes and beautiful things to wear and nice people to be with. In this country you cant have them without lots of money: that is why our souls are

ELLIE. Oh, a

lot. It eats

so horribly starved.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Mangan's soul lives on pigs' food. ELLIE. Yes: money is thrown away on him. I suppose his soul was starved when he was young. But it will not be thrown away on me. It is just because I want to save my soul that I am marrying for money. All the women who are not fools do.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There are other ways of getting money. Why dont you steal it? ELLIE. Because I dont want to go to prison.

Heartbreak House

548

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER.

Is that the

only reason? Are you quite

sure honesty has nothing to do with

it?

Does ways of getting money are the honest and dishonest ways? Mangan robbed my father and my father's friends. I should rob all the money back from Mangan if the police would let me. As they wont, I must get it back by marrying him. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I cant arguc: I'm too old: my mind is made up and finished. All I can tell you is that, oldfashioned or new-fashioned, if you sell yourself, you deal your soul a blow that all the books and pictures and concerts and scenery in the world wont heal [he gets up sud" denly and makes for the pantry]. ELLIE [running after him and seizing him by the sleeve] Then why did you sell yourself to the devil in Zanzibar? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [stopping, Startled] What? ELLIE. You shall not run away before you answer. I have found out that trick of yours. If you sold yourself, why ELLiE. Oh, you are very very old-fashioned, Captain.

any modern

girl

believe that the legal and illegal

shouldnt I?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I had to deal with men so degraded that they wouldnt obey me unless I swore at them and kicked them and beat them with my fists. Foolish people took young thieves off the streets; flung them into a training ship where they were taught to fear the cane instead of fearing God; and thought theyd make men and sailors of them by private subscription. I tricked these thieves into believing I'd sold myself to the devil. It saved

soul

me

from

the kicking

my

and swearing that was damning

by inches.

ELLIE [releasing him]

I shall

pretend to

sell

myself to Boss

to save my soul from the poverty that is damnby inches. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Richcs will damn you ten times deeper. Riches wont save even your body.

Mangan

ing

me

ELLIE. Old-fashioned again.

We know now

that the soul

body the soul. They tell us they are different because they want to persuade us that we can keep our souls if we let them make slaves of our bodies. I am afraid you are no use to me, Captain. is

the body, and the

Heartbreak House

549

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What did you expect? A Savior, eh? Are you old-fashioned enough to believe in that? ELLiE. No. But I thought you were very wise, and might help me. Now I have found you out. You pretend to be busy, and think of fine things to say, and run in and out to surprise people by saying them, and get away before they can answer you. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It confuscs me to be answered. It discourages me. I cannot bear men and women. I h a v e to run away. I must run away now [he tries to], ELLIE [again seizing his arm] You shall not run away from me. I can hypnotize you. You are the only person in the house I can say what I like to. I know you are fond of me. Sit down. [She draws him to the sofa]. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [yielding] Take care: I am in my dot^ age. Old men are dangerous: it doesnt matter to them what is going to happen to the world. They sit side by side on the sofa. She leans affection-ately against him with her head on his shoulder and her eyes half closed.

ELLIE [dreamily]

I

should have thought nothing else mat-

tered to old men.

They cant be very

interested in

what

is going to happen to themselves. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. A mau's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full; so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again. I can give you the memories of my ancient wisdom: mere scraps and leavings; but I no longer really care for anything but my own little wants and hobbies. I sit here working out my

old ideas as a see

my

means of destroying

daughters and their

men

my

fellow-creatures. I

living foolish lives of

romance and sentiment and snobbery. I see you, the younger generation, turning from their romance and sentiment and snobbery to money and comfort and hard common sense. I was ten times happier on the bridge in the typhoon, or frozen into Arctic ice for months in

Heartbreak House

550

darkness, than you or they have ever been.

looking for a rich husband. At your age

I

hardship, danger, horror, and death, that

I

the

life in

me more my life; and my reward

You

intensely. I did not let the fear of

had my You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your and your reward will be that you will eat, but you death govern

not

are

looked for might feel

was,

I

life.

life;

will

live.

up impatiently] But what can I do? I am not a sea captain: I cant stand on bridges in typhoons, or go slaughtering seals and whales in Greenland's icy mountains. They wont let women be captains. Do you want me

ELLIE

[sitting

to be a stewardess?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There are worse could

and

come ashore

if

lives.

The stewardesses

they liked; but they

sail

and

sail

sail.

What could they do ashore but marry for money? I dont want to be a stewardess: I am too bad a sailor. Think of something else for me.

ELLIE.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I cant think so long and continuously. I am too old. I must go in and out. [He tries to rise], ELLIE [pulling him back] You shall not. You are happy here, arnt you? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I tell you It's dangcrous to keep me. I cant keep awake and alert. ELLIE. What do you run away for? To sleep? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. To get a glass of rum. ELLIE [frightfully disillusioned] Is that it? How disgusting! Do you like being drunk? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No: I dread being drunk more than anything in the world. To be drunk means to have dreams; go soft; to be easily pleased and deceived; to fall into the clutches of women. Drink does that for you when you are young. But when you are old: very very old, like me, the dreams come by themselves. You dont know how terrible that is: you are young: you sleep at night only, and sleep soundly. But later on you will sleep in the afternoon. Later still you will sleep even in the morning; and you will awake tired, tired of life. You will never be free from dozing and dreams: the

Heartbreak House

551

dreams will steal upon your work every ten minutes unless you can awaken yourself with rum. I drink now to keep sober; but the dreams are conquering: rum is not what it was: I have had ten glasses since you came; and it might be so much water. Go get me another: Guinness knows where it is. You had better see for yourself the horror of an old man drinking, ELLiE. You shall not drink. Dream. I like you to dream. You must never be in the real world when we talk together.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I am too wcary to resist or too weak. I am in my second childhood. I do not see you as you really are. I cant remember what I really am. I feel nothing but the accursed happiness I have dreaded all

my

comes as life goes, the happiness of yielding and dreaming instead of resisting and doing, the sweetness of the fruit that is going life

long: the happiness that

rotten.

ELLIE.

You

dread

it

almost as

my

much

dread and do things. But

as I used to

dreams and having to fight m y dreams are dashed to pieces. I should like to marry a very old, very rich man. I should like to marry you. I had much rather marry you than marry Mangan. Are you very rich? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. Living from hand to mouth. And I have a wife somewhere in Jamaica: a black one. My losing

that

first

is all

over for me:

wife. Unless she's dead.

What

happy with you. [She takes his hand, almost unconsciously, and pats it], I thought I should never feel happy again. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Why? ELLIE. Dont you know? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. No. ELLIE. Heartbreak. I fell in love with Hector, and didnt know he was married. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Heartbreak? Are you one of those who are so sufficient to themselves that they are only happy when they are stripped of everything, even of hope? ELLIE [gripping the hand] It seems so; for I feel now as if there was nothing I could not do, because I want nothing. ELLIE.

a pity!

I feel

so

552

Heartbreak House

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Thats the only genius. Thats better than rum. ELLIE [throwing away his hand] Hector and Randall come

strength.

real

Rum! Why in

from

Thats

did you spoil

it?

the garden through

the starboard door.

HECTOR. I beg your pardon. We did not know there was anyone here. ELLIE [rising] That means that you want to tell Mr Randall the story about the tiger. Come, Captain: I want to talk to my father; and you had better come with me. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [rising] Nonsense! the man is in bed. ELLIE, Aha! Ive caught you. My real father has gone to bed; but the father you gave me is in the kitchen. You knew quite well all along. Come. [She draws him out into the garden with her through the port door].

HECTOR. Thats an extraordinary girl. She has the Ancient Mariner on a string like a Pekinese dog. RANDALL, Now that they have gone, shall we have a friendly chat?

HECTOR.

You

are in what

is

supposed to be

my

house.

I

am

at your disposal. Hector sits down in the draughtsman's

it

to face Randall,

who remains

chair, turning

standing, leaning at his

ease against the carpenter's bench. I take it that we may be quite frank. I mean about Lady Utterword. HECTOR. You may. I have nothing to be frank about. I

RANDALL,

never met her until

RANDALL

this afternoon.

[straightening up]

What! But you are her

sister's

husband.

HECTOR. Well,

if

you come

to that,

you are her husband's

brother.

RANDALL. But you Seem to be on intimate terms with her. HECTOR. So do you. RANDALL, Ycs; but I a m on intimate terms with her. I have known her for years. HECTOR. It took her years to get to the same point with you that she got to with

me

in five minutes,

RANDALL [vexed] Really, Ariadne is the away huffishly towards the windows].

it

seems.

limit [he

moves

—— Heartbreak House

HECTOR

[coolly]

enterprising

553

She

is,

as I

remarked to Hesione, a very

woman. much

troubled] You see, Hushabye, RANDALL you are what women consider a good-looking man. [returning,

appearance in the days of my vanity; and Hesione insists on my keeping it up. She

HECTOR.

I cultivated that

makes me wear these ridiculous things [indicating his Arab costume] because she thinks me absurd in evening dress,

RANDALL. Still, you do keep it up, old chap. Now, I assure you I have not an atom of jealousy in my disposition HECTOR. The question would seem to be rather whether your brother has any touch of that sort. RANDALL. What! Hastings! Oh, dont trouble about Hastings. He has the gift of being able to work sixteen hours a day at the dullest detail, and actually likes it. That gets him to the top wherever he goes. As long as Ariadne takes care that he is fed regularly, he is only too thankful to anyone who will keep her in good humor for him.

HECTOR. is

And

as she has all the Shotover fascination, there

plenty of competition for the job, eh?

RANDALL

She encourages them. Her conduct is perfectly scandalous. I assure you, my dear fellow, I havnt an atom of jealousy in my composition; but she makes herself the talk of every place she goes to by her thoughtlessness. It's nothing more: she doesnt really care for the men she keeps hanging about her; but how is the world to know that? It's not fair to Hastings. It's not fair to me, HECTOR. Her theory is that her conduct is so correct RANDALL. Corrcct! She does nothing but make scenes from morning til night. You be careful, old chap. She will get you into trouble: that is, she would if she really cared [angrily]

for you.

HECTOR. Doesnt she? RANDALL. Not a scrap. She may want your scalp to add to her collection; but her true affection has been engaged years ago. You had really better be careful. HECTOR. Do you suffer much from this jealousy?

—

— Heartbreak House

554

RANDALL. Jcalousy! I jealous! My dear fellow, havnt I told you that there is not an atom of HECTOR. Yes. And Lady Utterword told me she never made scenes. Well, dont waste your jealousy on my moustache. Never waste jealousy on a real man: it is the imaginary hero that supplants us all in the long run. Besides, jealousy does not belong to your easy man-ofthe world pose, which you carry so well in other respects. RANDALL. Really, Hushabye, I think a man may be allowed to be a gentleman without being accused of posing. HECTOR. It is a pose like any other. In this house we know all the poses: our game is to find out the man under the pose. The man under your pose is apparently Ellie's favorite, Othello.

RANDALL. Some of your games annoying,

let

me

tell

in this

house are damned

you.

have been their victim for many years. I under them at first; but I became accustomed to them. At last I learned to play them. RANDALL. If it's all the same to you, I had rather you didnt

HECTOR. Yes:

I

used to writhe

play them on me.

You

evidently dont quite understand

my character, or my notions of good form. HECTOR. Is it your notion of good form to give away Lady Utterword? RANDALL I

chUdishly plaintive note breaking into his huff] have not said a word against Lady Utterword, This is [a

just the conspiracy

over again.

HECTOR. What conspiracy? RANDALL. You know Very well, sir. A conspiracy to make me out to be pettish and jealous and childish and everything I am not. Everyone knows I am just the opposite. HECTOR [rising] Something in the air of the house has upset you. It often does have that effect. [He goes to the garden door and calls Lady Utterword with commanding emphasis] Ariadne!

LADY UTTERWORD [at some distance] Yes. RANDALL. What are you calling her for? I want to speak LADY UTTERWORD [arriving breathless] Yes. You really are a terribly commanding person. Whats the matter?

— Heartbreak House

555

HECTOR. I do not know how to manage your friend Randall. No doubt you do. LADY UTTERWORD. Randall: have you been making yourself ridiculous, as usual? I can see it in your face. Really, you are the most pettish creature. RANDALL. You kuow quitc well, Ariadne, that I have not an ounce of pettishness in my disposition. I have made myself perfectly pleasant here. I have remained absolutely cool and imperturbable in the face of a burglar. Imperturbability is almost too strong a point of mine. But [putting his foot down with a stamp, and walking angrily up and down the room] I insist on being treated with a certain consideration. I will not allow liberties

with me.

I will

Hushabye

to take

not stand your encouraging peo-

ple as you do. HECTOR. The man has a rooted delusion that he is your husband. LADY UTTERWORD. I know. He is jealous. As if he had any right to be! He compromises me everywhere. He makes

scenes

all

over the place. Randall:

simply will not allow

it.

I will

You had no

not allow

right to discuss

it.

I

me

with Hector. I will not be discussed by men. HECTOR. Be reasonable, Ariadne. Your fatal gift of beauty forces

men

to discuss you.

LADY UTTERWORD.

Oh

indeed! what about

your

fatal gift

of beauty?

HECTOR. How can I help it? LADY UTTERWORD. You could cut off your moustache: I cant cut off my nose. I get my whole life messed up with people falling in love with me. And then Randall says I run after men. RANDALL. I LADY UTTERWORD. Yes you do: you said it just now. Why cant you think of something else than women? Napoleon was quite right when he said that women are the occupation of the idle man. Well, if ever there was an idle man on earth, his name is Randall Utterword. RANDALL. Adad LADY UTTERWORD [overwhelming him with a torrent of

— —

—

Heartbreak House

556

words] O h yes you are: it's no use denying it. What have you ever done? What good are you? You are as much trouble in the house as a child of three. You couldnt live without your valet. RANDALL. This is

LADY UTTERWORD. Lazincss! You

You are selfishness itself. You man on earth. You cant even

are laziness incarnate.

are the most uninteresting gossip about anything but

yourself and your grievances and your ailments and the

who have offended you. [Turning you know what they call him, Hector?

people

to Hector]

HECTOR. speaking I Please dont tell me. I RANDALL. ) together ( I'll not stand it LADY UTTERWORD. Randall the Rotter: that is good society.

RANDALL

[shouting]

I'll

not bear

ten to me, you infernal

—

it,

I tell

his

Do

name

you. Will you

in

lis-

[he chokes].

LADY UTTERWORD. Well: go on. What were you going to cal me? An infernal what? Which unpleasant animal is it to be this time?

RANDALL [foaming] There

is

no animal

in the

world so hate-

woman can be. You are a maddening devil. Hushabye: you will not believe me when I tell you that I have loved this demon all my life; but God knows I have paid for it [he sits down in the draughtsman's chair, ful as a

weeping].

LADY UTTERWORD [standing over him with triumphant contempt] Cry-baby

I

coming to him] My friend: the Shotover have two strange powers over men. They can make them love; and they can make them cry. Thank your stars that you are not married to one of them, LADY UTTERWORD [haughtily] And pray, Hector HECTOR [suddenly catching her round the shoulders; swinging her right round him and away from Randall; and gripping her throat with the other hand] Ariadne: if you attempt to start on me, I'll choke you: do you hear? The cat-and-mouse game with the other sex is a good game; but I can play your head off at it. [He throws her, not

HECTOR

[gravely,

sisters

at all gently, into the big chair,

and proceeds,

less fiercely

Heartbreak House

557

Napoleon said that woman is the occupation of the idle man. But he added that she

but firmly^

is

It is

true that

am

the warrior.

the least put out,

and rather

the relaxation of the warrior. Well, /

So take care. LADY UTTERWORD [not

in

My dear Hector: I have only done what you asked me to do. HECTOR. How do you make that out, pray? LADY UTTERWORD. You Called me in to manage Randall, didnt you? You said you couldnt manage him yourpleased by his violence']

self.

HECTOR. Well, what if I did? I did not ask you to drive the man mad. LADY UTTERWORD. He isnt mad. Thats the way to manage him. If you were a mother, youd understand. HECTOR. Mother! What are you up to now? LADY UTTERWORD. It's quite simple. When the children got nerves and were naughty, I smacked them just enough to give them a good cry and a healthy nervous shock. They went to sleep and were quite good afterwards. Well, I cant smack Randall: he is too big; so when he gets nerves and is naughty, I just rag him til he cries. He will be all right now. Look: he is half asleep already [which

is

quite true].

RANDALL [waking up

indignantly] I'm not.

Ariadne. [Sentimentally] But

cruel,

I

You

are

suppose

I

most must

forgive you, as usual [he checks himself in the act of

yawning].

LADY UTTERWORD

[to

Hcctor]

tory, dread warrior? HECTOR. Some day I shall thought you were a fool.

Is the

kill

you,

explanation satisfac-

if

you go too

LADY UTTERWORD [laughing] Everybody does, I

am

not such a fool as

Now,

I

far. I

at first.

But

look. [She rises complacently].

Randall: go to bed.

You

will

be a good boy in

the morning.

RANDALL

[only Very faintly rebellious]

like. It isnt

I'll

go to bed when

I

ten yet.

LADY UTTERWORD. It is long past ten. See that he goes to bed at once, Hector. [She goes into the garden].

— Heartbreak House

558

HECTOR. of

Is

men

RANDALL

on earth

there any slavery

to

viler

than

this slavery

women?

[rising resolutely]

I'll

not speak to her for another

week. I'll give her s u c h a lesson. I'll go straight to bed without bidding her goodnight. [He makes for the door leading to the

hall].

HECTOR. You are under a

man. Old Shotover sold himself to the devil in Zanzibar. The devil gave him a black witch for a wife; and these two demon daughters spell,

are their mystical progeny. string; but

mad

I

am

I'm her husband; and

about her,

at least

tied to Hesione's if

apron-

I did go stark staring

we became man and

wife.

But

why should you

let yourself be dragged about and beaten by Ariadne as a toy donkey is dragged about and beaten by a child? What do you get by it? Are you her lover? RANDALL. You must not misunderstand me. In a higher

sense

—

in a Platonic sense

HECTOR. Psha! Platonic sense! She makes you her servant; and when pay-day comes round, she bilks you: that is what you mean. RANDALL [feebly] Well, if I dont mind, I dont see what business it is of yours. Besides, I tell you I am going to punish her.

You

shall

see:

/

know how

to deal with

women. I'm really very sleepy. Say goodnight to Mrs Hushabye for me, will you, like a good chap. Goodnight. [He hurries out]. HECTOR. Poor wretch! lifts

his fists in invocation to heaven] Fall. Fall

[He goes out

ACT

Oh women! women! women! [He and crush.

into the garden].

III

In the garden, Hector, as he comes out through the glass

door of the poop, finds Lady Utterword lying voluptuously in the hammock on the east side of the flagstaff, in the circle of light cast by the electric arc, which is like a moon in its opal globe. Beneath the head of the hammock, a campstool. On the other side of the flagstaff, on the long garden seat,

Heartbreak House

559

Captain Shotover

asleep with EUie beside him, leaning

is

affectionately against

him on

his right hand.

On

a deck chair. Behind them in the gloom, Hesione

about with Mangan.

It is

a fine

still

LADY UTTERWORD. What a lovcly

his left is

is

strolling

night, moonless.

night! It

seems made for

us.

HECTOR. The night takes no interest in us. What are we to the night? [He sits down moodily in the deck chair]. ELLIE [dreamily, nestling against the Captain] Its beauty soaks into my nerves. In the night there is peace for the old and hope for the young. HECTOR. Is that remark your own? ELLIE. No. Only the last thing the Captain said before he went to sleep. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I'm uot asleep. HECTOR. Randall is. Also Mr Mazzini Dunn. Mangan too, probably.

MANGAN. No. HECTOR. Oh, you are there. I thought Hesione would have sent you to bed by this time. MRS HUSHABYE. [coming to the back of the garden seat, into the light, with

me

Mangan]

I

think

I shall.

he has a presentiment that he

met a man so greedy

MANGAN

is

He

keeps telling

going to

die. I

never

for sympathy.

But I have a presentiment. I really And you wouldnt listen. MRS HUSHABYE. I was listening for something else. There was a sort of splendid drumming in the sky. Did none of you hear it? It came from a distance and then died away. [plaintively]

have.

MANGAN.

I tell

you

it

was a

train.

MRS HUSHABYE. And / tell you, Alf, there is no train at this hour. The last is nine forty-five. MANGAN. But a goods train. MRS HUSHABYE. Not ou our little line. They tack a truck on to the passenger train. What can it have been, Hector? HECTOR. Heaven's threatening growl of disgust at us useless futile creatures. [Fiercely] I tell you, one of two things must happen. Either out of that darkness some new

Heartbreak House

560 creation will

come

to supplant us as

the animals, or the heavens will

we have supplanted

fall

in thunder

and

destroy us.

LADY UTTERWORD

[in

G cool instructive manner, wallowing

We have not supplanted do you ask heaven to destroy

comfortably in her hammock] the animals, Hector.

Why

which could be made quite comfortable if Hesione had any notion of how to live? Dont you know what is wrong with it? HECTOR. We are wrong with it. There is no sense in us. We are useless, dangerous, and ought to be abolished. LADY UTTERWORD. Nonsensc! Hastings told me the very first day he came here, nearly twenty-four years ago, what is this house,

wrong with the house. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What! The numskull said there was something wrong with my house! LADY UTTERWORD. I Said Hastings said it; and he is not in the least a numskull.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Whats wrong with my house? LADY UTTERWORD. Just what is wrong with a ship, papa.

Wasnt

it

clever of Hastings to see that?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The man's a

fool.

Theres nothing wrong

with a ship.

LADY UTTERWORD. Ycs there is. MRS HUSHABYE. But what is it? Dont be aggravating, Addy. LADY UTTERWORD. GuCSS. HECTOR. Demons. Daughters of the witch of Zanzibar. Demons. LADY UTTERWORD. Not a bit. I assurc you, all this house needs to

make

it

a sensible, healthy, pleasant house, with

good appetites and sound sleep in it, is horses. MRS HUSHABYE. Horscs! What rubbish! LADY UTTERWORD. Ycs: horscs. Why have we never been able to let this house? Because there are no proper stables. Go anywhere in England where there are natural, wholesome, contented, and really nice English people; and what do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the household; and that if any visitor wants to play the piano the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened, there are so many things piled on it. I

Heartbreak House

561 learned to ride; and

I shall

never ride

really well because I didnt begin as a child.

There are

never lived until

I

only two classes in good society in England: the equestrian classes

and the neurotic

classes. It isnt

vention: everybody can see that the people the right people and the people

who dont

mere con-

who hunt are the

are

wrong

ones.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. There is some truth in this. My ship made a man of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea. LADY UTTERWORD. Exactly how Hastings explained your being a gentleman.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Not bad for a numskull. Bring the man here with you next time: I must talk to him. LADY UTTERWORD. Why is Randall such an obvious rotter? He is well bred; he has been at a public school and a university; he has been in the Foreign Office; he knows the best people and has lived all his life among them. Why is he so unsatisfactory, so contemptible? Why cant he get a valet to stay with him longer than a few months? Just because he is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and reads literary books and poems. He actually plays the flute; but

my

I

never

—

let

him bring

it

into

house. If he would only [she is interrupted by the melancholy strains of a flute coming from an open wmdow above. She raises herself indignantly in the ham" mock]. Randall: you have not gone to bed. Have you been listening? [The flute replies pertly:]

r£

How

^ vulgar!

1^

Go

fC V to

bed

t &

instantly, Randall:

^ how

\

dare

you? [The window is slammed down. She subsides]. How can anyone care for such a creature! MRS HusHABYE. Addy: do you think Ellie ought to marry poor Alfred merely for his money? MANGAN [much alarmed] Whats that? Mrs Hushabye: are my affairs to be discussed like this before everybody?

Heartbreak House

562

LADY UTTERWORD. I dont think Randall is listening now. MANGAN. Everybody is listening. It isnt right. MRS HUSHABYE. But in the dark, what does it matter? EUie doesnt mind. ELLIE.

Not

Do

you, EUie?

What is your opinion, Lady much good sense.

in the least.

Utter-

word? You have so MANGAN. But it isnt right. It [Mrs Hushabye puts her hand on his mouth]. Oh, very well. LADY UTTERWORD. How much money have you, Mr Mangan? MANGAN. Really No: I cant stand this. LADY UTTERWORD. Nonscnsc, Mr Mangan! It all turns on

—

—

your income, doesnt

MANGAN. Well,

if

it?

you come

to that,

how much money

has

she? ELLIE. None.

LADY UTTERWORD. You are answered, Mr Mangan. And now, as you have made Miss Dunn throw her cards on the table, you cannot refuse to shew your own. MRS HUSHABYE. Come, Alf! out with it! How much? MANGAN {baited out of all prudence'] Well, if you want to know, I have no money and never had any. MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred: you mustnt tell naughty stories. MANGAN. I'm not telling you stories. I'm telling you the raw truth.

LADY UTTERWORD. Then what do you live on, Mr Mangan? MANGAN. Travelling expenses. And a trifle of commission. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. What morc have any of us but travelour life's journey? HUSHABYE. But you havc factories and capital and

ling expenses for

MRS

things?

MANGAN. People think

I

have. People think I'm an industrial

Napoleon. Thats why Miss I tell you I have nothing. ELLIE.

Do you mean

tigers?

wants to marry me. But

that the factories are like Marcus's

That they dont

MANGAN. They They belong

Ellie

exist?

enough. But theyre not mine. and shareholders and all sorts of lazy good-for-nothing capitalists. I get money from such people to start the factories. I find people like Miss exist all right

to syndicates

Heartbreak House

563

Dunn's father to work them, and keep a tight hand so as to make them pay. Of course I make them keep me going pretty well; but it's a dog's life; and I dont own anything. MRS HUSHABYE. Alfred, Alfred: you are making a poor mouth of it to get out of marrying Ellie.

MANGAN. I'm time in

my

about

telling the truth life;

and

it's

the

first

my money for the first my word has ever

time

been doubted.

How sad! Why dont you go Mr Mangan? MANGAN. Go in for politics! Where have you been LADY UTTERWORD.

for

in

politics,

I

a

m

living?

in politics.

