ACT I

Produced by Eve Sobol

MAN AND SUPERMAN

A COMEDY AND A PHILOSOPHY

By Bernard Shaw

EPISTLE DEDICATORY TO ARTHUR BINGHAM WALKLEY

My dear Walkley:

You once asked me why I did not write a Don Juan play. The levity with

which you assumed this frightful responsibility has probably by this

time enabled you to forget it; but the day of reckoning has arrived:

here is your play! I say your play, because qui facit per alium facit

per se. Its profits, like its labor, belong to me: its morals, its

manners, its philosophy, its influence on the young, are for you to

justify. You were of mature age when you made the suggestion; and you

knew your man. It is hardly fifteen years since, as twin pioneers of

the New Journalism of that time, we two, cradled in the same new sheets,

made an epoch in the criticism of the theatre and the opera house by

making it a pretext for a propaganda of our own views of life. So you

cannot plead ignorance of the character of the force you set in motion.

You meant me to epater le bourgeois; and if he protests, I hereby refer

him to you as the accountable party.

I warn you that if you attempt to repudiate your responsibility, I shall

suspect you of finding the play too decorous for your taste. The

fifteen years have made me older and graver. In you I can detect no such

becoming change. Your levities and audacities are like the loves and

comforts prayed for by Desdemona: they increase, even as your days do

grow. No mere pioneering journal dares meddle with them now: the stately

Times itself is alone sufficiently above suspicion to act as your

chaperone; and even the Times must sometimes thank its stars that

new plays are not produced every day, since after each such event

its gravity is compromised, its platitude turned to epigram, its

portentousness to wit, its propriety to elegance, and even its decorum

into naughtiness by criticisms which the traditions of the paper do not

allow you to sign at the end, but which you take care to sign with the

most extravagant flourishes between the lines. I am not sure that this

is not a portent of Revolution. In eighteenth century France the end was

at hand when men bought the Encyclopedia and found Diderot there. When

I buy the Times and find you there, my prophetic ear catches a rattle of

twentieth century tumbrils.

However, that is not my present anxiety. The question is, will you not

be disappointed with a Don Juan play in which not one of that hero's

mille e tre adventures is brought upon the stage? To propitiate you, let

me explain myself. You will retort that I never do anything else: it

is your favorite jibe at me that what I call drama is nothing but

explanation. But you must not expect me to adopt your inexplicable,

fantastic, petulant, fastidious ways: you must take me as I am, a

reasonable, patient, consistent, apologetic, laborious person, with the

temperament of a schoolmaster and the pursuits of a vestryman. No doubt

that literary knack of mine which happens to amuse the British public

distracts attention from my character; but the character is there none

the less, solid as bricks. I have a conscience; and conscience is

always anxiously explanatory. You, on the contrary, feel that a man who

discusses his conscience is much like a woman who discusses her modesty.

The only moral force you condescend to parade is the force of your

wit: the only demand you make in public is the demand of your artistic

temperament for symmetry, elegance, style, grace, refinement, and the

cleanliness which comes next to godliness if not before it. But my

conscience is the genuine pulpit article: it annoys me to see people

comfortable when they ought to be uncomfortable; and I insist on making

them think in order to bring them to conviction of sin. If you don't

like my preaching you must lump it. I really cannot help it.

In the preface to my Plays for Puritans I explained the predicament of

our contemporary English drama, forced to deal almost exclusively with

cases of sexual attraction, and yet forbidden to exhibit the incidents

of that attraction or even to discuss its nature. Your suggestion that

I should write a Don Juan play was virtually a challenge to me to treat

this subject myself dramatically. The challenge was difficult enough

to be worth accepting, because, when you come to think of it, though we

have plenty of dramas with heroes and heroines who are in love and must

accordingly marry or perish at the end of the play, or about people

whose relations with one another have been complicated by the marriage

laws, not to mention the looser sort of plays which trade on the

tradition that illicit love affairs are at once vicious and delightful,

we have no modern English plays in which the natural attraction of the

sexes for one another is made the mainspring of the action. That is

why we insist on beauty in our performers, differing herein from the

countries our friend William Archer holds up as examples of seriousness

to our childish theatres. There the Juliets and Isoldes, the Romeos and

Tristans, might be our mothers and fathers. Not so the English actress.

The heroine she impersonates is not allowed to discuss the elemental

relations of men and women: all her romantic twaddle about novelet-made

love, all her purely legal dilemmas as to whether she was married

or "betrayed," quite miss our hearts and worry our minds. To console

ourselves we must just look at her. We do so; and her beauty feeds our

starving emotions. Sometimes we grumble ungallantly at the lady because

she does not act as well as she looks. But in a drama which, with all

its preoccupation with sex, is really void of sexual interest, good

looks are more desired than histrionic skill.

Let me press this point on you, since you are too clever to raise the

fool's cry of paradox whenever I take hold of a stick by the right

instead of the wrong end. Why are our occasional attempts to deal with

the sex problem on the stage so repulsive and dreary that even those

who are most determined that sex questions shall be held open and their

discussion kept free, cannot pretend to relish these joyless attempts at

social sanitation? Is it not because at bottom they are utterly sexless?