LADY UTTERWORD. I'm surc heard of you. MANGAN. Let me

tell

I

beg your pardon.

I

never

you, Lady Utterword, that the Prime

me

Government without even going through the nonsense of an elecMinister of this country asked

tion, as the dictator of

to join the

a great public department.

LADY UTTERWORD. As a Conservative or a Liberal? MANGAN. No such nonscnsc. As a practical business man. [They all burst out laughing]. What are you all laughing at?

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, Alfred, Alfred! ELLIE. You! who have to get my father

to

do everything for

you!

MRS HUSHABYE. You! who are afraid of your own workmen! HECTOR. You! with whom three women have been playing cat and mouse all the evening! LADY UTTERWORD. You must have given an immense sum to the party funds,

Mr

Mangan.

MANGAN. Not a penny out of my own pocket. The syndicate found the money: they knew how useful I should be to them in the Government. LADY UTTERWORD. Thls is most interesting and unexpected, Mr Mangan. And what have your administrative achievements been, so far? MANGAN. Achievements? Well,

I

dont

know what you

call

achievements; but Ive jolly well put a stop to the games of the other fellows in the other departments. Every of them thought he was going to save the country

man

all

by

Heartbreak House

564

and do me out of the credit and out of my chance of a title. I took good care that if they wouldnt let me do it they shouldnt do it themselves either. I may not know anything about my own machinery; but I know himself,

how

to stick a

they

all

HECTOR.

MANGAN.

ramrod

into the other fellow's.

And now

look the biggest fools going.

And I

in heaven's

name, what do y o u look

like?

look like the fellow that was too clever for

all

the others, dont I? If that isnt a triumph of practical busi-

what is? HECTOR. Is this England, or is it a madhouse? LADY UTTERWORD. Do you cxpcct to save the country, ness,

Mangan? MANGAN. Well, who

clsc will? Will

your

Mr

Mr

Randall save

it?

LADY UTTERWORD. Randall the Rotter! Certainly not. MANGAN. Will your brother-in-law save it with his moustache and his fine talk. HECTOR. Yes, if they will let me. MANGAN [sneering] Ah! i 1 1 they let you? HECTOR. No. They prefer you. MANGAN. Very well then, as youre in a world where I'm appreciated and youre not, youd best be civil to me, hadnt you? Who else is there but me? LADY UTTERWORD. There is Hastings. Get rid of your ridiculous sham democracy; and give Hastings the necessary powers, and a good supply of bamboo to bring the British native to his senses: h e will save the country with

W

the greatest ease.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It had better be lost. Any fool can govern with a stick in his hand. / could govern that way. It is not God's way. The man is a numskull. LADY UTTERWORD. The man is worth all of you rolled into one. What do y o u say. Miss Dunn? ELLIE. I think my father would do very well if people did not put upon him and cheat him and despise him because he is so good. MANGAN [contemptuously] I think I see Mazzini Dunn getting into

parliament or pushing his

way

into

the

— Heartbreak House

565

Government. Weve not come to that yet, thank God! What do you say, Mrs Hushabye? MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, / say it matters very Httle which of you governs the country so long as we govern you. HECTOR. We? Who is we, pray? MRS HUSHABYE. The dcvil's granddaughters, dear. The lovely

HECTOR

women.

[raising his

hands as before]

Fall, I say;

and deliver

us from the lures of Satan! ELLiE. There seems to be nothing real in the world except

my

father and Shakespear. Marcus's tigers are false;

Mr

Mangan's millions are false; there is nothing really strong and true about Hesione but her beautiful black hair; and Lady Utterword's is too pretty to be real. The one thing that was left to me was the Captain's seventh degree of concentration; and that turns out to be LADY UTTERWORD [placidly] A good deal of my hair is quite genuine. The Duchess of Dithering offered me fifty guineas for this [touching her forehead] under the im^ pression that it was a transformation; but it is all natural except the color.

MANGAN

Tm

[wildly] look here:

going to take off

all

my

clothes [he begins tearing off his coat],

LADY UTTERWORD. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. HECTOR,

[

j

in

I

J

consternation

|

I

ELLIE

Whats that? Ha! ha; Do, Do, Please dont,

J

MRS HUSHABYE

I

[catching his

arm and stopping him] Alfred;

for shame! Are you mad? MANGAN. Shame! What shame all

Mr Maugant

strip

stark naked.

is

there in this house? Let*s

We may

thoroughly when we're about morally naked: well, let us

it.

as well

Weve

strip

do the thing

stripped ourselves

ourselves physically

and see how we like it. I tell you I cant was brought up to be respectable. I dont mind the women dyeing their hair and the men drinking: it's

naked bear

as well,

this. I

human

nature. But

it's

not

human

nature to

tell

every-

body about it. Every time one of you opens your mouth go like this [he cowers as if to avoid a missile] afraid of

I

Heartbreak House

^gg

what

will

come

next.

How are we

to

have any self-respect

we dont keep it up that we're better than we really are? LADY UTTERWORD. I quitc sympathize with you, Mr. Manexperience gan. I have been through it all; and I know by if

are delicate plants and must be throwing cultivated under glass. Our family habit of is not only stones in all directions and letting the air in rude, but positively dangerous. Still, there is

that

men and women

unbearably

no use catching physical colds

as well as

moral ones; so

please keep your clothes on.

do as I like: not what you tell me. Am I a this mothering child or a grown man? I wont stand and tyranny. I'll go back to the city, where Vm respected

MANGAN.

I'll

made much of. MRS HUSHABYE. Goodbyc,

Alf.

Think of us sometimes

in

the city. Think of Ellie's youth! ELLiE. Think of Hesione's eyes and hair! are CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Think of this garden in which you not a dog barking to keep the truth out! sense! HECTOR. Think of Lady Utterword's beauty! her good

her

style!

whether LADY UTTERWORD. Flatterer. Think, Mr Mangan, that you can really do any better for yourself elsewhere: the essential point, isnt it? MANGAN [surrendering] All right: is

Have whether know alone. I dont it your own way. Only let me you all start on me like when Fm on my head or my heels this. I'll stay. I'll

marry

all right.

her. Fll

I'm done.

do anything

for a quiet

Are you satisfied now? you marry me, ELLIE. No. I never really intended to make Mr Mangan. Never in the depths of my soul. I only could not wanted to feel my strength: to know that you life.

escape

MANGAN

if I

chose to take you.

[indignantly]

me

Do you mean to say you are after my acting so handsome?

What!

over not be too hasty. Miss Dunn. should LADY UTTERWORD. I You can throw Mr Mangan over at any time up to the position go bankrupt. last moment. Very few men in his imYou can live very comfortably on his reputation for going to throw

mense wealth.

Heartbreak House

567

cannot commit bigamy, Lady Utterword. MRS HUSHABYE. Bigamy! Whatever ELLiE.

I

earth are

you

on

talking

about, Ellie?

LADY UTTERWORD.

What do you mean, Miss Dunn? Bigamy! Do you mean to

exclaifning \Big2imyl

MANGAN.

all

J

together

]

say youre married

al-

ready?

Bigamy!

HECTOR.

This

is

some

enigma. ELLIE. Only half an hour ago

I

became Captain Shotover's

white wife.

MRS HUSHABYE.

Ellic!

What

nonsense! Where?

ELLIE. In heaven, where

all true marriages are made. LADY UTTERWORD. Really, Miss Dunn! Really, papa! MANGAN. He told me / was too old! And him a mummy! HECTOR [quoting Shelley]

Their altar the grassy earth outspread. And their priest the muttering wind. ELLIE. Yes: I, Ellie Dunn, give my broken heart and strong sound soul to

its

natural captain,

my

my

spiritual hus-

band and second father. She draws the Captain's arm through hers, and pats his hand. The Captain remains fast asleep. MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, thats vcry clever of you, pettikins. Very clever. Alfred: you could never have lived up to Ellie. You must be content with a little share of me. MANGAN [sniffing and wiping his eyes] It isnt kind [his

—

emotion chokes him], LADY UTTERWORD. You are well out of it, Mr Mangan. Miss Dunn is the most conceited young woman I have met since I came back to England. MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, Ellie isnt conceited. Are you pettikins? ELLIE. I know my strength now, Hesione. MANGAN. Brazen, I call you. Brazen. MRS HUSHABYE. Tut tut, Alfred: dont be rude. Dont you feel how lovely this marriage night is, made in heaven? Arnt you happy, you and Hector? Open your eyes: Addy and Ellie look beautiful enough to please the most

Heartbreak House

568

man: we

and love and have not a care in have managed all that for you. Why in the name of common sense do you go on as if you were two miserable wretches? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. I tell you happlncss is no good. You can be happy when you are only half alive. I am happier now I am half dead than ever I was in my prime. But there is no blessing on my happiness. ELLIE [her face lighting up] Life with a blessing! that is what I want. Now I know the real reason why I couldnt marry Mr Mangan: there would be no blessing on our marriage. There is a blessing on my broken heart. There is a blessing on your beauty, Hesione. There is a blessing on your father's spirit. Even on the lies of Marcus there is a blessing; but on Mr Mangan's money there is none. MANGAN. I dont understand a word of that. ELLIE. Neither do I. But I know it means something. MANGAN. Dont say there was any difficulty about the blessing. I was ready to get a bishop to marry us. MRS HUSHABYE. Isnt he a fool, pettikins? HECTOR [fiercely] Do not scorn the man. We are all fools. Mazzini, in pyjamas and a richly colored silk dressinggown, comes from the house, on Lady Utterword's side. MRS HUSHABYE. Oh! here comes the only man who ever resisted me. Whats the matter, Mr Dunn? Is the house on fastidious

the world.

live

We women

fire?

MAZZINI.

Oh

no: nothing's the matter; but really

it's

im-

possible to go to sleep with such an interesting conversa-

on under one's window, and on such a beautinight too. I just had to come down and join you all.

tion going ful

What has it all been about? MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, woudcrful

things, soldier of

freedom.

HECTOR. For example, Mangan, as a practical business man, has tried to undress himself and has failed ignominiously; whilst you, as an idealist, have succeeded brilliantly. MAZZINI. I hope you dont mind my being like this, Mrs Hushabye. [He sits down on the campstool], MRS HUSHABYE. On the contrary, I could wish you always like that.

Heartbreak House

569

LADY UTTERWORD. YouF daughter's match is off, Mr Dunn. It seems that Mr Mangan, whom we all supposed to be a man of property, owns absolutely nothing. MAZZiNi. Well of course I knew that. Lady Utterword. But if people believe in him and are always giving him money, whereas they dont believe in me and never give me any, how can I ask poor Ellie to depend on what I can do for her? MANGAN. Dont you run away with this idea that I have nothing.

I

HECTOR. Oh, dont explain. We understand. You have a couple of thousand pounds in exchequer bills, 50,000 shares worth tenpence a dozen, and half a dozen tabloids of cyanide of potassium to poison yourself with when you are found out. Thats the reality of your millions. MAZZINI.

Oh

no, no, no.

He

is

quite honest: the businesses

and perfectly legal. HECTOR [disgusted] Yah! Not even a great swindler! MANGAN. So you think. But Ive been too many for some honest men, for all that LADY UTTERWORD. There is no pleasing you, Mr Mangan. are genuine

You

are determined to be neither rich nor poor, honest nor dishonest. MANGAN. There you go again. Ever since I came into this silly house I have been made to look like a fool, though I'm as good a man in this house as in the city. ELLIE [musically] Yes: this silly house, this strangely happy

house, this agonizing house, this house without foundations. I shall call

it

Heartbreak House.

MRS HUSHABYE. Stop, ElHc; or I shall howl like an animaL MANGAN [breaks into a low sniveUing]l\l MRS HUSHABYE. There! you have set Alfred off. ELLIE. I like him best when he is howling. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Silcncc! [Mangan subsides into silence]. I say, let the heart break in silence, HECTOR. Do you accept that name for your house? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. It is not my house: it is only my kennel. HECTOR. We have been too long here. We do not live in this house: we haunt it.

— Heartbreak House

570

LADY UTTERWORD [heart torn] It is dreadful to think how you have been here all these years while I have gone round the world. I escaped young; but it has drawn me back. It wants to break my heart too. But it shant. I have left you and it behind. It was silly of me to come back. I felt sentimental about papa and Hesione and the old place. I felt them calling to me. MAZZiNi. But what a very natural and kindly and charming human feeling, Lady Utterword! LADY UTTERWORD. So I thought, Mr Dunn. But I know now that it was only the last of my influenza. I found that I was not remembered and not wanted. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. You left bccausc you did not want us. Was there no heartbreak in that for your father? You tore yourself up by the roots; and the ground healed up and brought forth fresh plants and forgot you. What right had you to come back and probe old wounds? MRS HUSHABYE. You wcrc a complete stranger to me at first, Addy; but now I feel as if you had never been away. LADY UTTERWORD. Thank you, Hesione; but the influenza is quite cured. The place may be Heartbreak House to you, Miss Dunn, and to this gentleman from the city who seems to have so little self-control; but to me it is only a very ill-regulated and rather untidy villa without any stables.

HECTOR. Inhabited by ELLIE.

A

—

?

crazy old sea captain and a young singer

who

adores him.

MRS HUSHABYE.

A

sluttish female, trying

to stave off a

double chin and an elderly spread, vainly wooing a born soldier of freedom.

Mrs Hushabye of His Majesty's Government that member MANGAN. A everybody sets down as a nincompoop: dont forget him. MAZZINI. Oh, really,

Lady Utterword. LADY UTTERWORD. And a vcry fascinating gentleman whose chief occupation

is

to be married to

my

sister.

HECTOR. All heartbroken imbeciles. MAZZINI.

Oh

specimen of what

is

may

say so, rather a favorable best in our English culture. You are

no. Surely,

if I

Heartbreak House

571

very charming people,

most advanced, unprejudiced,

humane, unconventional, democratic, freeand everything that is delightful to thoughtful

frank,

thinking,

people.

MRS HUSHABYE. You do MAZZiNi.

I

am

US proud, Mazzini.

not flattering, really.

Where

else could I feel

my I sometimes dream that I am in very distinguished society, and suddenly I have nothing on but my pyjamas! Sometimes I havnt even pyjamas. And I always feel overwhelmed with confusion. But here, I dont mind in the least: it seems quite natural. LADY UTTERWORD. An infallible sign that you are not now in really distinguished society, Mr Dunn. If you were in my house, you would feel embarrassed. MAZZINI. I shall take particular care to keep out of your house. Lady Utterword. LADY UTTERWORD. You wiU be quitc wrong, Mr Dunn. I should make you very comfortable; and you would not have the trouble and anxiety of wondering whether you should wear your purple and gold or your green and crimson dressing-gown at dinner. You complicate life instead of simplifying it by doing these ridiculous things. ELLiE. Your house is not Heartbreak House: is it, Lady Utterword? HECTOR. Yet she breaks hearts, easy as her house is. That poor devil upstairs with his flute howls when she twists his heart, just as Mangan howls when my wife twists his. LADY UTTERWORD. That is bccausc Randall has nothing to do but have his heart broken. It is a change from having his head shampooed. Catch anyone breaking Hastings' perfectly at ease in

pyjamas?

heart!

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The uumskull wins, after all. LADY UTTERWORD, I shall go back to my numskull with the greatest satisfaction when I am tired of you all, clever as you are. MANGAN [huffily] I never set up to be clever. LADY UTTERWORD. I forgot you, Mr Mangan.

MANGAN. Well, I dont see that quite, either. LADY UTTERWORD. You may not be clever, but you are successful.

Mr Mangan;

—

— Heartbreak House

572

MANGAN. But

dont want to be regarded merely as a successful man. I have an imagination like anyone else. I have a presentiment I

MRS HUSHABYE. Oh, you

are impossible, Alfred. Here

I

am

devoting myself to you; and you think of nothing but your ridiculous presentiment. You bore me. Come and talk poetry to me under the stars. [She drags him away into the darkness].

MANGAN [tearfully, as he disappears] Yes: to make fun of me; but if you only knew HECTOR

[impatiently]

MAZZiNi.

It

it's all

very well

How is all this going to end? Mr Hushabye. Life doesnt

wont end,

end:

it

goes on. ELLiE. Oh,

cant go on for ever. I'm always expecting

it

something.

I

dont

know what

it is;

but

life

must come

to

a point sometime.

LADY UTTERWORD. The point age

is

for a

young woman of your

a baby.

HECTOR. Yes, but damn it, I have the same feeling; and / cant have a baby. LADY UTTERWORD. By deputy, Hector. HECTOR. But I have children. All that is over and done with for me: and yet I too feel that this cant last. We sit here talking, and leave everything to Mangan and to chance and to the devil. Think of the powers of destruction that Mangan and his mutual admiration gang wield! It's madness: it's like giving a torpedo to a badly brought up child to play at earthquakes with. MAZZiNL I know. I used often to think about that when I was young. HECTOR. Think! Whats the good of thinking about it? Why didnt you do something? MAZZINI. But I did. I joined societies and made speeches and wrote pamphlets. That was all I could do. But, you know, though the people in the societies thought they knew more than Mangan, most of them wouldnt have joined if they had known as much. You see they had never had any money to handle or any men to manage. Every year I expected a revolution, or some frightful smash-up: it seemed impossible that we could blunder

Heartbreak House

573

and muddle on any longer. But nothing happened, except, of course, the usual poverty and crime and drink that we are used to. Nothing ever does happen. It's amazing

how

well

we

get along,

all

things considered.

LADY UTTERWORD. Perhaps somebody cleverer than you and Mr Mangan was at work all the time. MAZZiNi. Perhaps so. Though I was brought up not to believe in anything, I often feel that there

is

a great deal to

be said for the theory of an overruling Providence, after all.

LADY UTTERWORD. Providcncc! I meant Hastings. MAZZiNL Oh, I b e g your pardon. Lady Utterword. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Every drunken skipper trusts to Providence. But one of the ways of Providence with drunken skippers is to run them on the rocks. MAZZINI. Very true, no doubt, at sea. But in politics, I assure you, they only run into jellyfish. Nothing happens. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. At sca nothing happens to the sea. Nothing happens to the sky. The sun comes up from the east and goes down to the west. The moon grows from a sickle to an arc lamp, and comes later and later until she is

lost in the light as

other things are lost in the darkness.

After the typhoon, the flying-fish

glitter in

the sunshine

amazing how they get along, all things Nothing happens, except something not

like birds. It's

considered.

worth mentioning. ELLiE.

What

is

that,

O

Captain,

my

captain?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. [savagely] Nothing but the smash of the drunken skipper's ship on the rocks, the splintering of her rotten timbers, the tearing of her rusty plates, the

drowning of the crew

like rats in a trap.

ELLIE. Moral: dont take rum.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER [vehemently] That

man

drink ten barrels of

skipper until he

is

is

a

a day, he

lie, is

child.

Let a

not a drunken

a drifting skipper. Whilst he can lay

his course

and stand on

drunkard.

It is

the

rum

his bridge

man who

lies

and

steer

it,

he

drinking in his

no bunk is

and trusts to Providence that I call the drunken skipper, though he drank nothing but the waters of the River Jordan.

574

Heartbreak House

And you havnt had a drop for an hour. you dont need it: your own spirit is not dead. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Echoes: nothing but echoes. The last shot was fired years ago. HECTOR. And this ship we are all in? This soul's prison we call England? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The Captain is in his bunk, drinking bottled ditch-water; and the crew is gambling in the forecastle. She will strike and sink and split. Do you think the laws of God will be suspended in favor of England because you were born in it? HECTOR. Well, I didnt mean to be drowned like a rat in a ELLIE. Splendid!

You

see

What am

do? CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Do? Nothing simpler. Learn your business as an Englishman. HECTOR. And what may my business as an Englishman be, trap.

I still

have the

will to live.

I

to

pray?

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Navigation. Learn it and be damned. ELLIE. Quiet, quiet;

youU

MAZZiNi.

all

it

and

live;

or leave

tire yourself.

assure

you

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Something happening [he blows

his

I

thought

that once, Captain; but

I

nothing will happen.

A HECTOR

dull distant explosion

What was

[starting up]

whistle].

is

heard. that?

Breakers ahead!

The light goes out. HECTOR [furiously] Who put

that light out?

Who

dared put

that light out?

NURSE GUINNESS [running of the esplanade]

say we'll be

I

did,

summoned

in sir. if

from the house to the middle The police have telephoned to

we dont put

that light out:

it

can be seen for miles. HECTOR. It shall be seen for a hundred miles [he dashes into the house].

NURSE GUINNESS. Thc they say. Unless

rcctory

we can

is

nothing but a heap of bricks,

give the rector a bed he has

nowhere to lay his head this night. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The Church is on the rocks, breaking

Heartbreak House up.

I

told

him

575 it

would unless

it

headed for God's open

sea.

NURSE GUINNESS. And you are CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. Batten

down

Go

all

to

go down to the cellars. you and all the crew.

there yourself,

the hatches.

NURSE GUINNESS. And hide beside the coward I married! I'll go on the roof first. [The lamp lights up again]. There! Mr Hushabye's turned it on again. THE BURGLAR [hurrying in and appealing to Nurse Guinness] Here: wheres the way to that gravel pit? The boot-boy says theres a cave in the gravel pit. Them cellars is no use. Wheres the gravel pit, Captain? NURSE GUINNESS. Go Straight on past the flagstaff until you fall into it and break your dirty neck. [She pushes him contemptuously towards the flagstaff, and herself goes to the foot of the hammock and waits there, as it were by Ariadne's cradle].

Another and louder explosion is heard. The burglar and stands trembling. ELLiE [rising] That was nearer. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The ncxt one will get us. [He rises]. stops

Stand by, all hands, for judgment. THE BURGLAR. Oh my Lordy God! [He rushes away frantically past the flagstaff into the gloom].

MRS HUSHABYE [emerging panting from

the darkness]

Who

away? [She comes to Ellie]. Did you hear the explosions? And the sound in the sky: it's was

that running

an orchestra: it's like Beethoven. ELLIE. By thunder, Hesione: it is Beethoven. She and Hesione throw themselves into one another's splendid:

arms

in

it's

like

wild excitement. The light increases.

MAZZiNi [anxiously] The light is getting brighter. NURSE GUINNESS [looking up at the house] It's Mr Hushabye turning on all the lights in the house and tearing down the curtains.

RANDALL [rushing flute]

Ariadne:

in in his

my

soul,

pyjamas, distractedly waving a

my

precious, go

down

to the

cellars: I beg and implore you, go down to the cellars! LADY UTTERWORD [quite composcd in her hammock] The

Heartbreak House

576

governor's wife in the cellars with the servants! Really,

Randall!

RANDALL. But what shall I do if you are killed? LADY UTTERWORD. You will probably be killed, too, Randall. Now play your flute to shew that you are not afraid; and be good. Play us Keep the home fires burning. NURSE GUINNESS [grimly] Theyll keep the home fires burning for us: them up there.

RANDALL [having

tried to play]

My lips

are trembling. I cant

get a sound.

hope poor Mangan is safe, MRS HUSHABYE. He is hiding in the cave in the gravel pit. CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. My dynamite drew him there. It is the hand of God. HECTOR [returning from the house and striding across to his former place] There is not half light enough. We should be blazing to the skies,

MAZZiNL

I

ELLiE [tense with excitement] Set fire to the house, Marcus. MRS HUSHABYE. My house! No. HECTOR. I thought of that; but it would not be ready in time.

CAPTAIN SHOTOVER. The judgment has come. Courage not save you; but it will shew that your souls are

will still

alive.

MRS HUSHABYE.

Sh-sh! Listen:

now?

It's

and took

up,

do you hear

it

magnificent.

They

all

turn

away from

the house

listening,

HECTOR

[gravely] Miss

Dunn: you can do no good

here.

of this house are only moths flying into the candle.

We

You

go down to the cellar, ELLIE [scornfully] I d o n t think.

had

better

MAZZINL EUie,

dear, there

is

no disgrace

An officer would order Mr Hushabye is behaving like

cellar.

in going to the

his soldiers to take cover,

an amateur. Mangan and the burglar are acting very sensibly; and it is they who will survive.

ELLIE. Let them. I shall behave like an amateur. But

should you run any risk?

why

—

—

Heartbreak House

577

MAZZiNi. Think of the risk those poor fellows up there are running!

NURSE GUINNESS. Think of blackguards!

A

terrific

What

t

h

e

m, indeed, the murdering

next?

explosion shakes the earth. They reel back

into their seats, or clutch the nearest support.

the falling of the shattered glass

MAZZINI.

from

They hear

the windows,

anyone hurt?

Is

HECTOR. Where did it fall? NURSE GUINNESS [in hidcous triumph] Right in the gravel pit: I seen it. Serve un right! I seen it [she runs away towards the gravel pit, laughing harshly]. HECTOR. One husband gone.

CAPTAIN

SHOTOVER.

Thirty

pounds of good

dynamite

wasted.

MAZZINI. Oh, poor Mangan!

HECTOR. Are you immortal that you need

pity

him? Our

turn next.

They wait (ind Ellie

A

in silence

and

intense expectation. Hesione

hold each other's hands

distant explosion

MRS HUSHABYE

is

tight,

heard.

[relaxing her grip]

Oh! they have passed

us.

LADY UTTERWORD. The danger is over, Randall. Go to bed. CAPTAN SHOTOVER. Tum in, all hands. The ship is safe. [He sits down and goes asleep], ELLIE [disappointedly] Safe!

HECTOR

[disgustedly] Yes, safe.

And how damnably

dull

the world has become again suddenly! [He sits down], MAZZINI [sitting down] I was quite wrong, after all. It is we who have survived; and Mangan and the burglar HECTOR. the two burglars LADY UTTERWORD. the two practical men of business^ MAZZINI. both gone. And the poor clergyman will have

— —

to get a

new

—

house.

MRS HUSHABYE. But what a glorious theyll come again tomorrow night.

experience! I

ELLIE [radiant at the prospect] Oh, I hope so. Randall at last succeeds in keeping the

burning on his

flute.

home

hope

fires

—

To

—

Fagan

B.

J.

Fagan was producing Heartbreak House Court Theatre, London.

the

at

Royal

10 Adelphi Terrace, W.C.2 20th Oct. 1921

My dear Fagan Take a blue pencil and following cuts in Act

p

98

U— I

Lady

97

—

a copy of H. H.; and

Dunn

the

III.

Mr. Man&c no &c

quite sympathize with you,

gan. (cut 5 lines) line 5.

mark

there

Still,

is

U—I

should not be too hasty, Miss (cut the next two lines). You can live very

Lady

comfortably on Mr. Mangan's reputation &c.

Mr. H.

p 100

—Oh, wonderful

things, soldier of

(cut the next 3 speeches). ter's

p 102

match &c

.

.

.

Lady

freedom daugh-

U —Your

absolutely nothing,

(cut the

rest of the page and the first 2 lines of p 101). Mangan There you go again &c. 9th speech Hector All heartbroken imbeciles (cut the rest of the page, and the first two speeches on 103). Ellie Your house is not H. H.

—

—

—

—

&c.

p 105

—

Nothing happens Mazz. Very true &c. Except some(cut the next IVi lines) Shotover thing not worth mentioning.

line 9.

,

.

.

—

not hurt Brember [Wills]'s feelings; but I think he will be glad of it, because for some reason the speech has always bothered him: he has never visualized it. Probably he never saw a flying fish. This gets rid I

hope

this last cut will

of 65 lines of print, and improves the scene: at least I think you will find it so, I never cut anything merely to

save time:

it is

never worth saving

at the cost

of the play,

ought to help the play. There are always lines which are dud lines with a given cast. Change the cast and

but here

it

Letter to

J.

B.

Fagan

you get other will

lines dud.

The

line

which

act patience,

first

act passages: that

which

much

is

on A's box this act a few

strikes

only bother B. Besides, there are in

passages which are first

579

is,

they require

thicker than

last

act

two at dead horses. I have been rather unhappy because I let the play go before it was safely ready and before we had polished it. patience. Also a lash or

It

needed, for Shotover, Ellie

&

Hesione, another week,

three days of which they should have spent at ing.

But the strained

home

study-

doubt whether

financial situation, the

a week would be enough, the staleness of the easy parts, and perhaps my own exhaustion (the cat & mouse watching of every word uses up one's nerve), determined me to relieve you of your strain and let it go, trusting to its

very unpreparedness to give a certain agonized intensity

—

performance which, by the Lord, it did. Still, it was a risk; and it cost us some bad notices. Ellie & Hesione kept going splendidly; but Shotover was terribly slow and bewildered: he dragged the scene with Ellie almost beyond endurance; and it missed fire in consequence. That was to the

whole play depends on it for its balance was very clear and competent, and did not miss a stroke: at no point did she seem to be muddled or to do anything she did not intend to do; but he was Hke a drowning man, or rather like a man sitting on Wells's Time Machine, and ageing ten years every minute, which was all the more alarming as he started at 99 instead of serious, as the

of

effect. Ellie

However he

this.

His

but he must knock 20 years off the

rest.

88.

will get

over

first

act

is all

right;

improvement all round when they at last get clear about the meaning of their lines and master the train of thought. Until then do not hurry them too much; for if you make an actor speak faster than he can think, his part will be like nothing at all, and

You

will find a great

you

will lose the play to save the lost train. I calculate

that

it

will take a fortnight to get the

more

difficult parts

really slick.

Mary [Grey]

astonished

all

the people

who

said

she

couldn't act [Hesione]; but she needed a good night's sleep to get her full bloom on. You must pamper her for all

580

Letter to

you are worth: those three hours on the

J.

stage

B.

Fagan

must be

paid for by a worthless, luxurious, lie-a-bed, lazy spoilt

life

during the other 21. [Arnold] Bennett

&

Nigel [Playfair] are sticking to their

anti-O'Mallegism. A.B.

he

&

part.

is

sure the play will fail because

N.P. did not produce

They know

it

with someone else in the

that Ellie [O'Malley]

is

unexciting and

disappointing as an ingenue, and have never found out that she

is

not an ingenue at

heavy. Ellie to

whom, by

is

all

(nor ever was) but a

the heavy lead, and Hesione

is

the siren,

the way, give the author's love,

G.B.S.

The article has gone to the Sunday Herald. It goes beyond all the worst notices in its description of the audience on the rock, P.S.

PPS is

I

forgot to say that in Act

for the stalls:

it

means nothing

III,

the horses speech

to the poor.

To Lawrence Langner

Langner was director of the Theatre Guild, which was planning the first New York production of Back to Methu**

Shaw

Beginning as both the first play in the cycle as well as the prologue to it. The second play. The Gospel of the Brothers Barnabas, had thinly veiled caricatures in it of England's First World War prime minis^ selah.

ters,

talks of In the

H» H. Asquith and David Lloyd George, Shapespeare Hotel, Stratford-on-Avoa 3

My I

May

1921

dear Langner

have been travelling about for more than a month, deliver-

from the too long spell of unbroken work that Methuselah brought on me; and writing nothing but the most urgently necessary letters on picture postcards. Hence my delay in replying to the letter you wrote on the Aquitania on the 18th March. The second play will not mean Asquith and Lloyd George to your public; and so far it will not produce the effect it will produce here on the few people who have any sense of political personalities. But in Fanny's First Play, the American public knew nothing about Walkley, Gilbert Cannan, and A. E. Vaughan (for that matter very few people outside a little ring in London were any better informed). Nevertheless Trotter, Gunn, and Vaughan went down just as well in America as here. I therefore believe that if Joyce Burge and Lubin fail here, they will fail everywhere; and if they succeed here they will succeed ing political orations; trying to recover

America. However that may be, the thing as it is now. The job did itself that way, and I cannot pull it to pieces and do it some other way.

just as well in

must stay

582

Letter to

As when

Lawrence Langner

it produced such an astonishing effect an audience consisting mostly of women that I never ventured on the experiment again. I gather that it missed fire with you. It may be so with your public; but I assure you it can explode with shattering consequences. To play it and the second play at the same performance is impossible. You will have to make up your mind to the three evenings and the two matinees. You must sell the tickets in batches of five, all five tickets on one sheet with perforated card divisions. If people buy them that way they will not throw them away. They may be bothered and disappointed by the first two plays as you expect; but their bewilderment will not take the form of throwing their tickets into the fire, especially if you charge enough for them. You can warn them that the prologue in the Garden of Eden will last only an hour (or perhaps 50 minutes; you can time it at rehearsal) and that no assumptions must be made as to the duration of each part of the play. Mark: each part of the play, not each play. The wording of your programmes and announcements must always rub in the fact that what the public is going to see is one play, with sections of various lengths. Later on we can see about giving separate performances

to the first play, I

read

it

to

of the sections; but for the

first

ten performances (say)

it

must be impossible to take less than the whole dose. The book will be published on the first of June or thereabouts. I note your calm suggestion that it should be held back until you are ready to produce. I told you you wanted the earth. If you want to produce simultaneously with the publication you must hurry up very smartly indeed. I

scrawl this in great haste in a hotel after a day's driv-

ing.

Yours as always, G, Bernard Shaw

BACK TO METHUSELAH from the preface, "The

DOGMA dogma is its

(conclusion

Infidel

Half Century")

A TOUCHSTONE FOR

The

test

of a

the British churchgoer, the hist,

the

Any

universality.

Mussulman cannot hold

in

doctrine that

Buddcommon, however

Brahman, the

Jainist, the

is an obstruction to the fellowship of the Holy Ghost. The only frontier to the currency of a sound dogma as such is the frontier of capacity for under-

varied their rituals,

standing

it.

This does not mean that we should throw away legend and parable and drama: they are the natural vehicles of dogma; but woe to the Churches and rulers who substitute the legend for the dogma, the parable for the history, the drama for the religion! Better by far declare the throne of God empty than set a liar and a fool on it. What are called wars of religion are always wars to destroy religion by affirming the historical truth or material substantiality of some legend, and killing those who refuse to accept it as historical or substantial. But who has ever refused to accept a good legend with delight as a legend? The legends, the parables, the dramas, are

mankind. did

No one

Mahomet

is

among

the choicest treasures of

ever tired of stories of miracles. In vain

repudiate the miracles ascribed to him: in

vain did Christ furiously scold those give

them an

declare that

who

asked him to

exhibition as a conjurer: in vain did the saints

God

chose them not for their powers but for

their weaknesses; that the

humble might be

exalted,

and

the proud rebuked. People will have their miracles, their

heroes and heroines and saints and martyrs and divinities to exercise their gifts of affection, admiration, wonder, and worship, and their Judases and devils to enable them to be angry and yet feel that they do well to be angry. Every one of these legends is the common heritage stories, their

Back

584

to

Methuselah

of the human race; and there is only one inexorable condition attached to their healthy enjoyment, which is that no

them literally. The reading of stories and them made Don Quixote a gentleman: the believing them literally made him a madman who slew lambs instead of feeding them. In England today good books of Eastern religious legends are read eagerly; and Protestants and Atheists read legends of the saints with one

shall believe

delighting in

pleasure.

at the

Freethinkers read the Bible:

Sceptical

they seem to be

Church

the legends as

its

only readers

lecterns. This literal

is

truths at

legends into falsehoods.

The

now

indeed

except the parsons

because the imposition of once changes them from

feeling against the Bible has

become

so strong at last that educated people will not even the chronicles of King David, which may be historical, and are certainly more candid than the official biographies of our contemporary monarchs. tolerate

WHAT TO DO WITH THE LEGENDS What we should make a delightful

do,

then,

is

to

pool our legends and

stock of religious folk-lore on an honest

With our minds freed from pretence and falsehood we could enter into the heritage of all the faiths. China would share her sages with Spain, and Spain basis for all children.

her saints with China. The Belfast Orangemen who gives his son a thrashing if the boy is so tactless as to ask how the evening and the morning could be the first day before the sun was created, or to betray an innocent calf-love for the Virgin Mary, would buy him a bookful of legends of the creation and of mothers of God from all parts of the world, and be very glad to find his laddie as interested in such things as in marbles or Police and Robbers. That would be better than beating all good feeling towards religion out of the child, and blackening his mind by teaching him that the worshippers of the holy virgins, whether of the Parthenon or St Peter's, are fire-doomed heathens and idolaters. All the sweetness of religion is conveyed to children by the hands of storytellers and imagemakers. Without their fictions the truths of religion would for the multitude be neither intelligible nor even appfehen-

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to

Methuselah

585

and the prophets would prophesy and the philosoAnd nothing stands between the people and the jfictions except the silly falsehood that the fictions are literal truths, and that there is nothing in sible;

phers cerebrate in vain.

religion but fiction.

FROM SCIENCE TO THE CHURCHES Churches ask themselves why there

A LESSON

no revolt against the dogmas of mathematics though there is one against the dogmas of religion. It is not that the mathematical dogmas are more comprehensible. The law of inverse Let the

squares

is

as

incomprehensible to the

Athanasian creed. witchcraft,

not that science

It is

miracles,

is

common man is

free

as the

from legends,

biographic boostings of quacks as

heroes and saints, and of barren scouedrels as explorers and

On the contrary, the inconography and hagiology of Scientism are as copious as they are mostly squalid. But no student of science has yet been taught that specific gravity consists in the belief that Archimedes jumped out of his bath and ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting Eureka, Eureka, or that the law of inverse squares must be discarded if anyone can prove that Newton was never in an orchard in his life. When some unusually discoverers.

conscientious or enterprising bacteriologist reads the

pam-

and discovers that they might have been written by an ignorant but curious and observant nurserymaid, and could not possibly have been written by any person with a scientifically trained mind, he does not feel that the whole edifice of science has collapsed and crumbled, and that there is no such thing as smallpox. . . But in fact it is the mind of Europe that has shrunk, being, as we have seen, wholly preoccupied with a busy springphlets of Jenner,

.

cleaning to get rid of itself to

its

superstitions before readjusting

the creative conception of Evolution.

EVOLUTION IN THE THEATRE

On

come at last to my own particular function in the matter), Comedy, as a destructive, derisory, critical, negative art, kept the theatre open when the stage (and here

I

sublime tragedy perished.

From Moliere

to Oscar

Wilde

Back

586

we had

a line of comedic playwrights who,

to

Methuselah

if

they had

nothing fundamentally positive to say, were at least in

and imposture, and were not only, as they claimed, "chastening morals by ridicule," but, in Johnson's phrase, clearing our minds of cant, and thereby shewing an uneasiness in the presence of error which is the surest symptom of intellectual vitality. Meanwhile the name of Tragedy was assumed by plays in which everyone was killed in the last act, just as, in spite of Moliere, plays in which everyone was married in the last act called themselves comedies. Now neither tragedies nor comedies can be produced according to a prescription which gives only revolt against falsehood

the last

moments

of the last act.

Ever since Shakespear, playwrights have been

strug-

Many of them become mere pandars and sensation-monbecause, though they had higher ambitions, they could

gling with their lack of positive religion.

were forced gers

to

no better subject matter. From Congreve to Sheridan they were so sterile in spite of their wit that they did not achieve between them the output of Moliere's single lifetime; and they were all (not without reason) ashamed of their profession, and preferred to be regarded as mere men of fashion with a rakish hobby. Goldsmith's was the only saved soul in that pandemonium. Consider the great exception of Goethe. He is Olympian: the other giants are infernal in everything but their veracity and their repudiafind

tion of the irreligion of their time: that

is,

they are bitter

and hopeless. It is not a question of mere dates. Goethe was an Evolutionist in 1830: many modern playwrights, even young ones, are still untouched by Creative Evolution. Even Ibsen was Darwinized to the extent of exploiting heredity on the stage much as the ancient Athenian playwrights exploited the Eumenides. Evolution as a poetic aspiration is plain enough in his Emperor as Galilean; but it is one of Ibsen's distinctions that nothing was valid for him but science; and he left that vision of the future which his Roman seer calls "the third Empire" behind him when he settled down to his serious grapple with realities in those plays of nineteenth century life with which he over-

Back

to

Methuselah

587

came Europe, and broke rotten theatre in

it

windows of every dry-

the dusty

from Moscow

to Manchester.

MY OWN PART IN THE MATTER In my own activities as a playwright of things intolerable.

The fashionable

I

found

this state

theatre prescribed

one serious subject: clandestine adultery: the dullest of all subjects for a serious author, whatever it may be for audiences who read the police intelligence and skip the reviews and leading articles. I tried slum-landlordism, doctrinaire Free Love (pseudo-Ibsenism), prostitution, militarism, marriage,

history,

current

politics,

natural

Christianity,

national and individual character, paradoxes of conventional society,

husband-hunting, questions of conscience,

professional delusions and impostures,

all

worked

into a

classic fashion,

which

was then very much out of fashion, the mechanical

tricks

comedies of manners in the

series of

of Parisian "construction" being held obligatory in the theatre.

But

this,

though

it

professionally, did not constitute

the religion of

my

me and established me me an iconographer of my natural function as

occupied

time, fulfilling

an artist. I knew that civilization needs a religion as a matter of life or death; and as the conception of Creative Evolution developed I saw that we were at last within reach of a faith which complied with the first condition of all the religions that have ever taken hold of humanity: namely, that it must be, first and fundamentally, a science of metabiology. This was a crucial point with me; for I had seen Bible fetichism, after standing up to all the rationalistic batteries of Hume, Voltaire, and the rest, collapse before the onslaught of

much

solely because they discredited

it

less gifted Evolutionists,

as a biological

document;

from that moment it lost its hold, and left literate Christendom faithless. My own Irish eighteenth-centuryism so that

made

it

impossible for

conceive

it

as

me

to believe anything until I could

a scientific hypothesis, even though the

abominations, quackeries, impostures, venalities, credulities,

and delusions of the camp followers of science, and the brazen lies and priestly pretensions of the pseudo-scientific

Back

588

to

Methuselah

all sedulously inculcated by modern "secondary education," were so monstrous that I was sometimes forced to make a verbal distinction between science and knowledge lest I should mislead my readers. But I never forgot that without knowledge even wisdom is more dangerous than mere opportunist ignorance, and that somebody must take the Garden of Eden in hand and weed it

cure-mongers,

properly. I took the legend of Don Juan Mozartian form and made it a dramatic parable of Creative Evolution. But being then at the height of my invention and comedic talent, I decorated it too brilliantly and lavishly. I surrounded it with a comedy of which it formed only one act, and that act was so completely episodical (it was a dream which did not affect the action of the piece) that the comedy could be detached and played by itself. Also I supplied the published work with an imposing framework consisting of a preface, an appendix called The Revolutionist's Handbook, and a final display of aphoristic fireworks. The effect was so vertiginous, ap-

Accordingly, in 1901,

in

its

parently, that

nobody noticed the new

of the intellectual whirlpool. these cerebral capers in

did

it

I

protest

I

did not cut

mere inconsiderate exuberance.

I

because the worst convention of the criticism of the

theatre current at that time is

Now

religion in the centre

was that

intellectual seriousness

out of place on the stage; that the theatre

is

a place of

shallow amusement; that people go there to be soothed

enormous

day in the city: in short, that a playwright is a person whose business it is to make unwholesome confectionery out of cheap emotions. My answer to this- was to put all my intellectual goods in the shop window under the sign of Man and Superman. That part of my design succeeded. By good luck and acting, the comedy triumphed on the stage; and the book was a good deal discussed. But as its tale of a husband huntress obscured its evolutionary doctrine I try again with this cycle of plays that keep to the point and through. I abandon the legend of Don Juan with its erotic associations, and go back to the legend of the Garden of Eden. I exploit the external interest of the philosopher's after the

intellectual strain of a

Back

to

Methuselah

589

stone which enables

under more

men

illusion

to live for ever. I

than

humanly

is

am

not, I hope,

inevitable as to

contribution to the scriptures of Creative Evolution.

my

It is

my

hope that a hundred parables by young hands will soon leave mine as far behind as the religious pictures of the

behind the first attempts of the early Christians at iconography. In that hope I withdraw and fifteenth century left

ring

up the

curtain.

AYOT SAINT LAWRENCE, 1921 Revised, 1944

BACK TO METHUSELAH PART ACT

I

In the Beginning

I

The Garden of Eden. Afternoon. An immense serpent

is

sleeping with her head buried in a thick bed of Johnswort,

and her body

coiled in apparently endless rings through the branches of a tree, which is already well grown; for the days of creation have been longer than our reckoning. She

not yet visible to anyone unaware of her presence, as her colors of green and brown make a perfect camouflage. is

Near her head a low rock shews above the Johnswort. The rock and tree are on the border of a glade in which lies a dead fawn all awry, its neck being broken. Adam, crouching with one hand on the rock, is staring in con^ sternation at the dead body.

on

his left hand.

He

He

has not noticed the serpent

turns his face to his right

and

calls

excitedly.

ADAM. Eve! Eve! eve's voice.

What

is it,

Adam?

ADAM. Come here. Quick. Something has happened. eve [running in] What? Where? [Adam points to the fawn]. Oh! {She goes to it; and he is emboldened to go with her].

Back

590

What ADAM. EVE.

Oh

ADAM. EVE.

the matter with

is

It is

I

not only

its

Why

dont!

doesnt

dont know.

Not

It is

Look. [He kicks

it

It

it].

wake?

not asleep.

asleep?

ADAM. Try. EVE [trying to shake it and roll ADAM. Nothing will wake it. EVE.

Methuselah

eyes?

its

eyes.

to

it

over]

It is stiff

and

cold.

has a queer smell. Pah! [She dusts her hands, and

draws away from it]. Did you find it like that? ADAM. No. It was playing about; and it tripped and went head over heels. It never stirred again. Its neck is wrong [he stoops to lift the neck and shew her]. EVE. Dont touch it. Come away from it. They both retreat, and contemplate it from a few steps' distance with growing repulsion.

Adam.

EVE.

ADAM. Yes? EVE. Suppose you were

to

trip

and

fall,

would you go

like that?

ADAM. Ugh! [He shudders and sits down on the rock]. EVE [throwing herself on the ground beside him, and grasping his knee] You must be careful. Promise me you will be careful.

ADAM. What

is

the

good of being careful?

We

have to

live

here for ever. Think of what for ever means! Sooner or later

shall trip

I

be after as

many

and

fall.

I

may

be tomorrow;

it

may

days as there are leaves in the garden

and grains of sand by the I shall forget and stumble. EVE.

It

river.

No

matter:

some day

too.

Oh no, no. I should be alone. Alone for You must never put yourself in danger of stumbling. You must not move about. You must sit still.

ADAM

[horrified]

ever.

I will

take care of you and bring you what you want.

EVE [turning away from him with a shrug, and hugging her ankles] I should soon get tired of that. Besides, if it happened to you, / should be alone. I could not sit still then. And at last it would happen to me too. ADAM. And then?

Back

to

EVE.

Then we should be no more. There would be only

Methuselah

591

the things on all fours, and the birds, and the snakes. ADAM. That must not be. EVE. Yes: that must not be. But it might be. ADAM. No. I tell you it must not be. I know that it must

not be.

We

EVE.

know

both

ADAM. There

How

me

it is

it?

is

there

so near that

tells

full of voices sometimes.

sorts of thoughts into

ADAM. To

do we know

a voice in the garden that

is

The garden

EVE.

it.

my

like a

it is

things.

They put

all

head.

only one voice.

is

me

very low; but

It is

whisper from within myself.

no mistaking it for any voice of the birds or your voice. EVE. It is strange that I should hear voices from all sides and you only one from within. But I have some thoughts that come from within me and not from the voices. The thought that we must not cease to be comes from within. ADAM [despairingly] But we shall cease to be. We shall fall like the fawn and be broken. [Rising and moving There

is

beasts, or for

about

have

will not

know how EVE. That

is

it.

It

must not

to prevent just

what

mind

is

knowledge.

this

Yet

be, I tell you.

I

I

do not

it.

I feel;

should say so: there

ADAM

cannot bear

in his agitation]. I

but

it is

very strange that you

You change

no pleasing you.

your

so often.

[scolding her]

changed

You

my

Why

do you say that?

How

have

I

mind?

we must

But you used to complain of having to exist always and for ever. You sometimes sit for hours brooding and silent, hating me in your heart. When I ask you what I have done to you, you say you are not thinking of me, but of the horror of having to be here for ever. But I know very well that what you mean is the horror of having to be

EVE.

say

here with

me

not cease to

exist.

for ever.

ADAM. Oh! That is what you think, is wrong. [He sits down again, sulkily]. having to be with myself for ever. not like myself.

I

want

to be

it? It is

I like

Well, you are the horror of

you; but

different; to

I

do

be better,

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592

to Methuselah

and again; to shed myself as a snake am tired of myself. And yet I must endure myself, not for a day or for many days, but for ever. That is a dreadful thought. That is what makes me sit brooding and silent and hateful. Do you never to begin again

sheds

its

skin. I

think of that?

EVE. 1

No:

am

I do not think about myself: what is the use? what I am: nothing can alter that. I think about

you.

ADAM. You should not. You are always spying on me. I can never be alone. You always want to know what I have been doing. It is a burden. You should try to have an existence of your own, instead of occupying yourself with EVE.

I

my existence. have to think

about you.

You

are lazy:

you are

dirty: you neglect yourself: you are always dreaming: you would eat bad food and become disgusting if I did not watch you and occupy myself with you. And now some day, in spite of all my care, you will fall on your head and become dead. ADAM. Dead? What word is that? EVE [pointing to the fawn] Like that. I call it dead. ADAM [rising and approaching it slowly] There is something uncanny about it. EVE [joining him] Oh! It is changing into little white worms, ADAM. Throw it into the river. It is unbearable,

EVE.

I

dare not touch

it.

ADAM. Then I must, though I loathe it. It is poisoning the air. [He gathers its hooves in his hand and carries it away in the direction from which Eve came, holding it as far from him as possible]. Eve looks after them for a moment; then, with a shiver of disgust, sits down on the rock, brooding. The body of the serpent becomes visible, glowing with wonderful new colors. She rears her head slowly from the bed of Johnswort, and speaks into Eve's ear in a strange seductively musical whisper.

THE SERPENT. EvC. EVE [startled] Who is that? THE SERPENT. It is I, I have come

to

shew you

my

beautl-

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to

ful

Methuselah

593

new hood. See

[she spreads a magnificent amethystine

hood]\

EVE [admiring it] Oh! But who taught you to speak? THE SERPENT. You and Adam. I have crept through the grass, and hidden, and hstened to you. EVE. That was wonderfully clever of you. THE SERPENT, I am the most subtle of all the creatures of the

EVE.

field.

Your hood

serpent].

is

most

and pets the you love your godmother

lovely. [She strokes

Pretty thing!

Do

it

Eve? THE SERPENT.

I adore her. [She licks Eve's neck with her double tongue].

wonderful darling snake. Eve will never be lonely now that her snake can talk to her. THE SNAKE. I can talk of many things. I am very wise. It was I who whispered the word to you that, you did not know. Dead. Death. Die. EVE [shuddering] Why do you remind me of it? I forgot it when I saw your beautiful hood. You must not remind

EVE

[petting her] Eve's

me of unhappy things. THE SERPENT. Death is not an unhappy

thing

when you

have learnt how to conquer it. How can I conquer it? THE SERPENT. By another thing, called birth. EVE. What? [Trying to pronounce it] B-birth? THE SERPENT. Ycs, birth. EVE.

EVE.

What

is

birth?

THE SERPENT. The Serpent never dies. Some day you shall see me come out of this beautiful skin, a new snake with a new and lovelier skin. That is birth. EVE.

I

have seen

that. It

is

wonderful.

THE SERPENT. If I Can do that, what can I not do? I tell you I am very subtle. When you and Adam talk, I hear you say "Why?" Always "Why?" You see things; and you say "Why?" But I dream things that never were; and I say "Why not?" I made the word dead to describe my old skin that I cast when I am renewed. I call that renewal being born. EVE. Born is a beautiful word.

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594

to

Methuselah

THE SERPENT. Why not be born again and again new and beautiful every time? EVE.

I!

does not happen: that

It

THE SERPENT. That

how; but

is

am,

why.

is

it

as I

is

not why.

Why

not?

would be nice to be new on the ground looking just like me; and Adam would see it shrivel up and THE SERPENT. No. He need not. There is a second birth. EVE. But

I

should not like

again; but

EVE.

A

my

it.

It

old skin would

lie

second birth?

THE SERPENT. very

Listen. I will

subtle;

thought.