What is the usual formula for such plays? A woman has, on some past

occasion, been brought into conflict with the law which regulates the

relations of the sexes. A man, by falling in love with her, or

marrying her, is brought into conflict with the social convention which

discountenances the woman. Now the conflicts of individuals with law and

convention can be dramatized like all other human conflicts; but they

are purely judicial; and the fact that we are much more curious about

the suppressed relations between the man and the woman than about the

relations between both and our courts of law and private juries of

matrons, produces that sensation of evasion, of dissatisfaction, of

fundamental irrelevance, of shallowness, of useless disagreeableness,

of total failure to edify and partial failure to interest, which is as

familiar to you in the theatres as it was to me when I, too, frequented

those uncomfortable buildings, and found our popular playwrights in the

mind to (as they thought) emulate Ibsen.

I take it that when you asked me for a Don Juan play you did not want

that sort of thing. Nobody does: the successes such plays sometimes

obtain are due to the incidental conventional melodrama with which the

experienced popular author instinctively saves himself from failure.

But what did you want? Owing to your unfortunate habit--you now, I

hope, feel its inconvenience--of not explaining yourself, I have had to

discover this for myself. First, then, I have had to ask myself, what

is a Don Juan? Vulgarly, a libertine. But your dislike of vulgarity

is pushed to the length of a defect (universality of character is

impossible without a share of vulgarity); and even if you could acquire

the taste, you would find yourself overfed from ordinary sources

without troubling me. So I took it that you demanded a Don Juan in the

philosophic sense.

Philosophically, Don Juan is a man who, though gifted enough to be

exceptionally capable of distinguishing between good and evil, follows

his own instincts without regard to the common statute, or canon law;

and therefore, whilst gaining the ardent sympathy of our rebellious

instincts (which are flattered by the brilliancies with which Don

Juan associates them) finds himself in mortal conflict with existing

institutions, and defends himself by fraud and farce as unscrupulously

as a farmer defends his crops by the same means against vermin. The

prototypic Don Juan, invented early in the XVI century by a Spanish

monk, was presented, according to the ideas of that time, as the enemy

of God, the approach of whose vengeance is felt throughout the drama,

growing in menace from minute to minute. No anxiety is caused on Don

Juan's account by any minor antagonist: he easily eludes the police,

temporal and spiritual; and when an indignant father seeks private

redress with the sword, Don Juan kills him without an effort. Not until

the slain father returns from heaven as the agent of God, in the form

of his own statue, does he prevail against his slayer and cast him into

hell. The moral is a monkish one: repent and reform now; for to-morrow

it may be too late. This is really the only point on which Don Juan is

sceptical; for he is a devout believer in an ultimate hell, and risks

damnation only because, as he is young, it seems so far off that

repentance can be postponed until he has amused himself to his heart's

content.

But the lesson intended by an author is hardly ever the lesson the world

chooses to learn from his book. What attracts and impresses us in El

Burlador de Sevilla is not the immediate urgency of repentance, but

the heroism of daring to be the enemy of God. From Prometheus to my own

Devil's Disciple, such enemies have always been popular. Don Juan became

such a pet that the world could not bear his damnation. It reconciled

him sentimentally to God in a second version, and clamored for

his canonization for a whole century, thus treating him as English

journalism has treated that comic foe of the gods, Punch. Moliere's Don

Juan casts back to the original in point of impenitence; but in piety he

falls off greatly. True, he also proposes to repent; but in what terms?

"Oui, ma foi! il faut s'amender. Encore vingt ou trente ans de cette

vie-ci, et puis nous songerons a nous." After Moliere comes the

artist-enchanter, the master of masters, Mozart, who reveals the hero's

spirit in magical harmonies, elfin tones, and elate darting rhythms as

of summer lightning made audible. Here you have freedom in love and in

morality mocking exquisitely at slavery to them, and interesting you,

attracting you, tempting you, inexplicably forcing you to range the hero

with his enemy the statue on a transcendant plane, leaving the prudish

daughter and her priggish lover on a crockery shelf below to live

piously ever after.

After these completed works Byron's fragment does not count for much

philosophically. Our vagabond libertines are no more interesting from

that point of view than the sailor who has a wife in every port, and

Byron's hero is, after all, only a vagabond libertine. And he is dumb:

he does not discuss himself with a Sganarelle-Leporello or with the

fathers or brothers of his mistresses: he does not even, like Casanova,

tell his own story. In fact he is not a true Don Juan at all; for he is

no more an enemy of God than any romantic and adventurous young sower of

wild oats. Had you and I been in his place at his age, who knows whether

we might not have done as he did, unless indeed your fastidiousness

had saved you from the empress Catherine. Byron was as little of a

philosopher as Peter the Great: both were instances of that rare and

useful, but unedifying variation, an energetic genius born without

the prejudices or superstitions of his contemporaries. The resultant

unscrupulous freedom of thought made Byron a greater poet than

Wordsworth just as it made Peter a greater king than George III; but

as it was, after all, only a negative qualification, it did not prevent

Peter from being an appalling blackguard and an arrant poltroon, nor did

it enable Byron to become a religious force like Shelley. Let us, then,

leave Byron's Don Juan out of account. Mozart's is the last of the true

Don Juans; for by the time he was of age, his cousin Faust had, in the

hands of Goethe, taken his place and carried both his warfare and his

reconciliation with the gods far beyond mere lovemaking into politics,

high art, schemes for reclaiming new continents from the ocean, and

recognition of an eternal womanly principle in the universe. Goethe's

Faust and Mozart's Don Juan were the last words of the XVIII century

on the subject; and by the time the polite critics of the XIX century,

ignoring William Blake as superficially as the XVIII had ignored Hogarth

or the XVII Bunyan, had got past the Dickens-Macaulay Dumas-Guizot stage

and the Stendhal-Meredith-Turgenieff stage, and were confronted with

philosophic fiction by such pens as Ibsen's and Tolstoy's, Don Juan had

changed his sex and become Dona Juana, breaking out of the Doll's House

and asserting herself as an individual instead of a mere item in a moral

pageant.

Now it is all very well for you at the beginning of the XX century to

ask me for a Don Juan play; but you will see from the foregoing survey

that Don Juan is a full century out of date for you and for me; and

if there are millions of less literate people who are still in the

eighteenth century, have they not Moliere and Mozart, upon whose art no

human hand can improve? You would laugh at me if at this time of day I

dealt in duels and ghosts and "womanly" women. As to mere libertinism,

you would be the first to remind me that the Festin de Pierre of

Moliere is not a play for amorists, and that one bar of the voluptuous

sentimentality of Gounod or Bizet would appear as a licentious stain on

the score of Don Giovanni. Even the more abstract parts of the Don Juan

play are dilapidated past use: for instance, Don Juan's supernatural

antagonist hurled those who refuse to repent into lakes of burning

brimstone, there to be tormented by devils with horns and tails. Of that

antagonist, and of that conception of repentance, how much is left that

could be used in a play by me dedicated to you? On the other hand, those

forces of middle class public opinion which hardly existed for a

Spanish nobleman in the days of the first Don Juan, are now triumphant

everywhere. Civilized society is one huge bourgeoisie: no nobleman

dares now shock his greengrocer. The women, "marchesane, principesse,

cameriere, cittadine" and all, are become equally dangerous: the sex

is aggressive, powerful: when women are wronged they do not group

themselves pathetically to sing "Protegga il giusto cielo": they grasp

formidable legal and social weapons, and retaliate. Political parties

are wrecked and public careers undone by a single indiscretion. A man

had better have all the statues in London to supper with him, ugly as

they are, than be brought to the bar of the Nonconformist Conscience by

Donna Elvira. Excommunication has become almost as serious a business as

it was in the X century.

As a result, Man is no longer, like Don Juan, victor in the duel of

sex. Whether he has ever really been may be doubted: at all events

the enormous superiority of Woman's natural position in this matter is

telling with greater and greater force. As to pulling the Nonconformist

Conscience by the beard as Don Juan plucked the beard of the

Commandant's statue in the convent of San Francisco, that is out of the

question nowadays: prudence and good manners alike forbid it to a hero

with any mind. Besides, it is Don Juan's own beard that is in danger of

plucking. Far from relapsing into hypocrisy, as Sganarelle feared,

he has unexpectedly discovered a moral in his immorality. The growing

recognition of his new point of view is heaping responsibility on him.

His former jests he has had to take as seriously as I have had to take

some of the jests of Mr W. S. Gilbert. His scepticism, once his least

tolerated quality, has now triumphed so completely that he can no

longer assert himself by witty negations, and must, to save himself from

cipherdom, find an affirmative position. His thousand and three affairs

of gallantry, after becoming, at most, two immature intrigues leading to

sordid and prolonged complications and humiliations, have been discarded

altogether as unworthy of his philosophic dignity and compromising to

his newly acknowledged position as the founder of a school. Instead of

pretending to read Ovid he does actually read Schopenhaur and Nietzsche,

studies Westermarck, and is concerned for the future of the race instead

of for the freedom of his own instincts. Thus his profligacy and his

dare-devil airs have gone the way of his sword and mandoline into the

rag shop of anachronisms and superstitions. In fact, he is now more

Hamlet than Don Juan; for though the lines put into the actor's mouth to

indicate to the pit that Hamlet is a philosopher are for the most

part mere harmonious platitude which, with a little debasement of the

word-music, would be properer to Pecksniff, yet if you separate the real

hero, inarticulate and unintelligible to himself except in flashes of

inspiration, from the performer who has to talk at any cost through

five acts; and if you also do what you must always do in Shakespear's

tragedies: that is, dissect out the absurd sensational incidents and

physical violences of the borrowed story from the genuine Shakespearian

tissue, you will get a true Promethean foe of the gods, whose

instinctive attitude towards women much resembles that to which Don Juan

is now driven. From this point of view Hamlet was a developed Don Juan

whom Shakespear palmed off as a reputable man just as he palmed poor

Macbeth off as a murderer. To-day the palming off is no longer necessary

(at least on your plane and mine) because Don Juanism is no longer

misunderstood as mere Casanovism. Don Juan himself is almost ascetic in

his desire to avoid that misunderstanding; and so my attempt to bring

him up to date by launching him as a modern Englishman into a modern

English environment has produced a figure superficially quite unlike the

hero of Mozart.