And

and I

I

am

tell

have

you a

great secret. I

am

and thought and

thought

very wilful, and must have what

I

I have willed and willed and willed. And I have eaten strange things: stones and apples that you

want; and

are afraid to eat.

EVE.

You

dared!

THE SERPENT. I dared everything. And way of gathering together a part of the EVE.

What

is

EVE.

What

Life

is

life in

the life?

THE SERPENT. That which makes the dead

found a my body

at last I

fawn and

a beautiful word!

the loveliest of

THE SERPENT. Ycs: gained the power

the difference between

the live one.

all

And what the

a wonderful thing!

new words.

was by meditating on Life that I to do miracles. EVE. Miracles? Another new word. THE SERPENT. A miracle is an impossible thing that is nevertheless possible. Something that never could happen, and yet does happen. EVE. Tell me some miracle that you have done. THE SERPENT. I gathered a part of the life in my body, and shut it into a tiny white case made of the stones I had eaten. EVE. And what good was that? THE SERPENT. I shewed the little case to the sun, and left it in its warmth. And it burst; and a little snake came out; and it became bigger and bigger from day to day until it was as big as I. That was the second birth. EVE. Oh! That is too wonderful. It stirs inside me. It hurts. it

Back

to

Methuselah

THE SERPENT.

595

my

my

alive,

Soon

many

there will be as

on

am

skin and renew myself as before.

nearly tore

It

and can burst

asunder. Yet

I

snakes in Eden as there are scales

Then death

body.

me

will

not matter: this snake and

that snake will die; but the snakes will live.

EVE. But the rest of us will die sooner or later, like the

fawn.

And

then there will be nothing but snakes, snakes,

snakes everywhere.

THE SERPENT, That must not must have something

worship you, Eve.

be. I

to worship.

ferent to myself, like you. There

1

Something quite difmust be something

greater than the snake.

EVE. Yes:

it

must not

very subtle:

me what

tell

THE SERPENT. Think. I

must not

perish.

You

are

to do.

Eat the dust. Lick the white the apple you dread. The sun will give life.

stone: bite

EVE.

Adam

be.

do not

Will.

trust the sun. I will give life myself. I will

Adam

tear another

my

from

body

if I

tear

my body

to

pieces in the act.

THE SERPENT. Do. Dare thing. Listen.

Adam,

I

am

Everything

it.

old. I

older than Eve.

am I

is

possible: every-

the old serpent, older than

remember

Lilith,

who came

was her darling as I am yours. She was alone: there was no man with her. She saw death as you saw it when the fawn fell; and she knew then that she must find out how to renew herself and cast the skin like me. She had a mighty will: she strove and strove and willed and willed for more moons than there are leaves on all the trees of the garden. Her pangs were terrible: her groans drove sleep from Eden. She said it must never be again: that the burden of renewing life was past bearing: that it was too much for one. And when she cast the skin, lo! there was not one new Lilith but two: one like herself, the other like Adam. You were the one: Adam was the other. EVE. But why did she divide into two, and make us difbefore

Adam

and Eve.

I

ferent?

THE SERPENT.

Two must

I

tell

share

it.

you the labor

is

too

much

for one.

Back

596

Do you mean that Adam must share it will not. He cannot bear pain, nor take

EVE.

to

Methuselah

with

me? He

trouble with

his body.

THE SERPENT. He need

He in

EVE.

will

your power through

Then

I

will

do

it.

There will be no pain for him. let him do his share. He will be

not.

implore you to

his desire.

But how?

How

did Lilith

work

this

miracle?

THE SERPENT. She imagined

What

it.

imagined? THE SERPENT. She told it to me as a marvellous story of something that never happened to a Lilith that never was. She did not know then that imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire; you will what you imagine; and at last you create what you will. EVE. How can I create out of nothing? THE SERPENT. Everything must have been created out of nothing. Look at that thick roll of hard flesh on your strong arm! That was not always there: you could not EVE.

is

climb a tree when

I first saw you. But you willed and tried and willed and tried; and your will created out of nothing the roll on your arm until you had your desire, and could draw yourself up with one hand and seat your^ self on the bough that was above your head, EVE. That was practice. THE SERPENT. Things wear out by practice: they do not grow by it. Your hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in streaming, be^ cause you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what she had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I bade her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing she had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her will. Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after many days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two

wills to create with.

EVE.

To

desire, to imagine, to will, to create.

That

is

too

Back

to

597

Methuselah

me one word

long a story. Find

for

it all:

you,

who

are

so clever at words.

THE SERPENT. In One word, to conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end

in creation.

me

a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet came true.

EVE. Find

THE SERPENT.

me

EVE. Find

A

pOCm.

another word for what Lilith was to me.

THE SERPENT. She was your mother. EVE. And Adam's mother? THE SERPENT. YcS. EVE [about to rise] I will go and tell Adam to conceive. THE SERPENT [Iaughs]VA EVE [jarred and startled] What a hateful noise! What is the matter with you? No one has ever uttered such a sound before.

THE SERPENT. EVE.

Adam

cannot conceive,

Why?

THE SERPENT.

Lilith did not

imagine him

so.

He

can

im-^

agine: he can will: he can desire: he can gather his life

together for a great spring towards creation: create

EVE.

things except one; and that one

all

Why

is

his

he can

own

kind,

did Lilith keep this from him?

THE SERPENT. Because

if

he could do that he could do

without Eve. EVE. That

is

true. It

is I

THE SERPENT. Ycs. By EVE.

And

I

who must

that he

is

conceive.

tied to you,

to him!

Until you create another Adam. had not thought of that. You are very subtle. But if I create another Eve he may turn to her and do without me. I will not create any Eves, only Adams. THE SERPENT. They cannot renew themselves without Eves. Sooner or later you will die like the fawn; and the new

THE SERPENT. Ycs, EVE.

I

Adams

will

be unable to create without

new

Eves.

can imagine such an end; but you cannot therefore cannot will it, therefore cannot create

You

desire

only.

it,

Adams

Back

598 EVE. If

I

am

die too?

to die like the fawn,

What do

THE SERPENT.

why

to

Methuselah

should not the rest

care?

I

That comes before You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and

must not

Life

everything. It

silly to

is

cease.

say you do not care.

create out of nothing.

EVE [thoughtfully] There can be no such thing as nothing. The garden is full, not empty. THE SERPENT. That is true. Darling Eve: this is a great thought. Yes: there is no such thing as nothing, only things we cannot see. The chameleon eats the air. have another thought: I must tell it to Adam. [Calling] Adam! Adam! Coo-ee! ADAM'S VOICE. CoO-Cc! EVE. This will please him, and cure his fits of melancholy. THE SERPENT. Do uot tell him yet. I have not told you EVE.

I

the great secret.

EVE.

What more

there to tell? It

is

is

I

who have

to

do

the miracle.

THE SERPENT. No: must give EVE.

and

must desire and

will.

But he

his will to you,

How?

THE SERPENT. That

ADAM

he, too,

his desire

[returning]

is

Is

the great secret. Hush! he there another voice

coming.

is

in the

garden

new voice. Adam! Our

besides our voices and the Voice? I heard a

EVE

[rising and running to him] Only think, snake has learnt to speak by listening to us. ADAM [delighted] Is it so? [He goes past her to the stone,

and fondles

the serpent],

THE SERPENT [responding affectionately] It Adam. EVE. But I have more wonderful news than

is

so,

that.

dear

Adam:

we need not live for ever. ADAM [dropping the snake's head in his excitement] What! Eve: do not play with me about this. If only there may be an end some day, and yet no end!

If

only

I

can be

relieved of the horror of having to endure myself for ever! If only the care of this terrible garden

on

to

some other gardener!

If

may

pass

only the sentinel set by

Back

Methuselah

to

599

the Voice can be relieved! If only the rest and sleep that enable after

many

me

to bear

it

from day

days into an eternal

my

to

day could grow an eternal sleep,

rest,

however long they may last. Only, there must be some end, some end: I am not strong enough to bear eternity. THE SERPENT. You need not live to see another summer; and yet there shall be no end. ADAM. That cannot be. THE SERPENT. It Can be. then

EVE.

could face

I

days,

It shall be.

THE SERPENT.

It

is.

me; and you

Kill

will find

You

snake in the garden tomorrow.

will

another

find

more

snakes than there are fingers on your hands. EVE.

I will

ADAM.

make

I tell

Adams, other Eves. you you must not make up stories about other

this.

cannot happen. THE SERPENT. I Can remember when you were yourself a It

thing that could not happen. Yet you are.

ADAM

[struck]

That must be

true.

[He

sits

down on

the

stone].

THE SERPENT. it

I will tell

Eve the

secret;

and she

will tell

to you.

ADAM. The secret! [He turns quickly towards the serpent, and in doing so puts his foot on something sharp]. Oh!

What is it? ADAM [rubbing his EVE.

briar.

And

foot]

A

nettles, too! I

thistle.

am

And

there, next to

it,

a

tired of pulling these things

up to keep the garden pleasant for us for ever. THE SERPENT. They do not grow very fast. They will not overrun the whole garden for a long time: not until you have laid down your burden and gone to sleep for ever. Why should you trouble yourself? Let the new

Adams

clear a place for themselves.

ADAM. That see,

is

very true.

You must

Eve, what a splendid thing

tell it

is

us your secret.

You

not to have to live

for ever.

EVE [throwing herself down discontentedly and plucking at the grass] That is so like a man. The moment you find we need not last for ever, you talk as if we were going

Back

600

to

Methuselah

end today. You must clear away some of those horrid things, or we shall be scratched and stung whenever we forget to look where we are stepping. ADAM. Oh yes, some of them, of course. But only some. I will clear them away tomorrow. THE SERPENT [laughs]VA ADAM. That is a funny noise to make. I like it. EVE. I do not. Why do you make it again? THE SERPENT. Adam has invented something new. He has invented tomorrow. You will invent things every day now that the burden of immortality is lifted from you. to

What is that? THE SERPENT. My new word for having to live for ever. EVE. The serpent has made a beautiful word for being. EVE. Immortality?

Living.

ADAM. Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention.

THE SERPENT. EVE. That

is

Procrastination.

a sweet word.

I

wish

THE SERPENT. That may come

I

too.

had a

serpent's tongue.

Everything

is

possible.

ADAM [springing up in sudden terror] Oh! EVE. What is the matter now? ADAM.

My

My

rest!

escape from

THE SERPENT. Death. That ADAM. There EVE,

is

life!

the word.

a terrible danger in this procrastination.

is

What danger?

ADAM. If I put off death until tomorrow, I shall never die. There is no such day as tomorrow, and never can be.

THE SERPENT.

I

am

very subtle; but

Man

is

deeper in his

I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them. ADAM. If I am to overtake death, I must appoint a real day, not a tomorrow. When shall I die? EVE. You may die when I have made another Adam. Not before. But then, as soon as you like. [She rises, and passing behind him, strolls off carelessly to the tree and leans

thought than

against

it,

stroking a ring of the snake].

ADAM. There need be no hurry even then. EVE. I see you will put it off until tomorrow.

Back

to

601

Methuselah

ADAM. And you? Will you die the moment you have made a new Eve? EVE. Why should I? Are you eager to be rid of me? Only just now you wanted me to sit still and never move lest I should stumble and die like the fawn. Now you no longer care.

ADAM. It does not matter so much now. EVE [angrily to the snake] This death that you have brought into the garden is an evil thing. He wants me to die. THE SERPENT [to Adam] Do you want her to die? ADAM. No. It is I who am to die. Eve must not die before me. I should be lonely. EVE. You could get one of the new Eves. ADAM. That is true. But they might not be quite the same. They could not: I feel sure of that. They would not have the same memories. They would be I want a word

—

for them.

THE SERPENT. ADAM. Yes: EVE.

Strangers.

that

When

is

a good hard word. Strangers.

there are

new Adams and new Eves we

We

shall

need each other. [She comes quickly behind him and turns up his face to

live in

her].

ADAM. of

a garden of strangers.

Do

shall

Adam. Never forget it. forget it? It is I who have thought

not forget that,

Why

should

I

it.

have thought of something. The fawn stumbled and fell and died. But you could come softly up behind me and [she suddenly pounces on his shoulders and throws him forward on his face] throw me down so that I should die. I should not dare to sleep if there were no reason why you should not make me die. ADAM [scrambling up in horror] Make you die!!! What a EVE.

I,

too,

frightful thought!

THE SERPENT. Kill, kill, kill, kill. That is the word. EVE. The new Adams and Eves might kill us. I shall not make them. [She sits on the rock and pulls him down beside her, clasping him to her with her right arm]. THE SERPENT. You must. For if you do not there will be an end.

ADAM. No: they

will

not

kill

us:

they will feel as

I do.

— Back

602

to

Methuselah

something against it. The Voice in the garden will tell them that they must not kill, as it tells me. THE SERPENT. The voice in the garden is your own voice. ADAM. It is; and it is not. It is something greater than me:

There

I

EVE.

am

is

only a part of

it.

The Voice does not

tell

me

not to

not want you to die before me.

make me feel ADAM [throwing

No

kill

you. Yet

voice

is

I

do

needdd to

that.

arm round her shoulder with an

his

Oh

ex-

any voice. There is something that holds us together, something that has no word THE SERPENT. Lovc. Love. Love. ADAM. That is too short a word for so long a thing. pression of anguish]

THE SERPENT

no: that

is

plain without

[Iaughs]\U

EVE [turning impatiently to the snake] That heart-biting sound again! Do not do it. Why do you do it? THE SERPENT. Love may be too long a word for so short a thing soon. But when it is short it will be very sweet. ADAM [ruminating] You puzzle me. My old trouble was heavy; but it was simple. These wonders that you promise to do may tangle up my being before they bring me the gift of death. I was troubled with the burden of eternal being; but I was not confused in my mind. If I did not

know

that

I

loved Eve, at least

I die}

not

know

that she

might cease to love me, and come to love some other

Adam

my

and desire

death.

Can you

find a

name

for

that knowledge?

THE SERPENT. Jealousy. Jealousy. Jealousy. ADAM. A hideous word. EVE [shaking him] Adam: you must not brood. You think too much.

ADAM

[angrily]

How

can

I

help brooding

has become uncertain? Anything tainty.

Life has

become

is

uncertain.

when

the future

better than uncer-

Love

Have you a word for this new misery? THE SERPENT. Fear. Fear. Fear. ADAM. Have you a remedy for it? THE SERPENT. Yes. Hope. Hope. Hope.

is

uncertain.

Back

to

Methuselah

603

ADAM. What is hope? THE SERPENT. As long as you do not know the future you do not know that it will not be happier than the past. That is hope. ADAM. It does not console me. Fear is stronger in me than hope, I must have certainty. [He rises threateningly]. Give it to me; or I will kill you when next I catch you asleep.

EVE [throwing her arms round the serpent] My beautiful snake. Oh no. How can you even think such a horror? ADAM. Fear will drive me to anything. The serpent gave me fear. Let it now give me certainty or go in fear of me. THE SERPENT. Bind the future by your will. Make a vow. ADAM. What is a vow? THE SERPENT. Choose a day for your death; and resolve to die on that day. Then death is no longer uncertain but certain. Let Eve vow to love you until your death. Then love will be no longer uncertain. ADAM. Yes: that is splendid: that will bind the future. EVE [displeased, turning away from the serpent] But it will destroy hope.

ADAM

[angrily]

ness

is

Be

silent,

woman. Hope

wicked. Certainty

is

is

wicked. Happi-

blessed.

THE SERPENT. What is wickcd? You have invented a word. ADAM. Whatever I fear to do is wicked. Listen to me, Eve; and you, snake, listen too, that your memory may hold my vow. I will live a thousand sets of the four seasons THE SERPENT. Ycars. Ycars. ADAM. I will live a thousand years; and then I will endure no more: I will die and take my rest. And I will love Eve all that time and no other woman. EVE. And if Adam keeps his vow I will love no other

man

he dies. THE SERPENT. You havc both invented marriage. And what he will be to you and not to any other woman is husband; and what you will be to him and not to any other man is

until

wife.

ADAM and

[instinctively

wife.

moving

his

hand towards

her]

Husband

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604

to Methuselah

EVE [slipping her hand into his] Wife and husband. THE SERPENT [laughs]V.l EVE [snatching herself loose from Adam] Do not make that odious noise,

ADAM.

Do

I tell

you.

not listen to her: the noise

good:

is

it

lightens

my

You are a jolly snake. But you have not made vow yet. What vow do you make? THE SERPENT. I make no vows. I take my chance. ADAM. Chance? What does that mean? heart.

THE SERPENT.

It

uncertainty.

It

tainty. If

I

mcans means

that

I

fear certainty as

that nothing

bind the future

I

you fear

certain but uncer-

is

my

bind

a

bind

will. If I

my

will I strangle creation.

EVE. Creation must not be strangled.

though

I

ADAM. Be will

I tell

you

I will create,

tear myself to pieces in the act.

both of you.

silent,

I

w

bind the future.

i 1 1

be delivered from fear. [To Eve]

We

I

have made our

vows; and if you must create, you shall create within the bonds of those vows. You shall not listen to that snake any more. Come [he seizes her by the hair to drag her away].

me

EVE. Let

ADAM

you

go,

[releasing her]

fool. It has not yet told

That

is

true.

What

is

me

the secret.

a fool?

do not know: the word came to me. It is what you forget and brood and are filled with fear. are

EVE.

I

when you

Let us listen to the snake.

ADAM. No: giving

and

I

am

afraid of

way under my

listen to

THE SERPENT

it.

feet

I feel as if

when

it

the ground were

speaks.

Do

you stay

it,

[laughs]\\\

ADAM

[brightening] That noise takes away fear. Funny. The snake and the woman are going to whisper secrets. [He chuckles and goes away slowly, laughing his first laugh],

EVE.

Now

the secret.

The

secret. [She sits

throws her arms round the serpent,

who

on the rock and begins whisper"

ing to her].

Eve's face lights up with intense interest, which increases until an expression of overwhelming repugnance

takes

its

place.

She buries her face

in

her hands.

Back

to

ACT

Methuselah

605

II

A

few centuries later. Morning. An oasis in Mesopotamia. Close at hand the end of a log house abuts on a kitchen

Adam

garden.

is

Eve

his right,

sits

on a stool

the doorway, spinning flax.

shadow of a

in the

Her

tree

by

wheel, which she turns by

a large disc of heavy wood, practically a fly-wheel. the opposite side of the garden is a thorn brake with a

hand,

At

On

digging in the middle of the garden.

is

passage through

it

barred by a hurdle.

The two are scantily and carelessly dressed in rough linen and leaves. They have lost their youth and grace; and Adam has an unkempt beard and jaggedly cut hair; but they are strong and in the prime of life. Adam looks worried, like a farmer. Eve, better humored (having given up worrying), sits and spins and thinks. A man's voice. Hallo, mother!

EVE [looking across the garden towards the hurdle] Here is

Cain.

ADAM

[He goes on digging

[uttering a grunt of disgust]lV.

without raising his head].

Cain kicks the hurdle out of the garden. In pose, voice, like.

He

bound

is

his

way, and strides into

and dress he

is

insistently

war*

equipped with huge spear and broad brass-

head with cloak with gold brooch

leather shield; his casque

is

a

tiger's

he wears a scarlet with the claws dangling; his feet are in sandals with brass ornaments; his shins are in brass bull's horns;

over a

lion's skin

greaves;

with

oil.

and To

quite-at-ease

he CAIN

is

his

bristling

his parents

military

moustache

glistens

he has the self-assertive, not'

manner of a revolted son who knows

that

not forgiven nor approved of. Adam] Still digging? Always dig, dig, dig. Stick-

[to

No progress! no advanced ideas! no adventures! What should I be if I had stuck to the digging you taught me? ADAM. What are you now, with your shield and spear, and ing in the old furrow.

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606

to

Methuselah

your brother's blood crying from the ground against you? CAIN. I am the first murderer: you are only the first man.

Anybody could be the first man: it is as easy as to be the first cabbage. To be the first murderer one must be a

man

of

spirit.

ADAM. Begone. Leave us in peace. The world is wide enough to keep us apart. EVE. Why do you want to drive him away? He is mine. I made him out of my own body. I want to see my

work sometimes. ADAM. You made Abel also. He killed Abel. Can you bear to look at him after that? CAIN. Whose fault was it that I killed Abel? Who invented killing? Did /? No: he invented it himself. I followed your teaching. I dug and dug and dug. I cleared away the thistles and briars. I ate the fruits of the earth. I lived in the sweat of my brow, as you do. I was a fool. But Abel was a discoverer, a man of ideas, of spirit: a true Progressive. He was the discoverer of blood. He was the inventor of killing. He found out that the fire of the sun could be brought down by a dewdrop. He invented the altar to keep the fire alive. He changed the beasts he killed into meat by the fire on the altar. He kept himself alive by eating meat. His meal cost him a day's glorious health-giving sport and an hour's amusing play with the fire. You learnt nothing from him: you drudged and drudged and drudged, and dug and dug and dug, and made me do the same. I envied his happifreedom.

ness, his

I

despised myself for not doing as he

did instead of what you did.

He became

so happy that

he shared his meal with the Voice that had whispered all his inventions to him. He said that the Voice was the voice of the

fire

made an

my

altar,

roots,

laughed

cooked

could cook could also consume the food on

fire that

the

that

fire

at

my

and

off'ered

fruit.

my

Useless:

me; and then came

and that the was true: I saw

his food,

eat. It

his

altar.

food on

Then it,

my

I,

grains,

nothing happened.

my

great idea:

too,

why

He not

Back

to Methuselah

kill

him

as

he

607

killed the beasts? I struck;

Then

and he

died,

gave up your old silly drudging ways, and lived as he had lived, by the chase, by the

just as they did.

killing,

and by the

I

fire.

Am

I

not better than you?

stronger, happier, freer?

ADAM. You are not stronger: you are shorter in the wind: you cannot endure. You have made the beasts afraid of us; and the snake has invented poison to protect herself against you. I fear you myself. If you take a step towards your mother with that spear of yours I will strike you with my spade as you struck Abel. EVE. He will not strike me. He loves me. ADAM. He loved his brother. But he killed him. CAIN. I do not want to kill women. I do not want to kill my mother. And for her sake I will not kill you, though I could send this spear through you without coming within reach of your spade. But for her, I could not resist the sport of trying to

kill

you, in spite of

my

fear that

me. I have striven with a boar and with a lion as to which of us should kill the other. I have striven with a man: spear to spear and shield to shield. It

you would

kill

but there is no joy like it. I call it fighting. has never fought has never lived. That is

is terrible;

He who

what has brought me to my mother today. ADAM. What have you to do with one another now? She is the creator, you the destroyer. CAIN. How can I destroy unless she creates? I want her to create more and more men: aye, and more and more women, that they may in turn create more men. I have imagined a glorious poem of many men, of more men than there are leaves on a thousand trees. I will divide them into two great hosts. One of them I will lead; and the other will be led by the man I fear most and desire to fight and kill most. And each host shall try to kill the other host. Think of that! all those multitudes of

men

fighting,

fighting,

killing,

killing!

The four

rivers

running with blood! The shouts of triumph! the howls of rage! the curses of despair! the shrieks of torment!

That

will

be

life

indeed:

life lived

to the very

marrow:

Back

608 burning, overwhelming

seen

heard

it,

felt

it,

life.

And

EVE.

I!

ADAM. Or

am

I

for you to

man who

Every

risked

it,

fool in the presence of the

will feel

it,

Methuselah

to

man who

a humbled

has.

be a mere convenience to

to

has not

make men

kill!

you fool. making of men

to kill you,

CAIN. Mother: the

is

your

right,

your

risk,

your agony, your glory, your triumph. You make my father here your mere convenience, as you call it, for that.

He

has to dig for you, sweat for you, plod for you,

ox who helps him to tear up the ground or the ass who carries his burdens for him. No woman shall

like the

make me

live

my

father's life. I will hunt; I will fight

and strive to the very bursting of my sinews. When I have slain the boar at the risk of my life, I will throw it to my woman to cook, and give her a morsel of it for her pains. She shall have no other food; and that will

make

her

my

have her for

Woman,

slave.

his

And

booty.

the

Man

man

that slays

me

shall

be the master of

shall

not her baby and her drudge.

Adam

throws darkly at Eve.

down

EVE. Are you tempted,

his spade,

and stands looking

Adam? Does

this

seem a

better

thing to you than love between us?

What does he know of love? Only when he has fought, when he has faced terror and death, when he

CAIN.

has striven to the spending of the

last

rally

of his

can he know what it is to rest in love in the arms of a woman. Ask that woman whom you made, who is also my wife, whether she would have me as I was in the days when I followed the ways of Adam, and was a digger and a drudge? EVE [angrily throwing down her distaff] What! You dare strength,

come

here boasting about that good-for-nothing Lua, the

worst of daughters and the worst of wives! master!

own

You

are

slave than

You

her

Adam's ox or your

when you have slain the boar your life, you will throw her a morsel of for her pains! Ha! Poor wretch: do you think I do not sheepdog. Forsooth,

at the risk of it

more her

Back

to

609

Methuselah

and know you, better than that? Do you risk when you trap the ermine and the sable and the blue fox to hang on her lazy shoulders and make her look more like an animal than a woman? When you

know your

her,

life

have to snare the

much

little

tender birds because

it

is

too

chew honest food, how much warrior do you feel then? You slay the tiger

trouble for her to

of a great

at the risk of

your

life;

but

who

gets the striped skin

you have run that risk for? She takes it to lie on, and flings you the carrion flesh you cannot eat. You fight because you think that your fighting makes her admire and desire you. Fool: she makes you fight because you bring her the ornaments and the treasures of those you have slain, and because she is courted and propitiated with power and gold by the people who fear you. You say that I make a mere convenience of Adam: / who spin and keep the house, and bear and rear children, and am a woman and not a pet animal to please men and prey on them! What are you, you poor slave of a painted face and a bundle of skunk's fur? You were a man-child when I bore you. Lua was a woman-child when I bore her. What have you made of yourselves? CAIN [letting his spear fall into the crook of his shield arm, and twirling his moustache] There is something higher than man. There is hero and superman. EVE. Superman! You are no superman: you are Anti-Man: you are to other men what the stoat is to the rabbit; and she is to you what the leech is to the stoat. You despise your father; but when he dies the world will be the richer because he lived. When you die, men will say, "He was a great warrior; but it would have been better for the world if he had never been born." And of Lua they will say nothing; but CAIN. She

is

when

they think of her they will

a better sort of

Lua nagged

me

woman

spit.

to live with than you.

you are nagging, and as you nag at Adam, I would beat her black and blue from head to foot. I have done it too, slave as you say I am. EVE. Yes, because she looked at another man. And then you grovelled at her feet, and cried, and begged her to If

at

as

Back

610 forgive you, and were ten times

to

more her

Methuselah slave than

and she, when she had finished screaming and the pain went off a little, she forgave you, did she not? CAIN. She loved me more than ever. That is the true ever;

nature of

woman.

EVE [now pitying him maternally] Love! You

You

call

neither

that the nature of

man nor woman

woman!

nor love nor

call that love!

My life.

boy: this

is

You have no

your bones nor sap in your flesh. and swings it muscularly]. EVE. Yes: you have to twirl a stick to feel your strength: you cannot taste life without making it bitter and boiling hot: you cannot love Lua until her face is painted, nor feel the natural warmth of her flesh until you have stuck real strength in

CAIN. Ha! [he seizes his spear

on

You

can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight a

squirrel's

fur

it.

or a death.

ADAM. Enough said. Let the boy alone. CAIN. Boy! Ha! ha! EVE [to Adam] You think, perhaps, that his way of be better than yours after

all.

You

are

still

life

may

tempted. Well,

you pamper me as he pampers his woman? Will you tigers kill and bears until I have a heap of their skins to lounge on? Shall I paint my face and let my arms waste into pretty softness, and eat partridges and doves, and the flesh of kids whose milk you will steal for me? ADAM. You are hard enough to bear with as you are. Stay as you are; and I will stay as I am. CAIN. You neither of you know anything about life. You are simple country folk. You are the nurses and valets of the oxen and dogs and asses you have tamed to work for you. I can raise you out of that. I have a plan. Why not tame men and women to work for us? Why not bring them up from childhood never to know any other lot, so that they may believe that we are gods, and that they will

are here only to

ADAM

make

[impressed] That

is

life

glorious for us?

a great thought, certainly.

Back

to

Methuselah

61

1

EVE [contemptuously] Great thought! ADAM. Well, as the serpent used to say, why not? EVE. Because I would not have such wretches in my house. Because I hate creatures with two heads, or with withered limbs, or that are distorted and perverted and unnatural. I have told Cain already that he is not a man and that Lua is not a woman: they are monsters. And now you want to make still more unnatural monsters, so that you may be utterly lazy and worthless, and that your tamed human animals may find work a blasting curse. A fine dream, truly! [To Cain] Your father is a fool skin deep; but you are a fool to your very marrow; and your baggage of a wife is worse. ADAM. Why am I a fool? How am I a greater fool than you? EVE. You said there would be no killing because the Voice would tell our children that they must not kill. Why did it not tell Cain that? CAIN.

It

did; but

I

am

not a child to be afraid of a Voice.

was nothing but my brother's keeper. It found that I was myself, and that it was for Abel to be himself also, and look to himself. He was not my keeper any more than I was his: why did he not kill me? There was no more to prevent him than there was to prevent me: it was man to man; and I won. I was the first conqueror. ADAM. What did the Voice say to you when you thought

The Voice thought

all

I

that?

Why, it gave me right. It said that my deed was as mark on me, a burnt-in mark such as Abel put on his

CAIN.

a

sheep, that no

man

unslain, whilst the

men who

should slay me.

And

here

cowards who have never

I

stand

slain,

the

are content to be their brothers' keepers instead

of their masters, are despised and rejected, and slain

He who bears the brand of Cain shall rule When he falls, he shall be avenged sevenfold: has said it; so beware how you plot against

like rabbits.

the earth. the Voice

me, you and all the rest. ADAM. Cease your boasting and

bullying,

and

tell

the truth.

Back

612

to

Methuselah

Does not the Voice tell you that as no man dare you for murdering your brother, you ought to

slay slay

yourself? CAIN. No. ADAM. Then there you are lying.

am

is

no such thing

as divine justice, unless

There is divine justice. For the Voice tells me that I must offer myself to every man to be killed if he can kill me. Without danger I cannot be great. That is how I pay for Abel's blood. Danger and fear follow my steps everywhere. Without them courage would have no sense. And it is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crim-^ son splendor. ADAM [picking up his spade and preparing to dig again] CAIN.

I

Take

not lying:

I

dare

all

truths.

yourself off then. This splendid

life

of yours does

last for a thousand years; and I must last for a thousand years. When you fighters do not get killed in fighting one another or fighting the beasts, you die from

not

mere

evil in yourselves.

man's

flesh:

it

grows

Your

like a

grow

flesh ceases to

fungus on a

tree.

like

Instead of

breathing you sneeze, or cough up your insides, and

wither and perish.

Your bowels become

falls

from you; your

you

die before

rotten;

your hair

teeth blacken and drop out; and your time, not because you will, but because you must. I will dig, and live. CAIN. And pray, what use is this thousand years of life to you, you old vegetable? Do you dig any better because you have been digging for hundreds of years? I have not lived ae long as you; but I know all there is to be known of the craft of digging. By quitting it I have set myself free to learn nobler crafts of which you know nothing. I know the craft of fighting and of hunting: in a word, the craft of killing. What certainty have you of your thousand years? I could kill both of you; and you could no more defend yourselves than a couple of sheep. I

spare you; but others

may

kill

you.

Why

not live

make room for others? Why, I! that know many more crafts than either of you, I am tired of myself when I was not fighting or hunting.

bravely, and die early and

—

Back

Methuselah

to

613

Sooner than face a thousand years of it kill myself, as the Voice sometimes tempts

I

me

should to

do

already.

ADAM. Liar: you denied just now that it called on you to pay for Abel's life with your own. CAIN. The Voice does not speak to me as it does to you, I am a man: you are only a grown-up child. One does not speak to a child as to a man. And a man does not listen and tremble in silence. He replies: he makes the Voice respect him: in the end he dictates what the Voice shall say.

ADAM.

May

your tongue be accurst for such blasphemy! EVE. Keep a guard on your own tongue; and do not curse my son. It was Lilith who did wrong when she shared the labor of creation so unequally between man and wife. If you, Cain, had had the trouble of making Abel, or had had to make another man to replace him when he was gone, you would not have killed him: you would have risked your own life to save his. That is why all this empty talk of yours, which tempted Adam just now when he threw down his spade and listened to you for a while, went by me like foul wind that has passed over a dead body. That is why there is enmity between Woman the creator and Man the destroyer. I know you: I am your mother. You are idle: you are selfish. It is long and hard and painful to create life: it is short and easy to steal the life others have made. When you dug, you made the earth live and bring forth as I live and bring forth.

from CAIN.

my my

It

was for that

the travail of

that Lilith set

women, not

you

free

for theft and murder.

for it! I can make better use of time than to play the husband to the clay beneath

The Devil thank her feet.

ADAM. Devil? What new word is that? CAIN. Hearken to me, old fool. I have never in my soul listened willingly when you have told me of the Voice that whispers to you. There must be two Voices: one that gulls and despises you, and another that trusts and respects me, I call yours the Devil. Mine I call the Voice of God.

-

.

614

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Back

to

Methuselah

to me.

And

615

man

as the

nobler than the ox,

is

let my enemy eat the ox; and then and slay eat him. ADAM. Monster! You hear this, Eve? EVE. So that is what comes of turning your face

some day

clean clear heavens! Man-eating! Child-eating! is

shall

I

I

will

to the

For

that

it would come to, just as it came to lambs and when Abel began with sheep and goats. You are a

what

kids

poor

silly

creature after

these thoughts: ing:

I!

I!

all.

who have

Do you

think

I

never have

the labor of the child-bear-

who have the drudgery of preparing the food? I moment that perhaps this strong brave mine, who could imagine something better, and

thought for a

son of

could desire what he imagined, might also be able to

what he desired until he created it. And all that comes of it is that he wants to be a bear and eat children. Even a bear would not eat a man if it could get honey instead. CAIN. I do not want to be a bear. I do not want to eat children. I do not know what I want, except that I want to be something higher and nobler than this stupid old digger whom Lilith made to help you to bring me into the world, and whom you despise now that he has will

served your turn.

ADAM

my

[in sullen rage] I

spade, can split

have half a mind to show you that your undutiful head open, in spite

of your spear. CAIN. Undutiful!

Ha! ha! [Flourishing

his spear]

Try

it,

old

everybody's father. Try a taste of fighting. EVE. Peace, peace, you two fools. Sit

down and be

quiet;

and listen to me. [Adam, with a weary shrug, throws down his spade. Cain, with a laughing one, throws down his shield

and

know which

spear.

of you

Both

satisfies

sit

me

digging, or he with his dirty

on the ground]. I hardly least, you with your dirty )

.lling.

I

cannot think

it

was for either of these cheap ways of life that Lilith set you free. [To Adam] You dig roots and coax grains out of the earth: why do you not draw down a divine sustenance from the skies? He steals and kills for his

Back

616 food; and makes up idle

up

dresses

poems of

to

Methuselah

his terror-ridden life with fine

words and

disease-ridden body with fine clothes, so that

derer and thief. All you men, except only

my

his

men may

and honor him instead of cursing him

glorify

and

after death;

life

as

Adam,

mur-

are

my

my sons' sons' sons: you all me: you all shew off before me: all your little wisdoms and accomplishments are trotted out before mother Eve. The diggers come: the fighters and killers come: they are both very dull; for they either sons, or

come

sons' sons, or

to see

complain

me

to

of the last harvest, or boast to

the last fight; and one harvest

is

the last fight only a repetition of the

heard

it

all

They

a thousand times.

me

just like another,

Oh,

first.

tell

me

I

of

and have

too of their

last-born: the clever thing the darling child said yester-

day, and

how much more wonderful

or witty or quaint

it is than any child that ever was born before. And I have to pretend to be surprised, delighted, interested; though the last child is like the first, and has said and done nothing that did not delight Adam and me when you and Abel said it. For you were the first children in the world, and filled us with such wonder and delight as no couple can ever again feel while the world lasts. When I can bear no more, I go to our old garden, that is now a mass of nettles and thistles, in the hope of finding the serpent to talk to. But you have made the serpent our enemy: she has left the garden, or is dead: I never see her now. So I have to come back and listen to Adam

saying the same thing for the ten-thousandth time, or to receive a visit

from the

last

great-great-grandson

has grown up and wants to impress portance. Oh,

is

it

dreary, dreary!

nearly seven hundred years of

You

CAIN. Poor mother! everything. There

ADAM

[to

is

find nothing better to

CAIN.

Of what?

is

with his imthere

is

yet

to endure.

see, life is too long.

One

tires

of

new under the sun. do you live on, if you can do than complain? nothing

Eve, grumpily]

EVE. Because there

it

me And

who

still

Why

hope.

Back EVE.

to

Methuselah

Of

coming

617

dreams and mine. Of newly created things. Of better things. My sons and my sons' sons are not all diggers and fighters. Some of them will neither dig nor fight: they are more useless than either of you: they are weaklings and cowards: they are vain; yet they are dirty and will not take the trouble to cut their hair. They borrow and never pay; but one gives them what they want, because they tell beautiful lies in beautiful words. They can remember their dreams. They can dream without sleeping. They have not will enough to create instead of dreaming; but the serpent said that every dream could be willed into creation by those strong enough to believe in it. There are others who cut reeds of different lengths and blow through them, making lovely patterns of sound in the air; and some of them can weave the patterns together, sounding three reeds at the same time, and raising my soul to things for which I have no words. And others make little mammoths out of clay, or make faces appear on flat stones, and ask me to create women for them with such faces. I have watched those faces and willed; and then I have made a woman-child that has grown up quite like them. And others think of numbers without having to count on their fingers, and watch the sky at night, and give names to the stars, and can foretell when the

true of your

the sun will be covered with a black saucepan

lid.

And

who made this wheel for me which has much labor. And there is Enoch, who walks

Tubal,

there

is

saved

me

so

on the hills, and hears the Voice continually, and has given up his will to do the will of the Voice, and has some of the Voice's greatness. When they come, there is always some new wonder, or some new hope: something to live for. They never want to die, because they are always learning and always creating either things or wisdom, or at least dreaming of them. And then you, Cain, come to me with your stupid fighting and destroying, and your foolish boasting; and you want me to tell you that it is all splendid, and that you are heroic, and that nothing but death or the dread of death makes life

— Back

618

worth

Away

living.

Methuselah

to

with you, naughty child; and do you,

Adam, go on with your work and

not waste your time

listening to him.

CAIN.

EVE

am

I

not, perhaps, very clever; but

[interrupting him] Perhaps not; but

boast of that.

For

CAIN.

me

all

It is

no

credit to you.

mother,

that,

that death plays

do not begin to

I

have an

part in

its

life.

instinct

which

me

Tell

tells

this:

who

distaff.

Both

Invented death?

Adam shew the CAIN.

What

Eve drops her

springs to his feet.

greatest consternation, is

you both?

the matter with

ADAM. Boy: you have asked us a EVE.

You

CAIN.

Murder

whom

I

is

slay

not death.

You know what

would

if

die

yet I shall die.

slain,

who

terrible question.

invented murder. Let that be enough for you.

I

Who

mean. Those

I

spared them. If put this upon

I

am

me?

not say,

I

invented death?

ADAM. Be reasonable, boy. Could you bear to You think you could, because you know

live for

that

never have to

make your thought good. But

known what

is

it

to sit

eternity, of immorality.

escape! to be

ever?

you I

will

have

and brood under the terror of Think of it, man: to have no

Adam, Adam, Adam through more days

than there are grains of sand by the two rivers, and then be as far from the end as ever! I, who have so

much

in

me

that I hate

to your parents,

who

and long

to cast off!

Be thankful

enabled you to hand on your

burden to new and better men, and won for you an eternal rest; for it was we who invented death. CAIN [rising] You did well: I, too, do not want to live for ever. But if you invented death, why do you blame me,

who am

a minister of death?

do not blame you. Go in peace. Leave me to my digging, and your mother to her spinning. CAIN. Well, I will leave you to it, though I have shewn you a better way. [He picks up his shield and spear]. I will go back to my brave warrior friends and their splendid women. [He strides to the thorn brake]. When Adam

ADAM.

I

Back

to

Methuselah

619

delved and Eve span, where was then the gentle

man?

[He goes away roaring with laughter, which ceases as he cries from the distance] Goodbye, mother. ADAM [grumbling] He might have put the hurdle back, lazy hound! [He replaces the hurdle across the passage]. EVE. Through him and his like, death is gaining on life. Already most of our grandchildren die before they have

know how

sense enough to

ADAM.

No

to live.

matter. [He spits on his hands,

spade again]. Life

to dig.

and takes up

the

long enough to learn to dig,

still

making

short as they are

EVE [musing] Yes,

is

it.

And

to fight.

But

is it

long enough

for the other things, the great things? Will they live long

enough to eat manna? ADAM. What is manna? EVE. Food drawn down from heaven, made out of the air, not dug dirtily from the earth. Will they learn all the ways of all the stars in their little time? It took Enoch two hundred years to learn to interpret the will of the Voice. When he was a mere child of eighty, his babyish attempts to understand the Voice were more dangerous than the wrath of Cain.

If

they shorten their

lives,

they

and kill and die; and their baby Enochs will tell them that it is the will of the Voice that they should dig and fight and kill and die for will

dig

and

fight

ever.

ADAM.

If

they are lazy and have a will towards death

cannot help not, let

EVE.

it.

them

I will live

die

my

thousand years:

if

I

they will

and be damned.

Damned? What

is

that?

ADAM. The state of them that love death more than life. Go on with your spinning; and do not sit there idle while I

am

straining

my

muscles for you.

EVE [slowly taking up her distaff] If you were not a fool you would find something better for both of us to live by than this spinning and digging. ADAM. Go on with your work, I tell you; or you shall go without bread. EVE.

Man

need not always

live

by bread alone. There

is

Back to Methuselah

620

We

do not yet know what it is; but some day we shall find out; and then we will live on that alone; and there shall be no more digging nor spinning, nor fighting nor killing. She spins resignedly; he digs impatiently. something

else.

To H. K.

Ayliff

Back

Ayliff

was producer of the

first

English performances of

to Methuselah.

Parknasilla.

Dear

No

Kenmare. Co. Kerry. 29th Aug. 1923.

Ayliff

property head that the clumsiest pantomime property

man

could perpetrate could be half so fatal

Evans's torso offering

itself as

as

Edith

the voice that breathed oer

Eden.

You must choose one)

get an artist (or get Sir to design

Whitworth Wallis

to

a very slender snake's head and

neck to rise out of the Johnswort and quiver there while Edith, sunk in the cut with her head just above the level of the stage, and hidden by the Johnswort, speaks the lines. She must stand on something resonant, not on anything solid, and tick out her words with deadly distinctness in a tone that suggests a whisper, but

isnt.

^Xf.U.

The hood may be

practicable or

may

not.

The

serpents

neck should be vibrant, not rigid. It is impossible to say more without experiments on the spot, and a real artist doing the design and coloring and lighting. If I had known Edith was to be in it I would have written in a proper part for her. Why dont you make her play the Envoy's wife? she would lift it to a leading part at once. Anybody can play the oracle. She is going to play Lady Utterword in Heartbreak House, I hope. ever

G.B.S.

To

A

the Editor of

The Weekly Westminster

discussion in the letters

column on

Shaw intended to satirize playwright's own response in

the

means of sexual Beginning

reproduction

in In the

led to the

the issue of 5 April

1924. Sir,

—

Eve's wry face

is

simply a criticism of the method of

reproduction, which offends her sense of

and decency. Making lity

all

of civilised prudery,

human

dignity

possible allowance for the artificiait

remains true that

if

the extra-

which makes reproduction so irresistible could be dissociated from a physical procedure which is common to mankind and the lower forms of evolutionary creation, we should no longer be so ashamed of it that no sober person can be ordinary emotion and intensification of

induced to face

it

life

in the presence of a third party.

G. Bernard Shaw

To

T. E. Lawrence ("of Arabia")

Ex-colonel Lawrence (as

H. Ross") had just been discovered by the newspapers as a recruit in the R.A.F., which in the aftermath of the publicity felt compelled to discharge him. He was still dubious about publishing his masterpiece. Seven Pillars of Wisdom, and G.B.S. was pressing him to use his unexpected leisure to prepare it for publication. Lawrence did so, but only after he enlisted again as a recruit, hiding this time in the Army as Private T. E. Shaw. *7.

Adelphi Terrace, London 4 January 1923 10,

WC

2

*

Dear Lawrence must add, all idiots, you greatly exaggerate your power of moulding the universe to your personal convictions. You have just had a crushing demon-

Like

all

heroes, and, I

stration of the utter impossibility of hiding or disguising

the monster you have created.

It is

useless to protest that

not your real name. That will not save you. be registered as Higg the son of Snell or Brian de Bois Guilbert or anything else; and if you had only stuck to it or else kept quiet, you might be Higg or Brian

Lawrence

is

You may

But you masqueraded as Lawrence and didnt keep quiet; and now Lawrence you will be to the end of your days, and thereafter to the end of what we call modern history. Lawrence may be as great a nuisance to you sometimes as G.B.S. is to me, or as Frankenstein found the man he had manufactured; but you created him, and must now

still.

put up with him as best you can. As to the book, bear two things in mind about me. I

am

First,

an old and hardened professional; and you are

still

624

Letter to T. E. Lawrence

apparently a palpitating amateur in literature, wondering

whether your first MS is good enough to be published, and whether you have a style or not. Second, I am entitled to

a reasonable construction; and when I say, as I do, that the work must be published unabridged I do not mean that it shall be published with the passages which would force certain people either to take an action against you or throw up their jobs. The publisher would take jolly good care ot that if you were careless about it. But these passages are few, and can be omitted or paraphrased without injury or misrepresentation.

As

to style,

what have you

to

do with such

dilettanti

more than I have? You have something to and you say it as accurately and vividly as you can; and when you have done that you do not go fooling with your statement with the notion that if you do it over again five or six times you will do it five or six times better. You get it set up, and correct its inevitable slips in proof. Then you get a revise and go over your corrections to see that they fit in properly and that you have not dropped one stitch in mending another. Then you pass for press; and there you are. The result has a certain melody and a certain mannerism which is your style, of which you are no more aware than you are of the taste of the water that is always in your mouth. You can, however, try an experiment. Copy out half a page of the work of some other man, and you will find your hand so rebelling against his particular melody and mannerism that you will have to look at the rubbish, any say;

original after every second or third

word

to prevent your-

self from getting off his track on to your own. The moment you are conscious of style in your own work, you are quoting or imitating or tom-fooling in some way or other. So much for style. Now as to the book just as it is. You will no more be

able to get rid of

it,

or to play about with

it,

than with

It is another Frankenstein monster; and you must make up your mind to do the will of Allah, in whose hand you were only a pen. You say that to publish anything now might look as though you were using the R.A.F.

Lawrence.

Letter to T. E. Lawrence

625

as an advertizing stunt. Considering that

you have already used the whole Arab race and the New Testament and the entire armies of all the countries engaged in the war to advertize yourself (since you take that view of it), I do not see why you should have a sudden fit of the bashfulness of the lady in reduced circumstances laces in the street

who

but hoped nobody heard her.

cried

A

long

deceased friend of mine, a parson, once told a drunken carpenter that there was once a carpenter who gave his life to

save him. "If so," replied the reprobate, "you

bet that he did

it

to get his

to the limelight. I

am

name

up."

You must

may

get used

naturally a pitiably nervous, timid

man, born with a whole plume of white feathers; but nowadays this only gives a zest to the fun of swanking at every opportunity. If you read my works with the attention they deserve they would have cured you of this misplaced modesty, which is precisely what makes Rahab assure you that she is only a clergyman's daughter. The officer who saw a first rate advertisement for the R.A.F. in your enlistment shewed a much finer appreciation of the situation. this

And

the people have their rights

too,

in

matter. They want you to appear always in glory,

crying, "This

is

I,

Lawrence, Prince of Mecca!"

To

live

under a cloud is to defame God. Moral: do your duty by the book; and arrange for its publication at once. It will not bounce out in five minutes, you know. You have the whole publishing world at your feet, as keen as Constables, who have perhaps more capital than Cape. Subject to that limitation you can choose where you will. The other day Sidney Webb stayed with me for a week end; I put the book into his hand and said "Read a couple of pages of that and tell me how it strikes you." As he reads a book almost as fast as he can turn the pages, he took quite a large dose in ten minutes, and then said "George Borrow not that I ever read George Borrow." *'What do you mean by that?" said I. "He describes every blade of grass he walked over" said Webb. I told Mrs Webb that there was something in it about her nephew Meinertz-

—

626

Letter to T. E.

Lawrence

it; but she gave me his South African dossier. Funny, your meeting at the Colonial

hagen. She did not find

Office!

Forgive the length of this; but as you never think unless you are down with dysentery in an Arab tent with the thermometer 100° above the temperature of hell, I must

do your thinking for you. That a

soldier

stops

thinking

is

the worst of the

instinctively.

wouldn't be a soldier. With which gibe, next

Army:

he didnt he farewell until your If

folly.

Ever G.B.S.

To

Charles Graves

4,

Whitehall Court

( 1

30) London, S.W.I

14th December, 1929

My dear Charles My attendance at

your wedding, or at anybody's wedding, is out of the question. I have within the last week or so stoutly absented myself from similar ceremonies of such pressing importance that if I made an exception in your case I could not look

some of

my

best friends in the face

again.

Besides, I have not the proper clothes

—on

purpose.

have ascertained that a correct outfit at my tailors •would cost me fifteen guineas; and it would be of no use to me subsequently, as I never dress correctly in daylight. But it would be of considerable use to you, as you earn your living by going into society. Therefore, as I suppose I ought to give you a wedding present, it is clear that the sensible solution of our problem is to give you the suit in which I should have graced your nuptials if I were a normal person. You will therefore hand the enclosed cheque to your tailor and order him to do the best he can for you to that amount. I

And

if

there

is

a

list

of presents see to

entered as "Bernard Shaw:

an exhibition of presents the I

suit

that I

am

tailor will lend

is

you a dummy.

celebrate the passing of your youth and irresponsibility

with a melancholy shake-hands.

I

you can assure her that any other disappointment after a week or

As for

it

of clothes." If there

it,

for you,

it

is

am sorry for Peggy; but man would be an equal

so.

too late to run

away now. You

are

Charles. faithfully

G. Bernard Shaw

To Frank

When

Harris

"G.B.S." was drama

critic on the Saturday Review, was the notorious Frank Harris. Harris had since fallen on evil days. He had tried to recoup his fortunes with biographical sketches and his almost unprint^ able My Life and Loves, and finally with a full-length life of Shaw, which Shaw, knowing Harris to be poor and ill^

editor

his

cooperated

completion^

in bringing to

London, 24th June, 1930

Dear Frank Harris, First,

can

O

Biographer, get

nothing

learn

it

your

about

from a mere record of

clear in your sitter

mind

(or

that

you

Biograph^e)

You

have no such record in the case of Shakespear, and a pretty full one for a few years in the case of Pepys: but you know much more about Shakespear than about Pepys. The explanahis copulations.

between the parties in copulation is It can be irresistibly desired and rapturously executed between persons who could not endure one another for a day in any other relation. If I were to tell you every such adventure that I have enjoyed you would be none the wiser as to my personal, nor even as to my sexual history. You would know only what you already know: that I am a human being. If you have any doubts as to my normal virility, dismiss them from your mind. I was not impotent: I was not sterile; I was not homosexual; and I was extremely, though not promiscution

is

that the relation

not a personal relation.

ously susceptible.

Also to

I

was

me) of

from the neurosis (as

entirely free

Original Sin.

course with delinquency.