And yet I have not the heart to disappoint you wholly of another glimpse

of the Mozartian dissoluto punito and his antagonist the statue. I feel

sure you would like to know more of that statue--to draw him out when he

is off duty, so to speak. To gratify you, I have resorted to the trick

of the strolling theatrical manager who advertizes the pantomime of

Sinbad the Sailor with a stock of second-hand picture posters designed

for Ali Baba. He simply thrusts a few oil jars into the valley of

diamonds, and so fulfils the promise held out by the hoardings to

the public eye. I have adapted this simple device to our occasion by

thrusting into my perfectly modern three-act play a totally extraneous

act in which my hero, enchanted by the air of the Sierra, has a dream in

which his Mozartian ancestor appears and philosophizes at great length

in a Shavio-Socratic dialogue with the lady, the statue, and the devil.

But this pleasantry is not the essence of the play. Over this essence

I have no control. You propound a certain social substance, sexual

attraction to wit, for dramatic distillation; and I distil it for you.

I do not adulterate the product with aphrodisiacs nor dilute it with

romance and water; for I am merely executing your commission, not

producing a popular play for the market. You must therefore (unless,

like most wise men, you read the play first and the preface afterwards)

prepare yourself to face a trumpery story of modern London life, a life

in which, as you know, the ordinary man's main business is to get means

to keep up the position and habits of a gentleman, and the ordinary

woman's business is to get married. In 9,999 cases out of 10,000, you

can count on their doing nothing, whether noble or base, that conflicts

with these ends; and that assurance is what you rely on as their

religion, their morality, their principles, their patriotism, their

reputation, their honor and so forth.

On the whole, this is a sensible and satisfactory foundation for

society. Money means nourishment and marriage means children; and that

men should put nourishment first and women children first is, broadly

speaking, the law of Nature and not the dictate of personal ambition.

The secret of the prosaic man's success, such as it is, is the

simplicity with which he pursues these ends: the secret of the artistic

man's failure, such as that is, is the versatility with which he strays

in all directions after secondary ideals. The artist is either a poet

or a scallawag: as poet, he cannot see, as the prosaic man does, that

chivalry is at bottom only romantic suicide: as scallawag, he cannot see

that it does not pay to spunge and beg and lie and brag and neglect

his person. Therefore do not misunderstand my plain statement of the

fundamental constitution of London society as an Irishman's reproach to

your nation. From the day I first set foot on this foreign soil I knew

the value of the prosaic qualities of which Irishmen teach Englishmen to

be ashamed as well as I knew the vanity of the poetic qualities of which

Englishmen teach Irishmen to be proud. For the Irishman instinctively

disparages the quality which makes the Englishman dangerous to him; and

the Englishman instinctively flatters the fault that makes the Irishman

harmless and amusing to him. What is wrong with the prosaic Englishman

is what is wrong with the prosaic men of all countries: stupidity. The

vitality which places nourishment and children first, heaven and hell

a somewhat remote second, and the health of society as an organic whole

nowhere, may muddle successfully through the comparatively tribal stages

of gregariousness; but in nineteenth century nations and twentieth

century empires the determination of every man to be rich at all costs,

and of every woman to be married at all costs, must, without a highly

scientific social organization, produce a ruinous development of

poverty, celibacy, prostitution, infant mortality, adult degeneracy, and

everything that wise men most dread. In short, there is no future for

men, however brimming with crude vitality, who are neither intelligent

nor politically educated enough to be Socialists. So do not

misunderstand me in the other direction either: if I appreciate the

vital qualities of the Englishman as I appreciate the vital qualities of

the bee, I do not guarantee the Englishman against being, like the

bee (or the Canaanite) smoked out and unloaded of his honey by beings

inferior to himself in simple acquisitiveness, combativeness, and

fecundity, but superior to him in imagination and cunning.

The Don Juan play, however, is to deal with sexual attraction, and not

with nutrition, and to deal with it in a society in which the serious

business of sex is left by men to women, as the serious business of

nutrition is left by women to men. That the men, to protect themselves

against a too aggressive prosecution of the women's business, have set

up a feeble romantic convention that the initiative in sex business must

always come from the man, is true; but the pretence is so shallow that

even in the theatre, that last sanctuary of unreality, it imposes only

on the inexperienced. In Shakespear's plays the woman always takes the

initiative. In his problem plays and his popular plays alike the love

interest is the interest of seeing the woman hunt the man down. She may

do it by blandishment, like Rosalind, or by stratagem, like Mariana; but

in every case the relation between the woman and the man is the same:

she is the pursuer and contriver, he the pursued and disposed of. When

she is baffled, like Ophelia, she goes mad and commits suicide; and the

man goes straight from her funeral to a fencing match. No doubt Nature,

with very young creatures, may save the woman the trouble of scheming:

Prospero knows that he has only to throw Ferdinand and Miranda together

and they will mate like a pair of doves; and there is no need for

Perdita to capture Florizel as the lady doctor in All's Well That Ends

Well (an early Ibsenite heroine) captures Bertram. But the mature

cases all illustrate the Shakespearian law. The one apparent exception,

Petruchio, is not a real one: he is most carefully characterized as

a purely commercial matrimonial adventurer. Once he is assured that

Katharine has money, he undertakes to marry her before he has seen her.