I

I

it

seems

never associated sexual interit always with delight,

associated

and had no scruples nor remorses nor misgivings of

Letter to Frank Harris

conscience. tive

Of course

I

had

ones too, about getting

letting

ing

629

them

my

scruples,

women

get themselves into

friends;

and

I

passion just as intellect

and

effectively inhibit

into trouble (or rather

with

it

me) or cuckold-

understand that chastity can be a is a passion; but St Paul's was to

me

always a pathological case. Sexual experience seemed a necessary completion of human growth; and I was not attracted by virgins as such. I preferred women who knew

what they were doing. As I have told you, my corporeal adventures began wheit I was twenty-nine. But it would be a prodigious mistake to take that as the date of the beginning of

Do

not

misunderstand

this:

I

my

sexual

life.

was perfectly continent

except for the involuntary incontinences of dreamland,

which were very unfrequent. But as between Oscar Wilde, who gave 16 as the age at which sex begins, and Rousseau, who declared that his blood boiled with sensuality from his birth (but wept when Madame de Warens initiated him) my experience confirms Rousseau and is amazed at Wilde. Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, so I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my overwhelming imagination in telling myself stories about

women.

young people should be, a votary of the Uranian Venus. I was steeped in romantic music from my childhood. I knew all the pictures and statues in the National Gallery of Ireland (a very good one) by heart, I

I

was, as

all

read everything

I

could lay

my

hands on.

Dumas

pere

made French history like an opera by Meyerbeer for me. From our cottage on Dalkey Hill I contemplated an eternal Shelleyan vision of sea, sky and mountain. Real

life

only a squalid interruption to an imaginary paradise.

I

was was

The Uranian Venus was beautiful. The difficulty about the Uranian Venus is that though she saves you from squalid debaucheries and enables you to prolong your physical virginity long after your adolescence, she may sterilise you by giving you imaginary amours on the plains of heaven with goddesses and angels and even devils so enchanting that they spoil you for real women or if you are a woman for real men. You beoverfed on honey dew.

—

—

Letter to Frank Harris

630

come inhuman through a of voluptuousness. bachelor, an old

surfeit of

You end

maid

as

an

beauty and an excess

ascetic, a saint,

(in short, a celibate)

an old

because, like

Heine, you cannot ravish the Venus de Milo or be ravished by the Hermes of Praxiteles. Your love poems are like Shelley's Epipsychidion, irritating to terre a terre sensual

women, who know

once that you are making them palatable by pretending they are something that they are not, and cannot stand comparison with. Now you know how I lived, a continent virgin, until I was 29, and ran away even when the handkerchief was thrown me. From that time until my marriage there was always

some lady

my

at

and I tried all the experiments and learned what there was to be learnt from them. They were "all for love"; for I had no spare money: I earned enough to keep me on a second floor, and took the rest out, not in money, but in freedom to preach Socialism. When at last I could afford to dress presentably I soon became accustomed to find women falling in love with me. I did not need to pursue women: I was pursued by them. Here again do not jump at conclusions. All the pursuers did not want sexual intercourse. They wanted company and friendship. Some were happily married, and were affectionately appreciative of my understanding that sex was barred. Some were prepared to buy friendship with pleasure, having made up their minds that men were made that way. Some were sexual geniuses, quite unbearable in any other capacity. No two cases were alike: William Morris's dictum "that all taste alike" was not, as Longfellow puts it, "spoken of the soul." I found sex hopeless as a basis for permanent relations, and never dreamt of marriage in connection with it. I put everything else before it, and never refused or broke an engagement to speak on Socialism to pass a gallant evening. I liked sexual intercourse because of its amazing power of producing a celestial flood of emotion and exaltation of existence which, however momentary, gave me a sample of what may one day be the normal state of being for mankind in intellectual ecstasy, I always gave the wildest at

disposal,

Letter to

Frank Harris

63

expression to this in a torrent of words, partly because I felt it

due to the

woman

to

know what

I felt in

her arms,

and partly because I wanted her to share it. But except perhaps on one occasion I never felt quite convinced that I

had carried the lady more than half as far as she had carried me: the capacity for it varies like any other capacity. I remember one woman who had a sort of affectionate worship for me, explaining that she had to leave her husband because sexual intercourse felt as she put it "like someone sticking a finger into my eye." Between her and the heroine of my first adventure, who was sexually insatiable, there is an enormous range of sensation; and the range of celestial exaltation must be still greater. When I married I was too experienced to make the frightful mistake of simply setting up a permanent whore; nor was my wife making the complementary mistake. There was nothing whatever to prevent us from satisfying our sexual needs without paying that price for it; and it was for other considerations that we became man and wife. In permanence and seriousness my consummated love affairs count for nothing beside the ones that were either unconsummated or ended by discarding that relation. Do not forget that all marriages are different, and that a marriage between two young people followed by parentage cannot be lumped in with a childless partnership between two middle-aged people who have passed the age at which it is safe to bear a first child. And now, no romance and above all no pornography. G.B.S.

To Mabel Shaw

A

year after G.B.S. wrote the following letter he told Nancy Astor (12 May 1930) that he had invited to lunch "a certain Miss Mabel Shaw (no relation), a woman with a craze for self-torture,

who broke

off

her engagement with

a clergyman (he died of it) to bury herself in the wilds of Africa and lead negro children to Christ. She has a very graphic pen; and some of her letters were shewn to me. She ." Not long has come home on a missionary-furlough. .

.

in South Africa; and when was prolonged because Charlotte was injured in

afterward G.B.S. was visiting the

visit

an auto accident, he used his enforced leisure to write The Black Girl, which appears to owe much of its inspiration to Mabel Shaw. Margaret Macmillan administered an innovative and ficient nursery school program.

e/-

Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts 30 January 1928

Dear Miss Shaw

A

shewn me some of your letters, and found them interesting to let you know thought you qualified to take up literature as

friend of yours has

asked

me

whether

—

I

as

—

I

a profession.

As

far as

mere

decidedly Yes.

literary faculty

You

is

concerned

I

should say

have evidently no difficulty in putting

into writing anything

you want

to say or describe,

and

in

such a way that the reader reads willingly and expectantly.

No more

than

this is required of the greatest

authors as

professional qualification.

depends on what you have to say as well as on how you say it. For instance, of Bunyan's

But success

in literature

Letter to

Mabel ShaW

633

two romances, The Pilgrim's Progress and The Holy War, the second

is,

if

anything,

more

skilfully written

than the

hand being more experienced. But the first is uniby people whose tastes rise above the football page of the evening paper; and the second ends by making theology ridiculous and unreadable even to a first,

the

versally readable

specialist of

Bunyan's

Whether you

own

persuasion.

enough of a freethinker to be successyour own sect I cannot say. We are none of us complete freethinkers (least of all sometimes the professed ones) we all have our superstitions and our complexes, the difference between a rather mad writer like Saint Paul and a rather sane one like Voltaire being only one of degree. One can only say that it would have been better for the world if Paul had never been born, and that it would have been a great misfortune a religious misfortune to have missed Voltaire, who at least loved justice and did mercy and walked humbly with his God, and believed that no further theology was required of him. Also he certainly loved mercy and, as far as his temperament would let him, tried to do justly. That is why he is still so readable. Besides, as the wickednesses which he exposed and which he called on the world's conscience to renounce were too frightful to be contemplated without some sort of anaesthetic, he used his sense of fun to make people come to scoff, knowing that that was the only chance of getting them to remain to pray. Now it is clear from what you have written that you are one of the would-be saviors, like Bunyan and Voltaire. Having found happiness with God (so to speak) you wish to bring others to him. Jesus, who was strongly anti-missionary, as his warning about the tares and the wheat shews, would probably tell you to mind your own business and suffer little children to find their own way to God even if it were a black way; but he certainly would not demur to your describing your own pilgrimage and testifying that you had found God in your own white way. That is, if he had any patience with you after discovering that you had set up in the virgin forest the horrible emblem of are

ful in literature outside

:

—

—

634

Letter to

Roman

Mabel Shaw

and Roman terrorism as an emblem of Even Rome itself would have set up the image of a mother and child. The question is, then, would your descriptions of your own discovery of God please a sufficient number of bookbuyers to make a profit for a publisher and bookseller and a living for you. I think it quite likely they would. I have found your scraps interesting; and I am not in sympathy with you at all. I am not in the least what modern psychologists call a masochist: that is, a person cruelty

Christianity.

with a queer lust for being tortured; so that

when your

parents no longer tortured you you tortured yourself.

You

are not satiated even with the horrible things they did to

you must heap on him a broken body, though the story insists so strongly on the fact that his body was not broken as the bodies of the thieves were. You meet a young man with whom you fall in love, and who falls in love with you. There was nothing to prevent you making him and yourself happy by naturally and unaffectedly marrying him and filling your lap with babies. But no: that would not have been any fun for you: you must break his heart and break your own (if you have one) on the ridiculous pretext that the negro children needed you, though your own country was swarming with little white heathens who needed you as badly as they need Margaret Macmillan in Deptford. And then comes your artistic impulse. You must write about it and make a propaganda Christ:

of voluptuous agony. Well, there are plenty of people

who

agony voluptuous on paper; and they will make a reading public for you. But I, who loathe torture, and object most strongly to being tortured, my lusts being altogether normal, should take you and shake you were it not that you are out of my reach and that you would rather enjoy being shaken if it hurt you enough. It may be that this psychosis (pardon the jargon) will pass away as your glands mature. At the bottom of this African business there may be a young woman with a healthy taste for travel, novelty, adventure, and salutary hardening hardship. You may not really have wanted that unfortunate young parson whom you smashed up. You find

are,

635

Mabel Shaw

Letter to

the granddaughter of your delightful old of a grandmother as well as the daughter of your

after

humbug

all,

(as I gather) detestable parents. I call your

grandmother

a humbug in the friendliest sense because she made child happy by flattering God, and pretending that he had not a great deal to answer for. She spoilt you; but she saved

your soul alive for the time when you will be strong enough to face adult life and grow out of the pastime of playing with the souls of little children as your soul was played with.

have to say to you on the little informahave about you. You may think I have said a great

And tion I

that

is all I

you the question of becomwhen the ing a professional writer is a pretty deep one well. intention behind it extends to becoming a prophet as KNOW. I am in that line myself; and I And anyhow you brought it on yourself. I wonder what deal too

much; but

you expected

me

I

assure

to say. faithfully

G. Bernard Shaw

THE ADVENTURES OF THE BLACK GIRL IN HER SEARCH FOR GOD*

"Where is God?" said the black had converted her.

"He has

said

girl to

the missionary

'Seek and ye shall find

me'"

who

said the

missionary,

The missionary was a small white woman, not yet thirty: little body who had found no satisfaction for her

an odd

soul with her very respectable

and

fairly well-to-do family

in her native England,

and had settled down in the African African children to love Christ and adore the Cross. She was a born apostle of love. At school she had adored one or other of her teachers with an forest to teach

idolatry that

cared

much

little

was proof against for girls of her

snubbing, but had never own age and standing. At all

eighteen she began falling in love with earnest clergymen,

and actually became engaged to six of them in succession. But when it came to the point she always broke it off; for these \o\q affairs, full at first of ecstatic happiness and hope, somehow became unreal and eluded her in the end. The clergymen thus suddenly and unaccountably disengaged did not always conceal their sense of relief and escape, as

if they too had discovered that the dream was only a dream, or a sort of metaphor by which they had striven to express the real thing, but not itself the real thing.

^

* In 1934

minus

X"

Shaw to

altered the original text in two places, changing ''minus one," and "Myna's sex" to "Myna's

one." Shaw had first summed up the mystery of existence in the equation "the square root of minus x." From the equation he created the Black Girl's misconstruing of the concept, which she identified With the sex of the goddess Myna, thus innocently suggesting a female divinity. When charged with inaccuracy in his use of Einstein's Relativity theory, Shaw altered the equation and weakened the pun. In this edition and future editions authorized by the Shaw Estate, art will be granted precedence over mathematics and the original pun preserved.

The Adventures of

One

of the

637

the Black Girl

jilted,

however, committed suicide; and

this

seemed to take tragedy gave her an extraordinary joy. It happiness into a real her from a fool's paradise of false became transcendent region in which intense suffering rapture.

engagements. put an end to her queer marriage cousin, of Not that it was the last of them. But a worldly roundly called she was a little afraid, and who

But

it

whose wit

one day accused her of playmg engagements for another suicide, and told her had been hanged for less. And though

her a coquette and a in her later

jilt,

woman

that

many

a

she

knew

in a

way

that this

was not

true,

and that the

of this world, did not understand; worldly way it was true yet she knew also that in the strange game of enough, and that she must give up this now knew she seducing men into engagements which she clergyman and would never keep. So she jilted the sixth and the last went to plant the cross in darkest Africa; repudiated as sin was a flash stirring in her of what she cousin, through whose wit of rage when he married the bishop in spite worldly wisdom he at last became a

cousin, being a

woman

and

of himself. The black

i a skin ana a fine creature, whose satin missionary folk seem like shining muscles made the white .

•

girl,

interesting but unsatisashen ghosts by contrast, was an with instead of taking Christianity

factory convert; for administered to her, she sweet docility exactly as it was which forced met it with unexpected interrogative reactions replies and invent eviher teacher to improvize doctrinal such an extent that dence on the spur of the moment to from herself that the life at last she could not conceal accreted so many circumof Christ, as she narrated it, had a body of homemade doctrine

and such been amazed and conthat the Evangelists would have it all put forward founded if they had been alive to hear choice of a on their authority. Indeed the missionary's been at first an act of specially remote station, which had stantial

details

as the appearance devotion very soon became a necessity, discovery that the to of a rival missionary would have led gospel pudding of the finest plums in the

though some

The Adventures

638

of the Black Girl

concocted by her had been picked out of the Bible, and the scenery and dramatis personae

the

resultant

religion

was,

borrowed from

spite

in

of this

compilation, really a product of the missionary's inspiration.

she be her

Only

yet

own

direct

a solitary pioneer missionary could

as

own Church and determine

fear of being

it,

element of

excommunicated

its

canon without

as a heretic.

But she was perhaps rash when, having taught the black girl to read, she gave her a bible on her birthday. For

when

the

literally,

black

girl,

receiving

her teacher's reply very

took her knobkerry and strode

forest in search of

off into the

God, she took the

African

bible with her as

her guidebook.

The

first

thing she met was a

few poisonous snakes that

Now

the missionary,

mamba

will attack

who was fond

snake, one of the

mankind if of making

crossed. pets of

animals because they were affectionate and never asked

had taught the black girl never to kill anything if she could help it, and never to be afraid of anything. So she grasped her knobkerry a little tighter and said to the mamba "I wonder who made you, and why he gave you the will to kill me and the venom to do it with." The mamba immediately beckoned her by a twist of its head to follow it, and led her to a pile of rocks on which questions,

enthroned a well-built aristocratic looking white man with handsome regular features, an imposing beard and luxuriant wavy hair, both as white as isinglass, and a ruthsat

lessly severe expression.

He had

in his

hand a

which and great

staff

seemed a combination of sceptre, big assegai; and with this he immediately killed the mamba, who was approaching him humbly and adoringly. The black girl, having been taught to fear nothing, felt her heart harden against him, partly because she thought strong men ought to be black, and only missionary ladies white, partly because he had killed her friend the snake, and partly because he wore a ridiculous white nightshirt, and thereby rubbed her up on the one point on which her teacher had never been able to convert her, which was the duty of being ashamed of her person and wearing pettistick,

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

639

There was a certain contempt

coats.

in

her voice as she

addressed him. "I

am

seeking

God"

she said.

"Can you

direct

•'You have found him" he replied. "Kneel

worship or dread

me?"

down and

me this very instant, you presumptuous creature, my wrath. I am the Lord of Hosts: I made the

heavens and the earth and all that in them is. I made the poison of the snake and the milk in your mother's breast. In my hand are death and all the diseases, the thunder

storm and the pestilence, and all the other proofs of my greatness and majesty. On your knees, girl; and when you next come before me, bring me your

and

lightning, the

favorite child I

and

slay

it

here before

me

as a sacrifice; for

love the smell of newly spilled blood."

have no child" said the black girl. "I am a virgin." "Then fetch your father and let him slay you" said the Lord of Hosts. "And see that your relatives bring me plenty of rams and goats and sheep to roast before me as offerings to propitiate me, or I shall certainly smite them with the most horrible plagues so that they may know that I am God." "I am not a piccaninny, nor even a grown up ninny, to believe such wicked nonsense" said the black girl; "and in "I

the as

name

of the true

you scotched

that

God whom

you poor mamba." And she bounded up I

seek

I

will scotch

the rocks at him, brandishing her knobkerry.

But when she reached the top there was nothing there. This so bewildered her that she sat down and took out her bible for guidance. But whether the ants had got at

had perished by natural decay, all the early pages had crumbled to dust which blew away when she opened it. So she sighed and got up and resumed her search. Presently she disturbed a sort of cobra called a ringhals, which spat at her and was gliding away when she said "You no dare spit at me. I want to know who made you, and why you are so unlike me. The mamba's God was no it,

or,

being a very old book,

use: he wasnt real

Lead me to yours."

when

I

it

tried

him with my knobkerry.

The Adventures of the Black

640

On

that, the ringhals

Girl

came back and beckoned her

to

follow him, which she did.

He led her to a pleasant glade in which an oldish gentleman with a soft silvery beard and hair, also in a white nightshirt, was sitting at a table covered with a white cloth and strewn with manuscript poems and pens made of angels' quills. He looked kindly enough; but his turned up moustaches and eyebrows expressed a self-satisfied cunning which the black girl thought silly. "Good little Spitty-spitty" he said to the snake. "You have brought somebody to argue with me." And he gave the snake an egg, which it carried away joyfully into the forest

"Do

am

not be afraid of

not a cruel god:

I

me" he

am

said to the black

a reasonable one.

I

girl.

"I

do nothing

worse than argue. I am a Nailer at arguing. Dont worship me. Reproach me. Find fault with me. Dont spare my feelings. Throw something in my teeth; so that I can argue about

it."

"Did you make the world?** said the black girl, "Of course I did" he said. **Why did you make it with so much evil in it?** she said. "Splendid!" said the god. "That is just what I wanted you to ask me. You are a clever intelligent girl. I had a servant named Job once to argue with; but he was so modest and stupid that I had to shower the most frightful misfortunes on him before I could provoke him to complain. His wife told him to curse me and die; and I dont wonder at the poor woman; for I gave him a terrible time, though I made it all up to him afterwards. When at last I got him arguing, he thought a lot of himself. But I soon shewed him up. He acknowledged that I had the better of him. I took "I

to

him down handsomely,

I tell

you."

do not want to argue" said the black girl. "I want if you really made the world, you made it

know why,

so badly."

"Badly!" cried the Nailer. "Ho! to call

me

criticize

to account!

Who

You

set yourself

you should Just world yourself? better

are you, pray, that

me? Can you make a

up

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

641

all. Try to make one little bit of it. For instance, make a whale. Put a hook in its nose and bring it to me when you have finished. Do you realize, you ridiculous little insect, that I not only made the whale, but made the sea for him to swim in? The whole mighty ocean, down

try: thats

to

its

bottomless depths and up to the top of the skies.

You

think that was easy, I suppose. You think you could do it better yourself, I tell you what, young woman: you want the conceit taken out of you. You couldnt make a mouse; and you set yourself up against me, who made a megatherium. You couldnt make a pond; and you dare talk to me, the maker of the seven seas. You will be ugly and old and dead in fifty years, whilst my majesty will endure for ever; and here you are taking me to task as if you were my aunt. You think, dont you, that you are better than God? What have you to say to that argument?" *Tt isnt

an argument:

**You dont seem to *'What!

I

who

put

it's

the

old

girl,

know what an argument is." down Job, as all the world admits, not

know what an argument said

a sneer" said the black

is!

gentleman,

I

simply laugh at you, child"

considerably

huffed,

but

too

astonished to take the situation in fully. "I dont

mind your laughing

at

me"

said the black girl;

"but you have not told me why you did not make the world all good instead of a mixture of good and bad. It

me

made it any tsetse flies. would be no I were God My people would not fall down in fits and have dreadful swellings and commit sins. Why did you put a bag of poison in the mamba's mouth when other snakes can live as well without it? Why did you make the monkeys so ugly and the birds so pretty?" *'Why shouldnt I?" said the old gentleman. "Answer me is

no answer

to ask

whether

better myself. If

I

could have

there

that."

"Why

should you? unless you have a taste for mischief

said the black

girl.

"Asking conundrums

is

not arguing** he said. "It

is

not playing the game."

"A God who

cannot answer

my

questions

is

no use to

The Adventures

642

me"

said the black

girl.

everything you would ugly as he

"Besides,

if

of the Black Girl

you had

know why you made

really

made

the whale as

in the pictures."

is

amuse myself by making him look funny, you?" he said. "Who are you to dictate to

"If I chose to

what

is

that to

me how I shall make things?" "I am tired of you" said the

black

girl.

"You always

come back to the same bad manners. I dont believe you ever made anything. Job must have been very stupid not to find you out. There are too many old men pretending to be gods in this forest."

She sprang

at

him with her knobkerry

uplifted; but

he

dived nimbly under the table, which she thought must

have sunk into the earth; for when she reached it there was nothing there. And when she resorted to her bible again the wind snatched thirty more pages out of it and scattered them in dust over the trees. After

this

adventure the black

girl felt distinctly sulky.

She had not found God; her bible was half spoilt; and she had lost her temper twice without any satisfaction whatever. She began to ask herself whether she had not overrated white beards and old age and nightshirts as divine credentials. It was lucky that this was her mood when she came upon a remarkably good looking clean shaven white young man in a Greek tunic. She had never seen anything like him before. In particular there was a lift and twist about the outer corners of his brows that both interested

and repelled her. "Excuse me, baas" she said. "You have knowing eyes. I am in search of God. Can you direct me?" "Do not trouble about that" said the young man. "Take the world as it comes; for beyond it there is nothing. All roads end at the grave, which is the gate of nothingness; and in the shadow of nothingness everything is vanity. Take my advice and seek no further than the end of your nose. You will always know that there is something beyond that; and in that knowledge you will be hopeful and happy."

"My mind

ranges further" said the black

girl. "It is

not

643

The Adventures of the Black Girl right to shut one's eyes.

than happiness or hope.

"How

if

you

I

knowledge of happiness and

desire a

God is my

find that there

is

no God?"

God more my hope."

said the

young

man. "I should

be a bad

woman

if I

did not

know

God

that

exists" said the black girl.

young man. "You should not let people tie up your mind with such limitations. Besides, why should you not be a bad woman?" "That is nonsense" said the black girl. "Being a bad

"Who

told

you

that?" said the

being something you ought not to be." "Then you must find out what you ought to be before you can tell whether you are a good woman or a bad one." "That is true" said the black girl. "But I know I ought

woman means

good woman even if it is bad to be good." "There is no sense in that" said the young man. "Not your sort of sense but God's sort of sense" she and I feel that said. "I want to have that sort of sense; when I have got it I shall be able to find God." "How can you tell what you shall find?" he said. "My you as counsel to you is to do all the work that comes to and use with well as you can while you can, and so fill up

to be a

honor the days that remain to you before the inevitable neither end, when there will be neither counsel nor work, doing nor knowing, nor even being." "There will be a future when I am dead" said the black girl. "If I cannot live it I can know it."

young man. "If beyond your the past, which has really happened, is which knowledge, how can you hope to know the future,

"Do you know

the past?"

said the

has not yet happened?"

"Yet

you

it

will

happen; and

that the sun will rise

I

know enough

of

it

to tell

every day" said the black

girl.^

"That also is vanity" said the young sage. "The sun burning and must some day bum itself out." but "Life is a flame that is always burning itself out;

is

it

every time a child is born. Life will do the greater than death, and hope than despair. I work that comes to me only if I know that it is good

catches

fire

again

is

The Adventures of

644

the Black Girl

work; and to know that, I must know the past and the future, and must know God.'* "You mean that you must be God" he said, looking hard at her. "As much as I can" said the black girl. "Thank you. We who are young are the wise ones: I have learned from you that to know God is to be God. You have strengthened my soul. Before I leave you, tell me who you are.*' "I

am

him!

He

known to many as preacher" he replied. "God be with you

Ecclesiastes the

Koheleth,

not with me. Learn Greek:

is

if

it

is

you can

find

the language

of wisdom. Farewell."

He made

a friendly sign and passed on.

The black

girl

went the opposite way, thinking harder than ever; but the train of thought he had started in her became so puzzling and difficult that at last she fell asleep and walked steadily on in her sleep until she smelt a lion, and, waking suddenly, saw him sitting in the middle of her path, sunning himself like a cat before the hearth: a lion of the kind

they

call

maneless because

its

mane

is

handsome and orderly

and not like a touzled mop. "In God's name, Dicky" she said, giving his throat as she passed him a caressing little pull with her fingers which felt as if she had pulled at a warm tuft of moss on a mountain. King Richard beamed graciously, and followed her with his eyes as if he had an impulse to go for a walk with

him too decisively for that; and she, remembering that there are many less amiable and even

her; but she left

stronger creatures in the forest than he, proceeded

more

man with wavy He had nothing on but a pair of sandals. was very much wrinkled; but the wrinkles were

warily until she met a dark

black hair, and

a number six nose.

His face

those of pity and kindliness, though the

had

number

six

nose

nostrils, and the corners of his She heard him before she saw him; for he was making strange roaring and hooting noises and seemed in great trouble. When he saw her he stopped roaring and tried to look ordinary and unconcerned. "Say, baas" said the black girl: "are you the prophet

large

courageous

mouth were

resolute.

The Adventures of

645

the Black Girl

that goes stripped

and naked, wailing

like the

dragons

and mourning like the owls?" "I do a little in that line" he said apologetically. "Micah anything is my name: Micah the Morasthite. Can I do for you?" "I seek God'' she answered.

"And have you found Him?" said Micah. "I found an old man who wanted me to roast animals him because he loved the smell of cooking, and to sacrifice my children on his altar." At this Micah uttered such a lamentable roar that King Richard hastily took cover in the forest and sat watchfor

ing there with his

tail

slashing.

an impostor and a horror" roared Micah. "Can you see yourself coming before the high God with burnt calves of a year old? Would He be pleased with thousands of rams or rivers of oil or the sacrifice of your first born,

"He

is

the fruit of your body, instead of the devotion of your soul? God has shewed your soul what is good; and your

you that He speaks the truth. And what does He require of you but to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with Him?" "This is a third God" she said; "and I like him much better than the one who wanted sacrifices and the one who wanted me to argue with him so that he might sneer shewat my weakness and ignorance. But doing justice and ing mercy is only a small part of life when one is not a baas or a judge. And what is the use of walking humbly soul has told

you dont know where you are walking to?" "Walk humbly and God will guide you" said the Prophet, "What is it to you whither He is leading you?" "He gave me eyes to guide myself said the black girl. "He gave me a mind and left me to use it. How can I now turn on him and tell him to see for me and to think for

if

me?" Micah's only reply was such a fearful roar that King Richard fairly bolted and ran for two miles without stopping.