In real life we find not only Petruchios, but Mantalinis and Dobbins who

pursue women with appeals to their pity or jealousy or vanity, or cling

to them in a romantically infatuated way. Such effeminates do not count

in the world scheme: even Bunsby dropping like a fascinated bird into

the jaws of Mrs MacStinger is by comparison a true tragic object of

pity and terror. I find in my own plays that Woman, projecting herself

dramatically by my hands (a process over which I assure you I have no

more real control than I have over my wife), behaves just as Woman did

in the plays of Shakespear.

And so your Don Juan has come to birth as a stage projection of the

tragi-comic love chase of the man by the woman; and my Don Juan is the

quarry instead of the huntsman. Yet he is a true Don Juan, with a sense

of reality that disables convention, defying to the last the fate which

finally overtakes him. The woman's need of him to enable her to carry

on Nature's most urgent work, does not prevail against him until his

resistance gathers her energy to a climax at which she dares to throw

away her customary exploitations of the conventional affectionate and

dutiful poses, and claim him by natural right for a purpose that far

transcends their mortal personal purposes.

Among the friends to whom I have read this play in manuscript are some

of our own sex who are shocked at the "unscrupulousness," meaning

the total disregard of masculine fastidiousness, with which the woman

pursues her purpose. It does not occur to them that if women were as

fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the

race. Is there anything meaner then to throw necessary work upon other

people and then disparage it as unworthy and indelicate. We laugh at the

haughty American nation because it makes the negro clean its boots and

then proves the moral and physical inferiority of the negro by the fact

that he is a shoeblack; but we ourselves throw the whole drudgery of

creation on one sex, and then imply that no female of any womanliness

or delicacy would initiate any effort in that direction. There are no

limits to male hypocrisy in this matter. No doubt there are moments when

man's sexual immunities are made acutely humiliating to him. When

the terrible moment of birth arrives, its supreme importance and its

superhuman effort and peril, in which the father has no part, dwarf

him into the meanest insignificance: he slinks out of the way of the

humblest petticoat, happy if he be poor enough to be pushed out of the

house to outface his ignominy by drunken rejoicings. But when the

crisis is over he takes his revenge, swaggering as the breadwinner, and

speaking of Woman's "sphere" with condescension, even with chivalry, as

if the kitchen and the nursery were less important than the office in

the city. When his swagger is exhausted he drivels into erotic poetry

or sentimental uxoriousness; and the Tennysonian King Arthur posing as

Guinevere becomes Don Quixote grovelling before Dulcinea. You must admit

that here Nature beats Comedy out of the field: the wildest hominist or

feminist farce is insipid after the most commonplace "slice of life."

The pretence that women do not take the initiative is part of the farce.

Why, the whole world is strewn with snares, traps, gins and pitfalls

for the capture of men by women. Give women the vote, and in five years

there will be a crushing tax on bachelors. Men, on the other hand,

attach penalties to marriage, depriving women of property, of the

franchise, of the free use of their limbs, of that ancient symbol of

immortality, the right to make oneself at home in the house of God by

taking off the hat, of everything that he can force Woman to dispense

with without compelling himself to dispense with her. All in vain. Woman

must marry because the race must perish without her travail: if the risk

of death and the certainty of pain, danger and unutterable discomforts

cannot deter her, slavery and swaddled ankles will not. And yet we

assume that the force that carries women through all these perils and

hardships, stops abashed before the primnesses of our behavior for young

ladies. It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is

wooed. Nay, she often does wait motionless. That is how the spider waits

for the fly. But the spider spins her web. And if the fly, like my hero,

shows a strength that promises to extricate him, how swiftly does she

abandon her pretence of passiveness, and openly fling coil after coil

about him until he is secured for ever!

If the really impressive books and other art-works of the world were

produced by ordinary men, they would express more fear of women's

pursuit than love of their illusory beauty. But ordinary men cannot

produce really impressive art-works. Those who can are men of genius:

that is, men selected by Nature to carry on the work of building up an

intellectual consciousness of her own instinctive purpose. Accordingly,

we observe in the man of genius all the unscrupulousness and all the

"self-sacrifice" (the two things are the same) of Woman. He will risk

the stake and the cross; starve, when necessary, in a garret all his

life; study women and live on their work and care as Darwin studied

worms and lived upon sheep; work his nerves into rags without payment,

a sublime altruist in his disregard of himself, an atrocious egotist in

his disregard of others. Here Woman meets a purpose as impersonal, as

irresistible as her own; and the clash is sometimes tragic. When it is

complicated by the genius being a woman, then the game is one for a king

of critics: your George Sand becomes a mother to gain experience for

the novelist and to develop her, and gobbles up men of genius, Chopins,

Mussets and the like, as mere hors d'oeuvres.