And

the black girl did the

same

in the opposite direc-

But she ran only a mile. "What am I running away from?" she said to herself.

tion.

The Adventures

646 pulling herself up.

man." "Your

*Tm

of the Black Girl

not afraid of that dear noisy old

and hopes are only fancies" said a voice from a very shortsighted elderly man in spectacles who was sitting on a gnarled log. "In running away you were acting on a conditioned reflex. It is quite simple. Having lived among lions you have from your childhood associated the sound of a roar with deadly danger. Hence your precipitate flight when that superstitious old jackass brayed at you. This remarkable discovery cost me twenty-five years of devoted research, during which I cut out the brains of innumerable dogs, and observed their spittle by making holes in their cheeks for them to salivate through instead of through their tongues. The whole scientific world is prostrate at my feet in admiration of this colossal achievement and gratitude for the light it has shed on the great problems of human conduct." fears

close to her, proceeding

"Why

didnt you ask

have told you poor dogs."

me?"

said the black girl. "I could

in twenty-five

seconds without hurting those

"Your ignorance and presumption are unspeakable" said the old myop. "The fact was known of course to every child; but it had never been proved experimentally in the laboratory; and therefore it was not scientifically known at all. It reached me as an unskilled conjecture: I handed it on as science. Have you ever performed an experiment

may

I

ask?"

perform one now. Do you know what you are sitting on?" "I am sitting on a log grey with age, and covered with an uncomfortable rugged bark" said the myop. "You are mistaken" said the black girl. "You are sitting "Several" said the black

girl.

"I will

on a sleeping crocodile." With a yell which Micah himself might have envied,

myop rose and fled frantically to a neighboring tree, up which he climbed catlike with an agility which in so elderly a gentleman was quite superhuman.

the

"Come down"

said the black

girl.

"You ought

found near only trying an experiment. Come down." that crocodiles are only to be

to

rivers.

know I

was

The Adventures of

"How am

to

647

come down?"

I to

my

"I should break

"How

the Black Girl

said the

know" he

make

man

a

girl.

replied, almost in tears. "It

believe in miracles.

and yet here

this tree;

trembling.

neck."

did you get up?" said the black

"I dont

myop

am

I

down again." "A very interesting

and

I

is

enough

couldnt have climbed

shall

never be able to

get

black

experiment,

wasnt

it?"

said

the

girl.

"A

shamefully cruel one, you wicked girl" he moaned. "Pray did it occur to you that you might have killed me?

Do you

suppose you can give a delicate physiological organism like mine a violent shock without the most

and quite possibly

serious I

never be able to

shall

live. I

believe

count

it;

for

my if I

pulse let

is

fatal

sit

reactions

on the heart?

on a log again

as long as I

quite abnormal, though

go of

this

branch

I

shall

I

drop

cannot like a

stone." "If you can cut half a dog's brain any reactions on its spittle you need calmly. "I think African magic much your divining by dogs. By saying one

out without causing not worry" she said

more powerful than word to you I made you climb a tree like a cat. You confess it was a miracle." "I wish you would say another word and get me safely

down

confound you for a black witch" he grumbled. "I will" said the black girl. "There is a tree snake smelling at the back of your neck." The myop was on the ground in a jiffy. He landed finally on his back; but he scrambled to his feet at once and said "You did not take me in: dont think it. I knew perfectly well you were inventing that snake to frighten me. "And yet you were as frightened as if it had been a real

again,

snake" said the black

"I

girl.

was not" said the myop indignantly, "I was not

frightened in the least."

"You nipped down black

the tree as

if

you were"

said the

girl.

"That

is

what

is

so interesting" said the

ing his self-possession

now

that he felt

myop, recoversafe. "It was a

The Adventures of

648 conditioned

a

reflex.

I

wonder could

I

make

the Black Girl

a

dog climb

tree."

"What "Why,

for?" said the black to place this

girl.

phenomenon on

a scientific basis"

said he.

"Nonsense!" said the black

girl.

"A dog

cant climb a

tree."

"Neither can

I

without the stimulus of an imaginary

crocodile" said the professor.

"How am

I

to

make

a dog

imagine a crocodile?" "Introduce him to a few real ones to begin with" said the black

girl.

"That would cost a great deal" said the myop, wrinkling his brows. "Dogs are cheap if you buy them from professional dog-stealers, or lay in a stock when the dog tax becomes due; but crocodiles would run into a lot of money. I must think this out carefully." "Before you go" said the black girl "tell me whether you believe in God." "God is an unnecessary and discarded hypothesis" said the myop. "The universe is only a gigantic system of reflexes reproduced by shocks. If I give you a clip on the knee you will wag your ankle." "I will also give you a clip with my knobkerry; so dont

do

it"

said the black

"For

scientific

girl.

purposes

it

is

necessary to inhibit such

secondary and apparently irrelevant reflexes by tying the subject down" said the professor. "Yet they also are quite relevant as examples of reflexes produced by association

of ideas.

I

have spent twenty-five years studying their

effects."

on what?" said the black girl. "On a dog's saliva" said the myop. "Are you any the wiser?" she said. "I am not interested in wisdom" he replied: "in fact I do not know what it means and have no reason to believe that it exists. My business is to learn something that was not known before. I impart that knowledge to the world, and thereby add to the body of ascertained scien"Effects

tific

truth."

The Adventures of

"How much

the Black Girl

better will

the world be

649

when

it

is

all

knowledge and no mercy?" said the black girl. "Havnt you brains enough to invent some decent way of finding out what you want to know?" "Brains!" cried the myop, as if he could hardly believe his ears. "You must be an extraordinarily ignorant young woman. Do you not know that men of science are all brains from head to foot?" "Tell that to the crocodile" said the black tell

me

this.

Have you

girl.

"And

ever considered the effect of your

experiments on other people's minds and characters? Is it worth while losing your own soul and damning everybody else's to find

"You

out something about a dog's spittle?"

are using words that have no meaning" said the

myop. "Can you demonstrate the existence of the organ you call a soul on the operating table or in the dissecting room? Can you reproduce the operation you call damning in the laboratory?"

body with a soul into a dead one whack of my knobkerry" said the black girl "and you will soon see the difference and smell it. When people damn their souls by doing something wicked, you soon see the difference too." "I have seen a man die: I have never seen one damn his soul" said the myop. "But you have seen him go to the dogs" said the black can turn a

"I

without

girl.

it

live

with a

"You have gone

"A

quip;

to the dogs yourself, havnt

you?"

and an extremely personal one" said the myop

haughtily. "I leave you."

So he went his way trying to think of some means of making a dog climb a tree in order to prove scientifically that he himself could climb one; and the black girl went her opposite way until she came to a hill on the top of which stood a huge cross guarded by a Roman soldier with a spear. sionary,

Now

in spite of all the teachings of the mis-

who found

in the horrors of the crucifixion the

same strange joy she had found in breaking her own heart and those of her lovers, the black girl hated the cross and thought it a great pity that Jesus had not died peacefully and painlessly and naturally, full of years and wisdom.

The Adventures of

650

the Black Girl

his granddaughters (her imagination always completed the picture with at least twenty promising black granddaughters) against the selfishness and violence of

protecting

their parents.

So she was averting her head from the cross

Roman

with an expression of disgust when the sprang at her with his spear

"On your

fiercely

Roman

charge and shouted

at the

knees, blackamoor, before the instru-

ment and symbol of Roman order and

soldier

justice,

Roman

law,

Roman

peace."

But the black girl side-stepped the spear and swung her knobkerry so heartily on the nape of his neck that he went down sprawling and trying vainly to co-ordinate the movement of his legs sufficiently to rise. "That is the blackamoor instrument and symbol of all those fine things" said the black girl, shewing him the knobkerry. "How do

you

like it?"

"Hell!" groaned the soldier. "The tenth legion rabbit

punched by a black

And

bitch! This

is

the end of the world."

he ceased struggling and lay down and cried

like

a child.

He recovered before she had gone very far; but being a Roman soldier he could not leave his post to gratify his feelings. hill

his

The

she saw of

last

him before

cut off their view of one another fist

at her;

and the

last

the

brow

of the

was the shaking of

him need not

she heard from

be repeated here.

Her next adventure was at a well where she stopped to drink, and suddenly saw a man whom she had not noticed before sitting beside it. As she was about to scoop up some water in her hand he produced a cup from nowhere and said "Take this and drink in remembrance of me." "Thank you, baas" she said, and drank. "Thank you kindly."

She gave him back the cup; and he made it disappear which she laughed and he laughed too. "That was clever, baas" she said. "Great magician, you.

like a conjurer, at

You

perhaps

of God.

tell

Where

is

black

woman

something.

I

am

in search

he?"

*'Within you" said the conjurer. "Within

me

too."

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

651

"I think so" said the girl. "But

"Our father"

what

he?"

is

said the conjurer.

The black girl made a wry face and thought for a moment. "Why not our mother?" she said then. It was the conjurer's turn to make a wry face; and he made it. "Our mothers would have us put them before God" he said. "If I had been guided by my mother I should perhaps have been a rich

and a wanderer; but

man

instead of an outcast

should not have found God."

I

"My father beat me from the time I was little until I was big enough to lay him out with my knobkerry" said the black girl; "and even after that he tried to sell me to a white baas-soldier who had left his wife across the seas. I have always refused to say 'Our father which art in heaven.' I always say 'Our grandfather.' I will not have a

God who

my

is

father."

"That need not prevent us loving one another like and sister" said the conjurer smiling; for the grandfather amendment tickled his sense of humor. Besides, he was a goodnatured fellow who smiled whenever he brother

could.

"A woman

"Her heart

girl.

my

does not love her brother" said the black turns

from her brother

to a stranger as

heart turns to you."

"Well:

let

us drop the family:

said the conjurer.

"We

are

it

is

members of

only a metaphor" the

same body of

mankind, and therefore members one of another. Let us leave

at that."

it

"I cannot,

"God

baas" she said.

tells

me

that he has

nothing to do with bodies, and fathers and mothers, and sisters

"It

and brothers." a

is

way of

saying love one another: that

that curse you.

all"

is

them

"Love them Never forget that two blacks do not make that hate you. Bless

said the conjurer.

a white." "I girl.

me

do not want everyone "I

to love

me"

said the black

cannot love everybody. I do not want to. God tells I must not hit people with my knobkerry merely

that

because

I

dislike

them, and that their dislike of

they happen to dislike

me

—

gives

them no

me

—

if

right to hit

The Adventures of

652

the Black Girl

God makes me dislike many people. And there people who must be killed like snakes, because they rob

me. But are

and

kill

other people."

you would not remind me of these people" said "They make me very unhappy." makes things very nice to forget about the un-

"I wish

the conjurer. "It

pleasant things" said the black

them

and

believable;

and

it

"but

girl;

does not

it

does not

make them

make

Do you

right.

me, baas?" The conjurer shrank, but immediately smiled kindly as

really

truly love

he replied "Do not let us make a personal matter of it." "But it has no sense if it is not a personal matter" said the black girl. "Suppose I tell you I love you, as you tell me I

ought!

Do you

not feel that

am

I

taking a liberty with

you?"

"You must not think am white we are equal

"Certainly not" said the conjurer. that.

Though you are black and God who made us so."

I

before "I

am

not thinking about that at

*T forgot

when

I

spoke that

only a poor white. Think of yourself as a white king.

you

black

girl.

am black and that you are me as a white queen and of

I

What

is

Why

the matter?

did

start?"

"Nothing. Nothing" said the

am

all" said the

the poorest of poor whites; yet

conjurer.

"Or

—Well,

I

have thought of myself as a king. But that was when the wickedness of men had driven

me

I

crazy."

"I have seen worse kings" said the black

girl;

"so you

need not blush. Well, let you be King Solomon and let me be Queen of Sheba, same as in the bible. I come to you and say that I love you. That means I have come to take possession of you. I come with the love of a lioness and eat you up and make you a part of myself. From this time you will have to think, not of what pleases you, but of what pleases me. I will stand between you and yourself, between you and God. Is not that a terrible tyranny? Love is a devouring thing. Can you imagine heaven with love in it?"

"In

my

heaven there

is

nothing

else.

What

else

is

heaven

but love?" said the conjurer, boldly but uncomfortably.

The Adventures of "It is glory. It

there

is

no

the Black Girl is

billing

the

home

653

God and

of

and cooing

of his thoughts:

no clinging

there,

to

one

another like a tick to a sheep. The missionary, my teacher, talks of love; but she has run away from all her lovers to

do God's work. The whites turn their eyes away from me lest they should love me. There are companies of men and women who have devoted themselves to God's work; but though they call themselves brotherhoods and sisterhoods they do not speak to one another." "So much the worse for them" said the conjurer. "It is silly, of course" said the black girl. "We have to live with people and must make the best of them. But does it not shew that our souls need solitude as much as our bodies need love? We need the help of one another's bodies and the help of one another's minds; but our souls need to be alone with God; and when people come loving you and wanting your soul as well as your mind and body, you cry 'Keep your distance: I belong to myself, not to you.* This 'love one another' of yours is worse mockery to me who am in search of God than it is to the warrior who must fight against murder and slavery, or the hunter who must slay or see his children starve." "Shall I then say 'This commandment I give unto you:

that

you

"It

kill

is

black

"Neither

girl.

cure-all

one another'?" said the conjurer.

only the other one turned inside out" said the is

a rule to live by.

commandments

cheap jacks

sell us:

of yours

are

I

like

tell

you these

the pills

the

they are useful once in twenty times

perhaps, but in the other nineteen they are no use. Besides, I

am

not seeking commandments.

I

am

seeking God."

"Continue your search; and God be with you" said "To find him, such as you must go past me."

the conjurer.

And

with that he vanished.

"That "though

is

I

a lovable

A

perhaps your best

trick*'

am sorry to lose you; man and mean well."

said the black girl;

for to

my mind

you

are

mile further on she met an ancient fisherman carry-

enormous cathedral on his shoulders. "Take care: it will break your poor old back" she

ing an

running to help him.

cried,

The Adventures of

654

"Not it" he replied cheerfully. this Church is built." "But you are not a rock; and she said, expecting every

"I

it

moment

am is

the Black Girl

the rock

on which

too heavy for you!"

to see

him crushed by

weight.

its

"No fear" he made entirely of

said,

grinning pleasantly at her. "It

paper."

And

is

he danced past her, making

the bells in the cathedral tinkle merrily.

all

Before he was out of sight several others, dressed

in

costumes of black and white and all very carefully soaped and brushed, came along carrying smaller and mostly much uglier paper Churches. They all cried to different

her

"Do

not believe the fisherman.

other fellows.

Mine

is

Do

not listen to those

the true Church."

At

last

she had

began one another; and as their aim was almost as bad as if they were blind, the stones came flying all over the road. So she concluded that she would not find God to her taste among them. When they had passed, or rather when the battle had rolled by, she returned to the road, where she found a very old wandering Jew, who said to her "Has He come?" to turn aside into the forest to avoid them; for they

throwing stones

at

"Has who come?"

"He who promised said that all

I

must tarry

reason. If

men

late; for

said the black to

come"

girl.

said the Jew.

"He who

He

comes. I have tarried beyond He does not come soon now it will be too learn nothing except how to kill one another til

and greater numbers." "That wont be stopped by anybody coming" said the

in greater

black

girl.

"But of

He

God"

will

come

in glory, sitting

cried the Jew.

"He

said so.

on the

He

right

hand

will set every-

thing right."

you wait for other people to come and set everything right" said the black girl "you will wait for ever.'* At that the Jew uttered a wail of despair; spat at her; and tottered away. She was by this time quite out of conceit with old men; so she was glad to shake him off. She marched on until she came to a shady bank by the wayside; and here she "If

rhe Adventures of the Black Girl

655

own black people, evidently employed as bearers, sitting down to enjoy a meal at a respectful distance from a group of white gentlemen and ladies. As found

fifty

of her

wore breeches and sunhelmets the black girl were explorers, like the men. They had finished eating. Some of them were dozing: others

the ladies

knew just

that they

were writing

in note books.

"What expedition

is

this?" said

the black girl to the

leader of the bearers.

Caravan of the Curious" he replied. "Are they good whites or bad?" she asked. "They are thoughtless, and waste much time quarreling "It

is

about

galled the

trifles"

he

said.

"And

they ask questions for the

sake of asking questions." "Hi! you there" cried one of the ladies.

"Go about your

you cannot stop here. You will upset the men." "No more than you" said the black girl.

business:

"Stuff, girl" said the lady:

"I

am

fifty.

I

am

a neuter.

Theyre used to me. Get along with you." "You need not fear: they are not white men" said the black girl rather contemptuously. "Why do you call yourselves the Caravan of the Curious? What are you curious about? Are you curious about God?"

There was such a hearty laugh at this that those who were having a nap woke up and had to have the joke repeated to them.

"Many hundred

years have passed since there has been

any curiosity on that subject in one of the gentlemen.

"Not

civilized countries"

since the fifteenth century,

another. "Shakespear

is

I

said

should say" said

already quite Godless,"

"Shakespear was not everybody" said a third. "The national anthem belongs to the eighteenth century. In it you find us ordering God about to do our political dirty work."

"Not the same God" said the second gentleman. "In the middle ages God was conceived as ordering us about and keeping our noses to the grindstone. With the rise of the bourgeoisie and the shaking off by the feudal aristocracy of the duties that used to be the price of their

The Adventures of

656

you

privileges

get a

new

who

god,

is

the Black Girl

ordered about and

has his nose kept to the grindstone by the upper classes,

*Confound

their politics; frustrate their knavish tricks'

and

so forth."

"Yes" said the

gentleman; "and also a third god of

first

the petty bourgeoisie,

whose job

it is,

when

they have

filled

the recording angel's slate with their trade dishonesties for

the week, to wipe the slate clean with his blood

"Both these gods are

going strong" said the third

still

gentleman. "If you doubt

it,

on Sunday."

try to provide a decent

second

verse for the national anthem; or to expunge the Atone^

ment from the prayerbook." "That makes six gods that my search; but none of them black

I is

have met or heard of the

God

I

in

seek" said the

girl,

"Are you

God?"

in search of

first

gentleman.

Mumbo

Jumbo, or

said the

**Had you not better be content with

whatever you call the god of your tribe? You will not find any of ours an improvement on him." "We have a very miscellaneous collection of Mumbo

Jumbos"

said the third gentleman,

(pan honestly

"That

recommend

may

"and not one that we

to you."

be so" said the black

better be careful.

The

girl.

"But you had

missionaries teach us to believe in

your gods. It is all the instruction we get. If we find out that you do not believe in them and are their enemies we may come and kill you. There are millions of us; and we can shoot as well as you," "There is something in that" said the second gentleman, "We have no right to teach these people what we do not believe.

They may take

it

in deadly earnest.

Why

not

tell

them the simple

truth that the universe has occurred through Natural Selection, and that God is a fable." "It would throw them back on the doctrine of the survival of the fittest" said the first gentleman dubiously; "and it is not clear that we are the fittest to survive in competition with them. That girl is a fine specimen. We have had to give up employing poor whites for the work of our

expedition: intelligent."

the natives are stronger, cleaner,

and more

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

much

''Besides having

657

manners" said one of the

better

ladies.

the

said

"Precisely*'

prefer to teach

first

gentleman. "I should really

them to believe in a god who would give them if they started a crusade against

us a chance against

European

atheism,**

*'you cannot teach these people the truth about the universe" said a spectacled lady.

*'It

we now know, a

is,

mathematical universe. Ask that girl to divide a quantity by the square root of minus x, and she will not have the faintest notion what you mean. Yet division by the square root of minus x

"A the

is

the key to the universe."

skeleton key" said the second gentleman.

square root of minus x

—

Selection

"What

"To me Natural

nonsense.

flat

is

*'

is

the use of

this?"

all

groaned a depressed gen-

we know for certain is that the and that we shall presently die of

tleman. "The only thing

sun

is

cold.

losing

its

heat,

What does anything matter

"Cheer up,

Mr

Croker" said a

in the face of that fact?" lively

**As chief physicist to this expedition I

young gentleman,

am

in a position to

inform you authoritatively that unless you you have

radiation and tidal retardation

reason to believe that the sun

and

cremate us

will eventually

"What comfort

is

getting hotter

cosmic

as

much

and hotter

all alive."

there in that?" said

is

reject just

Mr

Croker.

"We

perish anyhow."

"Not necessarily"

said the

*'Yes, necessarily" said

first

gentleman.

Mr

Croker rudely. "The elements life can exist are ascertained cannot live at the temperature

of temperature within which

and unquestionable. You of frozen air and you cannot a cremation furnace.

No

tures the earth reaches

"Pooh!" said the

first

live at the

temperature of

matter which of these tempera-

we

perish."

gentleman. "Our bodies, which are

the only part of us to which your temperatures are fatal, will perish in a

rooms kept

at

few years, mostly

in well ventilated bed-

a comfortable temperature. But what of

the something that

makes the

body and the dead one?

difference between the live

Is there

a rag of proof, a ray of

The Adventures of

658

the Black Girl

any way dependent on

probability even,

that

temperature?

certainly not flesh nor blood nor bone,

though

it

It is

has the curious property of building bodily organs

for itself in those forms. figure

at all

it

in

is

it

you must

It

is

incorporeal:

figure

it

if

you

try to

as an electromagnetic

wave, as a rate of vibration, as a vortex in the ether there be an ether; that is to say as something that, if exists

exist

—

if it

—

and who can question its existence? can at all on the coldest of the dead stars or in the hottest

crater of the sun."

"Besides" said one of the ladies, that the sun

"You "I feel

hot?"

ask that in Africa!" said

it

"You

is

to be hot: that

feel

"how do you know

is

how

I

Mr

Croker scornfully. know."

pepper to be hot" said the lady, returning

scorn with interest; "but you cannot light a match at

his it."

"You feel that a note at the right end of the piano keyboard is higher than a note at the left; yet they are both on the same level" said another lady. "You feel that a macaw's coloring is loud; but it is really as soundless as a sparrow's" said yet another lady.

"You need not condescend

to answer such quibbles" an authoritative gentleman. "They are on the level of the three card trick. I am a surgeon; and I know, as a matter of observed fact, that the diameter of the vessels which supply blood to the female brain is excessive according to the standard set by the male brain. The resultant surcharge of blood both overstimulates and confuses the imagination, and so produces an iconosis in which the pungency of pepper suggests heat, the scream of a soprano height, and the flamboyancy of a macaw noise." "Your literary style is admirable, Doctor" said the first gentleman; "but it is beside my point, which is that whether the sun's heat is the heat of pepper or the heat of flame, whether the moon's cold is the coldness of ice or the coldness of a snub to a poor relation, they are just as likely to be inhabited as the earth."

said

"The coldest

Mr

parts of the earth are not inhabited" said

Croker.

"The

hottest are" said the

first

gentleman.

"And

the

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

659

coldest probably would be if there were not plenty of accommodation on earth for us in more congenial climates. Besides, there are Emperor penguins in the Antarctic. Why should there not be Emperor salamanders in the sun? Our great grandmothers, who believed in a brimstone hell, knew that the soul, as they called the thing that leaves the body when it dies and makes the difference between

and death, could live eternally in flames. In that they were much more scientific than my friend Croker here." life

"A man who said

Mr

believes in hell could believe in anything"

Croker,

"even in the inheritance of acquired

habits."

you believed in evolution, Croker" said a gentleman who was naturalist to the expedition. "I do believe in evolution" said Mr Croker warmly, "Do you take me for a fundamentalist?" "If you believe in evolution" said the naturalist "you must believe that all habits are both acquired and inherited. But you all have the Garden of Eden in your blood still. The way you fellows take in new ideas without ever thinking of throwing out the old ones makes you "I thought

public dangers.

You

are

dressing of science. That

conservatives

and

fundamentalists with a top

all is

why you

reactionisis

in

are the stupidest of

politics

and the most

itself. When it comes the same opinion: stop on you are all of move it, flog it, hang it, dynamite it, stamp it out." "All of the same opinion!" exclaimed the first lady, "Have they ever agreed on any subject?" "They are all looking in the same direction at present!"

bigoted of obstructionists in science

to getting a

said a lady with a sarcastic expression.

"What

direction?" said the

first

lady.

"That direction" said the sarcastic lady, pointing to the black

girl.

"Are you there still?" said the first lady. "You were told to go. Get along with you." The black girl did not reply. She contemplated the lady gravely and let the knobkerry swing slowly between her fingers. Then she looked at the mathematical lady and said "Where does it grow?"

The Adventures of

660

the Black Girl

"Where does what grow?" said the mathematical lady. "The root you spoke of" said the black girl. "The square root of Myna's sex."

grows in the mind" said the lady. **It is a number. Can you count forwards from one?" "One, two, three, four, five, do you mean?" said the black girl, helping herself by her fingers. "Just so" said the lady. "Now count backwards from "It

one."

"One, one

They

"Newton!"

less,

two

less,

three

less,

four

less.**

clapped their hands. "Splendid!" cried one,

all

said another. "Leibniz!" said a third. "Einstein!**

And

said a fourth.

then altogether, "Marvellous! marvel-

lous!"

you" said a lady who was the ethnologist of the expedition "that the next great civilization will be "I

keep

telling

The white man

a black civilization.

knows

too,

it,

"Why

are

and

is

is

committing suicide as

you surprised

played out. fast as

He

he can."

at a little thing like that?" said

"Why

cannot you white people grow up and be serious as we blacks do? I thought glass beads marvellous when I saw them for the first time; but I soon got used to them. You cry marvellous every time the black

girl.

one of you says something silly. The most wonderful things you have are your guns. It must be easier to find God than to find out how to make guns. But you do not care for God: you care for nothing but guns. You use your guns to make slaves of us. Then, because you are too lazy to shoot, you put the guns into our hands and teach us to shoot for you. You will soon teach us to make the guns because you are too lazy to make them yourselves. You have found out how to make drinks that make men forget God, and put their consciences to sleep and make murder seem a delight. You sell these drinks to us and teach us how to

make them. And

all the time you steal the land from us and starve us and make us hate you as we hate the snakes. What will be the end of that? You will kill one another so fast that those who are left will be too few to resist when our warriors fill themselves with your magic drink and kill you with your own guns, And then our

The Adventures of

the Black Giri

661

one another as you do, unless they are prevented by God. Oh that I knew where I might find Him! Will none of you help me in my search? Do none of you warriors will

kill

care?'*

"Our guns have saved you from the man-eating

lion

and

the trampling elephant, have they not?" said a huflfy gen-

tleman,

who had

hitherto

found the conversation too deep

for him.