I state the extreme case, of course; but what is true of the great man

who incarnates the philosophic consciousness of Life and the woman who

incarnates its fecundity, is true in some degree of all geniuses and

all women. Hence it is that the world's books get written, its pictures

painted, its statues modelled, its symphonies composed, by people who

are free of the otherwise universal dominion of the tyranny of sex.

Which leads us to the conclusion, astonishing to the vulgar, that art,

instead of being before all things the expression of the normal sexual

situation, is really the only department in which sex is a superseded

and secondary power, with its consciousness so confused and its purpose

so perverted, that its ideas are mere fantasy to common men. Whether the

artist becomes poet or philosopher, moralist or founder of a religion,

his sexual doctrine is nothing but a barren special pleading for

pleasure, excitement, and knowledge when he is young, and for

contemplative tranquillity when he is old and satiated. Romance and

Asceticism, Amorism and Puritanism are equally unreal in the great

Philistine world. The world shown us in books, whether the books be

confessed epics or professed gospels, or in codes, or in political

orations, or in philosophic systems, is not the main world at all: it

is only the self-consciousness of certain abnormal people who have the

specific artistic talent and temperament. A serious matter this for you

and me, because the man whose consciousness does not correspond to that

of the majority is a madman; and the old habit of worshipping madmen is

giving way to the new habit of locking them up. And since what we call

education and culture is for the most part nothing but the substitution

of reading for experience, of literature for life, of the obsolete

fictitious for the contemporary real, education, as you no doubt

observed at Oxford, destroys, by supplantation, every mind that is not

strong enough to see through the imposture and to use the great Masters

of Arts as what they really are and no more: that is, patentees of

highly questionable methods of thinking, and manufacturers of highly

questionable, and for the majority but half valid representations of

life. The schoolboy who uses his Homer to throw at his fellow's head

makes perhaps the safest and most rational use of him; and I observe

with reassurance that you occasionally do the same, in your prime, with

your Aristotle.

Fortunately for us, whose minds have been so overwhelmingly

sophisticated by literature, what produces all these treatises and poems

and scriptures of one sort or another is the struggle of Life to become

divinely conscious of itself instead of blindly stumbling hither and

thither in the line of least resistance. Hence there is a driving

towards truth in all books on matters where the writer, though

exceptionally gifted is normally constituted, and has no private axe to

grind. Copernicus had no motive for misleading his fellowmen as to the

place of the sun in the solar system: he looked for it as honestly as a

shepherd seeks his path in a mist. But Copernicus would not have written

love stories scientifically. When it comes to sex relations, the man of

genius does not share the common man's danger of capture, nor the woman

of genius the common woman's overwhelming specialization. And that is

why our scriptures and other art works, when they deal with love, turn

from honest attempts at science in physics to romantic nonsense, erotic

ecstasy, or the stern asceticism of satiety ("the road of excess leads

to the palace of wisdom" said William Blake; for "you never know what is

enough unless you know what is more than enough").

There is a political aspect of this sex question which is too big for my

comedy, and too momentous to be passed over without culpable frivolity.

It is impossible to demonstrate that the initiative in sex transactions

remains with Woman, and has been confirmed to her, so far, more and more

by the suppression of rapine and discouragement of importunity,

without being driven to very serious reflections on the fact that this

initiative is politically the most important of all the initiatives,

because our political experiment of democracy, the last refuge of cheap

misgovernment, will ruin us if our citizens are ill bred.

When we two were born, this country was still dominated by a selected

class bred by political marriages. The commercial class had not then

completed the first twenty-five years of its new share of political

power; and it was itself selected by money qualification, and bred, if

not by political marriage, at least by a pretty rigorous class marriage.

Aristocracy and plutocracy still furnish the figureheads of politics;

but they are now dependent on the votes of the promiscuously bred

masses. And this, if you please, at the very moment when the political

problem, having suddenly ceased to mean a very limited and occasional

interference, mostly by way of jobbing public appointments, in the

mismanagement of a tight but parochial little island, with occasional

meaningless prosecution of dynastic wars, has become the industrial

reorganization of Britain, the construction of a practically

international Commonwealth, and the partition of the whole of Africa and

perhaps the whole of Asia by the civilized Powers. Can you believe that

the people whose conceptions of society and conduct, whose power of

attention and scope of interest, are measured by the British theatre as

you know it to-day, can either handle this colossal task themselves, or

understand and support the sort of mind and character that is (at least

comparatively) capable of handling it? For remember: what our voters are

in the pit and gallery they are also in the polling booth. We are

all now under what Burke called "the hoofs of the swinish multitude."

Burke's language gave great offence because the implied exceptions to

its universal application made it a class insult; and it certainly was

not for the pot to call the kettle black. The aristocracy he defended,

in spite of the political marriages by which it tried to secure breeding

for itself, had its mind undertrained by silly schoolmasters and

governesses, its character corrupted by gratuitous luxury, its

self-respect adulterated to complete spuriousness by flattery and

flunkeyism. It is no better to-day and never will be any better: our

very peasants have something morally hardier in them that culminates

occasionally in a Bunyan, a Burns, or a Carlyle. But observe, this

aristocracy, which was overpowered from 1832 to 1885 by the middle

class, has come back to power by the votes of "the swinish multitude."

Tom Paine has triumphed over Edmund Burke; and the swine are now courted

electors. How many of their own class have these electors sent to

parliament? Hardly a dozen out of 670, and these only under the

persuasion of conspicuous personal qualifications and popular eloquence.

The multitude thus pronounces judgment on its own units: it admits

itself unfit to govern, and will vote only for a man morphologically

and generically transfigured by palatial residence and equipage, by

transcendent tailoring, by the glamor of aristocratic kinship. Well, we

two know these transfigured persons, these college passmen, these well

groomed monocular Algys and Bobbies, these cricketers to whom age brings

golf instead of wisdom, these plutocratic products of "the nail and

sarspan business as he got his money by." Do you know whether to laugh

or cry at the notion that they, poor devils! will drive a team of

continents as they drive a four-in-hand; turn a jostling anarchy of

casual trade and speculation into an ordered productivity; and federate

our colonies into a world-Power of the first magnitude? Give these

people the most perfect political constitution and the soundest

political program that benevolent omniscience can devise for them, and

they will interpret it into mere fashionable folly or canting charity as

infallibly as a savage converts the philosophical theology of a Scotch

missionary into crude African idolatry.

I do not know whether you have any illusions left on the subject of

education, progress, and so forth. I have none. Any pamphleteer can show

the way to better things; but when there is no will there is no way. My

nurse was fond of remarking that you cannot make a silk purse out of

a sow's ear, and the more I see of the efforts of our churches and

universities and literary sages to raise the mass above its own level,

the more convinced I am that my nurse was right. Progress can do nothing

but make the most of us all as we are, and that most would clearly not

be enough even if those who are already raised out of the lowest

abysses would allow the others a chance. The bubble of Heredity has been

pricked: the certainty that acquirements are negligible as elements in

practical heredity has demolished the hopes of the educationists as well

as the terrors of the degeneracy mongers; and we know now that there is

no hereditary "governing class" any more than a hereditary hooliganism.

We must either breed political capacity or be ruined by Democracy,

which was forced on us by the failure of the older alternatives. Yet

if Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what

chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable

voters: that is, of political critics who, if they cannot govern in

person for lack of spare energy or specific talent for administration,

can at least recognize and appreciate capacity and benevolence in

others, and so govern through capably benevolent representatives? Where

are such voters to be found to-day? Nowhere. Promiscuous breeding has

produced a weakness of character that is too timid to face the full

stringency of a thoroughly competitive struggle for existence and

too lazy and petty to organize the commonwealth co-operatively. Being

cowards, we defeat natural selection under cover of philanthropy: being

sluggards, we neglect artificial selection under cover of delicacy and

morality.

Yet we must get an electorate of capable critics or collapse as Rome

and Egypt collapsed. At this moment the Roman decadent phase of panem

et circenses is being inaugurated under our eyes. Our newspapers and

melodramas are blustering about our imperial destiny; but our eyes and

hearts turn eagerly to the American millionaire. As his hand goes down

to his pocket, our fingers go up to the brims of our hats by instinct.

Our ideal prosperity is not the prosperity of the industrial north, but

the prosperity of the Isle of Wight, of Folkestone and Ramsgate, of Nice

and Monte Carlo. That is the only prosperity you see on the stage, where

the workers are all footmen, parlourmaids, comic lodging-letters

and fashionable professional men, whilst the heroes and heroines are

miraculously provided with unlimited dividends, and eat gratuitously,

like the knights in Don Quixote's books of chivalry.

The city papers prate of the competition of Bombay with Manchester and

the like. The real competition is the competition of Regent Street with

the Rue de Rivoli, of Brighton and the south coast with the Riviera, for

the spending money of the American Trusts. What is all this growing

love of pageantry, this effusive loyalty, this officious rising

and uncovering at a wave from a flag or a blast from a brass band?

Imperialism: Not a bit of it. Obsequiousness, servility, cupidity roused

by the prevailing smell of money. When Mr Carnegie rattled his millions

in his pockets all England became one rapacious cringe. Only, when

Rhodes (who had probably been reading my Socialism for Millionaires)

left word that no idler was to inherit his estate, the bent backs

straightened mistrustfully for a moment. Could it be that the Diamond

King was no gentleman after all? However, it was easy to ignore a rich

man's solecism. The ungentlemanly clause was not mentioned again; and

the backs soon bowed themselves back into their natural shape.