"Only

to deliver us into the

hands of the man-beating

and the trampling baas'* said the black girl. and elephant shared the land with us. When they ate or trampled on our bodies they spared our souls. When they had enough they asked for no more. But nothing will satisfy your greed. You work generations of us to death until you have each of you more than a hundred of us could eat or spend; and yet you go on forcing us to work harder and harder and longer and longer for less and less food and clothing. You do not know what enough means for yourselves, or less than enough for us. You are for ever grumbling because we have no money to buy the goods you trade in; and your only remedy is to give us less money: This must be because you serve false gods. You are heathens and savages. You know neither slave-driver **Lion

how

to live nor let others live.

When

I find

God

I shall

have the strength of mind to destroy you and to teach

my

people not to destroy themselves,**

"Look!" cried the first lady. "She is upsetting the men. you she would. They have been listening to her

I told

seditious rot.

Look

shall put a bullet

And

at their eyes.

They

if none of you men will.** drew a revolver, she was so

through her

the lady actually

frightened. But before she could get

case the black

girl

all

it

out of

its

leather

sprang at her; laid her out with her

favorite knobkerry stroke;

And

are dangerous. I

and darted away into the

forest.

the black bearers went into extasies of merri-

ment. "Let us be thankful that she has restored good humor'* said the first gentleman. "Things looked ugly for a moment. Now all is well. Doctor: will you see to poor Miss Fitzjones's cerebellum.**

The Adventures of

662

the Black Girl

"The mistake we made" said the naturalist "was in not offering her some of our food." The black girl hid herself long enough to make sure that she was not being pursued. She knew that what she had done was a flogging matter, and that no plea of defence would avail a black defendant against a white plaintiff. She did not worry about the mounted police; for in that district they were very scarce. But she did

not want to have to dodge the caravan continuously; and

was as good as another for her purpose, she turned back on her tracks (for the caravan had been going her way) and so found herself towards evening at the well where she had talked with the conjurer. There she found a booth with many images of wood, plaster, or ivory set out for sale; and lying on the ground beside it was a big wooden cross on which the conjurer was lying with his ankles crossed and his arms stretched out. And the man who kept the booth was carving a statue of him in wood with great speed and skill. They were watched by a handsome Arab gentleman in a turban, with a scimitar in his sash, who was sitting on the coping of the well, and combing his beard. "Why do you do this, my friend?" said the Arab gentleman. "You know that it is a breach of the second commandment given by God to Moses. By rights I should smite you dead with my scimitar; but I have suffered and sinned all my life through an infirmity of spirit which renders me incapable of slaying any animal, even a man, in cold blood. Why do you do it?" "What else can I do if I am not to starve?" said the as one direction

conjurer. "I

means of

am

so utterly rejected of

men

that

my

only

model to this compassionate artist who pays me sixpence an hour for stretching myself on this cross all day. He himself lives by selling livelihood

is

to

sit

as a

images of

me

me

Dying Malefactor because they are

as the

in

this

ridiculous position. People idolize

in nothing but the police news.

interested

When

he has laid in a and I have saved a sufficient take a holiday and go about giving

sufficient stock of images,

number of sixpences, I people good advice and telling them wholesome truths.

If

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

they would only listen to

me

663

much

they would be ever so

happier and better. But they refuse to believe me unless I do conjuring tricks for them; and when I do them they only throw me coppers and sometimes tickeys, and say

what a wonderful man I am, and that there has been nobody like me ever on earth; but they go on being foolish and wicked and cruel all the same. It makes me feel that

God in

has forsaken

me

sometimes."

"What is a tickey?" said more becoming folds.

the Arab, rearranging his robe

"A

threepenny bit" said the conjurer. "It is coined because proud people are ashamed to be seen giving me coppers, and they think sixpence too much." "I should not like people to treat

me

like that" saia the

Arab. "I also have a message to deliver. left

to themselves,

would

fall

My

people,

down and worship

all

the

images in that booth. If there were no images they would worship stones. My message is that there is no majesty and no might save in Allah the glorious, the great, the one and only. Of Him no mortal has ever dared to make

anyone attempted such a crime I should forget merciful, and overcome my infirmity to the extremity of slaying him with my own hand. But who could conceive the greatness of Allah in a bodily form? Not even an image of the finest horse could convey a notion of His beauty and greatness. Well, when I tell them this, they ask me, too, to do conjuring tricks; and when I tell them that I am a man like themselves and that not Allah Himself can violate His own laws if one could conceive Him as doing anything unlawful they go away and pretend that I am working miracles. But they believe; for if they doubt I have them slain by those who believe. That is what you should do, my friend." "But my message is that they should not kill one anan image:

that Allah

if

is

— —

other" said the conjurer.

"One has

to be consistent."

"That is quite right as far as their private quarrels are concerned" said the Arab. "But we must kill those who are unfit to live. We must weed the garden as well as water

it."

"Who

is

to

be the judge of our

fitness to live?" said the

The Adventures of

664

the Black Girl

conjurer. *'The highest authorities, the imperial governors

and the high

priests, find that I

am

Perhaps

unfit to live.

they are right." "Precisely the

same conclusion was reached concerning

myself" said the Arab. "I had to run away and hide until I

had convinced a

men

number of

sufficient

that their elders

athletic

were mistaken about me:

young that,

in

leg. Then I returned with young men, and weeded the garden." admire your courage and practical sagacity" said the

fact, the

boot was on the other

the athletic *T

conjurer; "but

"Do

I

am

not built that way."

am

not admire such qualities" said the Arab. "I

somewhat ashamed of them. Every desert chieftain displays them abundantly. It is on the superiority of my mind, which has made me the vehicle of divine inspiration, that I value myself. Have you ever written a book?" I

"No"

said the conjurer sadly: "I wish I could; for then

could

make money enough

cross and send

But

I

am no

my

message

author. I have

short prayer with, I hope, inspires

me

"Writing

all

to

come

tiresome

off this

in print all over the world.

composed a handy the essentials in

it.

sort

But

of

God

to speak, not to write." is

useful" said the Arab. "I have been inspired

many chapters of the word of Allah, praised be His name! But there are fellows in his world with whom Allah cannot be expected to trouble Himself. His word to write

means nothing to them; so when I have to deal with them I am no longer inspired, and have to rely on my own invention and my own wit. For them I write terrible stories of the

Day

of Judgment, and of the hell in which evildoers

will suffer eternally. I contrast these horrors with enchant-

ing pictures of the paradise maintained for those

who do

you and perfumes and

the will of Allah. Such a paradise as will tempt them,

understand: beautiful

a paradise

of

gardens

women."

"And how do you know what

is

the will of Allah?" said

the conjurer.

"As they are incapable for understanding it, my will must serve them for it instead" said the Arab. "They can understand my will, which is indeed truly the will of

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

665

at second hand, a little soiled by my mortal passions and necessities, no doubt, but the best I can do for them. Without it I could not manage them at all. Without it they would desert me for the first chief who promised them a bigger earthly plunder. But what other chief can write a book and promise them an eternity of bliss after their death with all the authority of a mind which can

Allah

surround

own

its

inventions with the majesty of authentic

inspiration?"

"You have every jurer politely, and a

qualification for success" said the conlittle

wistfully.

am the eagle and the serpent" said the Arab. "Yet my youth I was proud to be the servant of a widow and drive her camels. Now I am the humble servant of Allah "I

in

and drive men for Him. For in no other do I recognize majesty and might; and with Him I take refuge from Satan and his brood." "What is all this majesty and might without a sense of beauty and the skill to embody it in images that time cannot change into corruption?" said the wood carver, who had been working and listening in silence. "I have no use for your Allah, who forbids the making of images.'* "Know, dog of an unbeliever," said the Arab, "that images have a power of making men fall down and worship them, even

when

they are images of beasts."

"Or of the sons of carpenters"

"When

I

drove the camels" continued the Arab, not

quite catching idols of

interjected the conjurer.

men

the

interruption,

"I

carried

in

my

seated on thrones with the heads of

pack

hawks

and scourges in their hands. The Christians who began by worshipping God in the form of a man, now worship Him in the form of a lamb. This is the punishment decreed by Allah for the sin of presuming to imitate the work of His hands. But do not on that account dare to deny Allah His sense of beauty. Even your model here who is sharing your sin will remind you

on

their shoulders

lilies of Allah are more lovely than the robes of Solomon in all his glory. Allah makes the skies His pictures and His children His statues, and does not withhold them from our earthly vision. He permits you to make

that the

The Adventures of

666

the Black Girl

and carpets to

lovely robes and saddles and trappings,

kneel on before Him, and windows like flower beds of

work

precious stones. Yet you will be meddling in the

He

reserves for Himself, and making idols. For ever be such sin forbidden to my people!" "Pooh!" said the sculptor "your Allah is a bungler; and he knows it. I have in my booth in a curtained-off corner some Greek gods so beautiful that Allah himself may well burst with envy when he compares them with

own amateur

I tell you Allah made this hand own hands are too clumsy, if indeed he have any hands at all. The artist-god is himself an artist,

his

attempts.

of mine because his

never

with His work, always perfecting it to the His powers, always aware that though He must stop

satisfied

limit of

when He reaches that limit, yet there is a further perfection without which the picture has no meaning. Your Allah can

make

a

woman. Can he make

Goddess of Love? No:

the

can do that. See!" he said, rising to go into his booth. "Can Allah make herV And he brought from the curtained corner a marble Venus and placed her on only an

artist

the counter.

"Her limbs are cold"

said the black girl,

who had been

listening all this time unnoticed.

"Well said!" cried the Arab.

"A

living failure

than a dead masterpiece; and Allah this

most presumptuous

idolater,

is

whom

I

justified

better

is

against

must have

slain

with a blow had you not slain him with a word." "I

live"

still

the

said

artist,

unabashed.

"That

girl's

limbs will one day be colder than any marble. Cut

goddess in two: she that girl in

is

my

white marble to the core. Cut

still

and see what you

two with your

scimitar,

no longer

interests

will

find there."

"Your

talk

"Maiden: there

You full

is

yet

room

in

are beautiful: your skin

of

my is

me" said the Arab. house for another wife^

like

black satin: you are

life."

"How many

wives have you?" said the black girl. have long since ceased to count them" replied the Arab; "but there are enough to shew you that I am an "I

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

experienced husband and

667

know how

happy as Allah permits.'* "I do not seek happiness:

I

seek

to

make women

God"

as

said the black

girl.

*'Have you not found

Him

yet?" said the conjurer.

have found many gods" said the black girl. "Everymeet has one to offer me; and this image maker here has a whole shopful of them. But to me they are all half dead, except the ones that are half animals like this one on the top shelf, playing a mouth organ, who is half a goat and half a man. That is very true to nature; for I myself am half a goat and half a woman, though "I

one

I

I

should

like to

be a goddess. But even these gods

are half goats are half men.

women?" "What about

this

Why

who

are they never half

one?" said the image maker, point-

ing to Venus.

"Why black

her lower half hidden in a sack?" said the

is

girl.

"She

is

neither a goddess nor a

woman:

she

is

ashamed of half her body, and the other half of her is what the white people call a lady. She is ladylike and beautiful; and a white Governor General would be glad to have her at the head of his house; but to my mind she has no conscience; and that makes her inhuman without making her godlike. I have no use for her." "The Word shall be made flesh, not marble" said the conjurer. "You must not complain because these gods have the bodies of men. If they did not put on humanity for you, how could you, who are human, enter into any communion with them? To make a link between Godhood and Manhood, some god must become man." "Or some woman become God" said the black girl. "That would be far better, because the god who con^

human degrades himself; who becomes God exalts herself." descends to be "Allah be

my

the Arab. "This

ever met.

It is

refuge from

all

but the

troublesome

woman

women"

said

is the most troublesome woman I have one of the mysterious ways of Allah to

make women troublesome when he makes them

beauti-

'

668

The Adventures of

The more reason he gives them more dissatisfied they are. This one ful.

with Allah Himself, in

whom

is all

the Black Girl

to be content, the is

dissatisfied

majesty and

all

even

might.

Well, maiden, since Allah the glorious and great cannot please you,

what god or goddess can?"

is a goddess of whom I have heard, and of would know more" said the black girl. "She is I named Myna; and I feel there is something about her that none of the other gods can give." "There is no such goddess" said the image maker. "There are no other gods or goddesses except those I make; and I have never made a goddess named Myna.** "She most surely exists" said the black girl; "for the white missy spoke of her with reverence, and said that the key to the universe was the root of her womanhood and that it was bodiless like number, which has neither end nor beginning; for you can count one less and less and less and never come to a beginning; and you can count one more and more and more and never come to an end: thus it is through numbers that you find eternity." "Eternity in itself and by itself is nothing" said the

"There

whom

Arab. "What

is

eternity to

me

if

I

cannot find eternal

truth?"

"Only the truth of number is eternal" said the black "Every other truth passes away or becomes error, like the fancies of our childhood; but one and one are two and one and nine ten and always will be. Therefore I feel that there is something godlike about numbers." "You cannot eat and drink numbers" said the image maker. "You cannot marry them." "God has provided other things for us to eat and drink; and we can marry one another" said the black girl. "Well, you cannot draw nor mould them; and that is enough for me" said the image maker. "We Arabs can; and in this sign we shall conquer the world. See!" said the Arab. And he stooped and drew girl.

figures in the sand.

is

"The missionary says three in one and one "That

is

that

God

is

a magic

number

that

in three" said the black girl.

simple" said the Arab; "for

I

am

the son of

The Adventures of

my

the Black Girl

father and the father of

669

my

sons and myself to boot;

three in one and one in three. Man's nature

Allah alone

is

one.

He

is

unity.

He

is

is

manifold;

the core of the

onion, the bodiless centre without which there could be

no body.

He

is

the

number of

weight of the imponderable

air,

the innumerable stars, the the

—

'*

"You are a poet, I believe" said the image maker. The Arab, thus interrupted, colored deeply; sprang to his feet; and drew his scimitar. "Do you dare accuse me of being a lewd balladmonger?" he said. "This to be

wiped out

is

an

insult

in blood."

"Sorry" said the image maker. "I meant no offence.

Why

are you ashamed to make a ballad which outlives a thousand men, and not ashamed to make a corpse, which any fool can make, and which he has to hide in the earth when he has made it lest it stink him to death?" "That is true" said the Arab, sheathing his weapon, and sitting down again. "It is one of the mysteries of Allah that when Satan makes impure verses Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them. Nevertheless I was an honest cameldriver, and never took money for singing, though I was much addicted to it.** have not been righteous overmuch** said the conjurer. "I have been called a gluttonous man and a winebibber. I have not fasted. I have broken the sabbath. I have been kind to women who were no better than they should be. I have been unkind to my mother and shunned my family; for a man's true household is that in which God is the father and we are all His children, and not the belittling house and shop in which he must stay within reach of his mother's breast until he is weaned.** "A man needs many wives and a large household to prevent this cramping of his mind" said the Arab. "He

I

confess "I too

should distribute his affection. Until he has known many women he cannot know the value of any; for value is a matter of comparison.

I

did not

know what an

I

had in my last." "Are they also "And your wives?" said the black know many men in order that they may learn your

had

in

my

first

wife until

I

found what

I

girl.

to

old angel

value?"

The Adventures of

670 "I take refuge with

Allah against

the Black Girl

black daughter

this

Arab vehemently. "Learn to hold your woman, when men are talking and wisdom is their God made Man before he made Woman."

of Satan" cried the peace, topic.

"Second thoughts are best" said the black girl. "If it is as you say, God must have created Woman because He found Man insufficient. By what right do you demand fifty wives and condemn each of them to one husband?"

"Had I my life to live over again" said the Arab "I would be a celibate monk and shut my door upon women and their questions. But consider this. If I have only one wife I deny all other women any share in me, though

many women

will desire

me

lence and their discernment.

my excelwoman who

in proportion to

The enlightened

desires

the best father for her children will ask for a

fiftieth

share in

to herself.

all

there

is

known

rather than a piece of

fifty

is

to

refuse

when

it?"

she to

men

human

should she suffer this injustice

no need for

how

"But

me

Why

know your

value unless she has

compare with you?"

said the black

girl.

"The

child

who

has

fifty

fathers has

no father" cried

the Arab.

"What matter girl.

will

"Besides,

be

its

if

it

have a mother?" said the black

what you say

is

not true.

One

of the

fifty

father."

"Know then" said the Arab "that there are many shamewomen who have known men without number; but they do not bear children, whereas I, who covet and possess every desirable woman my eyes light on, have a large posterity. And from this it plainly appears that injustice to women is one of the mysteries of Allah,

less

against

and

whom

it is

vain to rebel. Allah

him alone

is

great and glorious;

is there majesty and might; but his beyond our understanding. My wives, who pamper themselves too much, bring forth their children in torments that wring my heart when I hear their cries; and these torments we men are spared. This is not just; but if you have no better remedy for such injustice than to let women do what men do and men do what women do, will

in

justice

is

1

The Adventures of

you

me

tell

the Black Girl

to lie in

and bear children?

that Allah will not have "I girl.

67

it

so. It

I

can reply only

against nature."

is

know that we cannot go against nature" said the black "You cannot bear children; but a woman could have

several husbands

and could still bear children provided she had no more than one husband at a time."

"Among

Arab

woman must

word.

His ordinance that a

"is I

the other injustices of Allah" said the

have the

last

am dumb." "What happens"

women

said

the

image maker "when

fifty

assemble round one man, and each must have the

word?" "The hell in which the one man expiates all his sins and takes refuges with Allah the merciful" said the Arab,

last

with deep feeling. "I

not find

shall

women"

'

God where men

said the black

girl,

are talking about

turning to go.

"Nor where women are talking about men" shouted the image maker after her. She waved her hand in assent and left them. Nothing particular happened after that until she came to a prim with a very amateurish garden which was being cultivated by a wizened old gentleman whose eyes were little villa

so striking that his face seemed

remarkable that his face seemed

all

all

eyes,

his

nose so

nose, and his

mouth

so expressive of a comically malicious relish that his face seemed all mouth until the black girl combined these three

incompatibles by deciding that his face was

all intelligence.

"Excuse me, baas" she said: "may I speak to you?" "What do you want?" said the old gentleman. "I want to ask my way to God" she said; "and as you have the most knowing face I have ever seen, I thought I

would ask you."

"Come

consideration, that the best place to seek

garden.

You

"That the black

is

can dig for

not

girl,

my

Him

God

is

in

a

here."

idea of seeking for

God

at all" said

disappointed. "I will go on, thank you."

"Has your own yet?"

good deal of

in" said he. "I have found, after a

idea,

as

you

call

it,

led

you

to

Him

The Adventures of

672 **No*' said the it

has.

But

"Many

black

do not

I

girl,

stopping:

your idea." have found

*'I

the Black Girl

cannot say that

like

who

God

have not liked Him and have spent the rest of their lives running away from Him. Why do you suppose you would like Him?" "I dont know" said the black girl. "But the missionary has a line of poetry that says that we needs must love people

the highest

when we

see

it."

"That poet was a fool" said the old gentleman. "We it; we crucify it; we poison it with hemlock; we chain it to a stake and burn it alive. All my life I have striven in my little way to do God's work and teach His enemies to laugh at themselves; but if you told me God was coming down the road I should creep into the nearest mousehole and not dare to breathe until He had passed. For if He saw me or smelt me, might He not put His foot on me and squelch me, as I would squelch any venomous little thing that broke my commandments? These fellows who run after God crying 'Oh that I knew where I might find Him' must have a tremendous opinion

hate

of themselves to think that they could stand before Him,

Has

the missionary ever told

you the

story of Jupiter

and Semele?"

"No"

said the black

"Jupiter

is

gentleman.

"What is that story?** names of God" said

girl.

one of the

"You know

that

He

has

the old

many names, dont

you?"

"The

last

man

I

met

called

Him

Allah," she said.

"Just so" said the old gentleman. "Well, Jupiter fell

love with Semele, and was considerate enough to appear and behave just like a man to her. But she thought herself good enough to be loved by a god in all the greats ness of his godhood. So she insisted on His coming to her in the full panoply of His divinity." "What happened when He did?" asked the black girl.

in

"Just what she might have known would happen if she had had any sense" said the old gentleman. "She shrivelled up and cracked like a flea in the fire. So take care. Do not be a fool like Semele. God is at your elbow, and He has been there all the time; but in His divine mercy He has

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

673

not revealed Himself to you lest too full a knowledge of Him should drive you mad. Make a little garden for yourself: dig and plant and weed and prune; and be content if He jogs your elbow when you are gardening

and

unskilfully,

blesses

you when you are gardening

well."

"And

we never be

shall

said the black *'I

able to bear His full presence?"

girl.

not" said the old philosopher. "For

trust

never be able to bear His

full

presence until

we shall we have

His purposes and become gods ourselves. But as His purposes are infinite, and we are most briefly finite, we shall never, thank God, be able to catch up with His

fulfilled all

much the better for us. If our work were done we should be of no further use: that would be the end of us; for He would hardly keep us alive for the pleasure of looking at us, ugly and ephemeral insects as we are. Therefore come in and help to cultivate this garden to His glory. The rest you had better leave to Him." So she laid down her knobkerry and went in and gardened with him. And from time to time other people came in and helped. At first this made the black girl jealous; but she hated feelings like that, and soon got used to their comings and goings. One day she found a redhaired Irishman laboring in the back garden where they grew the kitchen stuff. "Who let you in here?" she said. purposes. So

"Faith,

I

let

myself

in"

said

the

Irishman.

"Why

wouldnt I?" "But the garden belongs to the old gentleman" said the black

girl.

"I'm a Socialist" said the Irishman "and dont admit that gardens belong to annybody. That oul' fella is cracked and past his work and needs somewan to dig his podatoes for him. Theres a lot been found out about podatoes since he learnt to dig them."

"Then you did not come the black

in to search for

God?"

said

girl.

"Divvle a search" said the Irishman. "Sure God can search for me if He wants me. My own belief is that He's

674

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

all that He sets up to be. He's not properly made and finished yet. Theres somethin in us thats dhrivin at Him, and somethin out of us thats dhrivin at Him: thats certain; and the only other thing thats certain is that the somethin makes plenty of mistakes in thryin to get there. We'v got to find out its way for it as best we can, you and I; for theres a hell of a lot of other people thinkin of nothin but their own bellies." And he spat on his hands and went on digging. Both the black girl and the old gentleman thought the Irishman rather a coarse fellow (as indeed he was) but as he was useful and would not go away, they did their best to teach him nicer habits and refine his language. But nothing would ever persuade him that God was anything more solid and satisfactory than an eternal but as yet unfulfilled purpose, or that it could ever be fulfilled if the fulfillment were not made reasonably easy and hopeful by Socialism. Still, when they had taught him manners and cleanliness they got used to him and even to his dreadful jokes. One day the old gentleman said to her "It is not right that a fine young woman like you should not have a husband and children. I am much too old for you: so you had better marry that Irishman." As she had become very devoted to the old gentleman she was fearfully angry at first at his wanting her to marry anyone else, and even spent a whole night plan-

not

ning to drive the Irishman out of the place with her knobkerry. She could not bring herself to admit that the old gentleman had been born sixty years too early for

and must in the course of nature die and leave her without a companion. But the old gentleman rubbed these flat facts into her so hard that at last she gave in and the two went together into the kitchen garden and told the Irishman that she was going to marry him. He snatched up his spade with a yell of dismay and made a dash for the garden gate. But the black girl had taken the precaution to lock it; and before he could climb it they overtook him and held him fast. her,

The Adventures of "Is

it

the Black Girl

me marry

cried piteously,

675

a black heathen

forgetting

all

his

niggerwoman?" he

lately

acquired refine-

ments of speech. "Lemme go, will yous. I dont want to marry annywan." But the black girl held him in a grip of iron (softly padded, however); and the old gentleman pointed out to him that if he ran away he would only fall into the clutches of some strange woman who cared nothing about searching for God, and who would have a pale ashy skin instead of the shining black satin he was accustomed to. At last, after half an hour or so of argument and coaxing, and a glass of the old gentleman's best burgundy to encourage him, he said "Well, I dont mind if I do." So they were married; and the black girl managed the Irishman and the children (who were charmingly coffeecolored) very capably, and even came to be quite fond of them. Between them and the garden and mending her husband's clothes (which she could not persuade him to leave off wearing) she was kept so busy that her search for God was crowded out of her head most of the time; but there were moments, especially when she was drying her favorite piccaninny, who was very docile and quiet, after his bath, in which her mind went back to her search; only now she saw how funny it was that an unsettled girl should start off to pay God a visit, thinking herself the centre of the universe, and taught by the missionary to regard God as somebody who had nothing better to do than to watch everything she did and worry himself about her salvation. She even tickled the piccaninny and asked him "Suppose I had found God at home what should I have done when He hinted that I was staying too long and that He had other things to attend to?" It was a question which the piccaninny was quite unable to answer: he only chuckled hysterically and tried to grab her wrists. It was only when the piccaninnies grew up and became independent of her, and the Irishman had become an unconscious habit of hers, as if he were a part of herself, that they ceased to take her away from herself and she was left once more with the leisure and loneliness that threw

676

The Adventures of

the Black Girl

back on such questions. And by that time her strengthened mind had taken her far beyond the stage at which there is any fun in smashing idols with knob-

her

kerries.

To

Sister Laurentia

McLachlan

>OOOOOOOOOOC>OO0OOX>OOOOOOOOOOOOOO0O