But I hear you asking me in alarm whether I have actually put all this

tub thumping into a Don Juan comedy. I have not. I have only made my Don

Juan a political pamphleteer, and given you his pamphlet in full by way

of appendix. You will find it at the end of the book. I am sorry to say

that it is a common practice with romancers to announce their hero as

a man of extraordinary genius, and to leave his works entirely to the

reader's imagination; so that at the end of the book you whisper to

yourself ruefully that but for the author's solemn preliminary assurance

you should hardly have given the gentleman credit for ordinary good

sense. You cannot accuse me of this pitiable barrenness, this feeble

evasion. I not only tell you that my hero wrote a revolutionists'

handbook: I give you the handbook at full length for your edification if

you care to read it. And in that handbook you will find the politics of

the sex question as I conceive Don Juan's descendant to understand them.

Not that I disclaim the fullest responsibility for his opinions and for

those of all my characters, pleasant and unpleasant. They are all right

from their several points of view; and their points of view are, for the

dramatic moment, mine also. This may puzzle the people who believe that

there is such a thing as an absolutely right point of view, usually

their own. It may seem to them that nobody who doubts this can be in a

state of grace. However that may be, it is certainly true that nobody

who agrees with them can possibly be a dramatist, or indeed anything

else that turns upon a knowledge of mankind. Hence it has been pointed

out that Shakespear had no conscience. Neither have I, in that sense.

You may, however, remind me that this digression of mine into politics

was preceded by a very convincing demonstration that the artist never

catches the point of view of the common man on the question of sex,

because he is not in the same predicament. I first prove that anything I

write on the relation of the sexes is sure to be misleading; and then I

proceed to write a Don Juan play. Well, if you insist on asking me why

I behave in this absurd way, I can only reply that you asked me to,

and that in any case my treatment of the subject may be valid for the

artist, amusing to the amateur, and at least intelligible and therefore

possibly suggestive to the Philistine. Every man who records his

illusions is providing data for the genuinely scientific psychology

which the world still waits for. I plank down my view of the existing

relations of men to women in the most highly civilized society for what

it is worth. It is a view like any other view and no more, neither true

nor false, but, I hope, a way of looking at the subject which throws

into the familiar order of cause and effect a sufficient body of fact

and experience to be interesting to you, if not to the play-going public

of London. I have certainly shown little consideration for that public

in this enterprise; but I know that it has the friendliest disposition

towards you and me as far as it has any consciousness of our existence,

and quite understands that what I write for you must pass at a

considerable height over its simple romantic head. It will take my books

as read and my genius for granted, trusting me to put forth work of such

quality as shall bear out its verdict. So we may disport ourselves on

our own plane to the top of our bent; and if any gentleman points out

that neither this epistle dedicatory nor the dream of Don Juan in the

third act of the ensuing comedy is suitable for immediate production at

a popular theatre we need not contradict him. Napoleon provided Talma

with a pit of kings, with what effect on Talma's acting is not recorded.

As for me, what I have always wanted is a pit of philosophers; and this

is a play for such a pit.

I should make formal acknowledgment to the authors whom I have pillaged

in the following pages if I could recollect them all. The theft of the

brigand-poetaster from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is deliberate; and the

metamorphosis of Leporello into Enry Straker, motor engineer and New

Man, is an intentional dramatic sketch for the contemporary embryo of

Mr H. G. Wells's anticipation of the efficient engineering class

which will, he hopes, finally sweep the jabberers out of the way of

civilization. Mr Barrio has also, whilst I am correcting my proofs,

delighted London with a servant who knows more than his masters. The

conception of Mendoza Limited I trace back to a certain West Indian

colonial secretary, who, at a period when he and I and Mr Sidney

Webb were sowing our political wild oats as a sort of Fabian Three

Musketeers, without any prevision of the surprising respectability

of the crop that followed, recommended Webb, the encyclopedic and

inexhaustible, to form himself into a company for the benefit of the

shareholders. Octavius I take over unaltered from Mozart; and I hereby

authorize any actor who impersonates him, to sing "Dalla sua pace" (if

he can) at any convenient moment during the representation. Ann was

suggested to me by the fifteenth century Dutch morality called Everyman,

which Mr William Poel has lately resuscitated so triumphantly. I

trust he will work that vein further, and recognize that Elizabethan

Renascence fustian is no more bearable after medieval poesy than Scribe

after Ibsen. As I sat watching Everyman at the Charterhouse, I said to

myself Why not Everywoman? Ann was the result: every woman is not Ann;

but Ann is Everywoman.

That the author of Everyman was no mere artist, but an

artist-philosopher, and that the artist-philosophers are the only sort

of artists I take quite seriously, will be no news to you. Even Plato

and Boswell, as the dramatists who invented Socrates and Dr Johnson,

impress me more deeply than the romantic playwrights. Ever since, as

a boy, I first breathed the air of the transcendental regions at a

performance of Mozart's Zauberflote, I have been proof against the

garish splendors and alcoholic excitements of the ordinary stage

combinations of Tappertitian romance with the police intelligence.

Bunyan, Blake, Hogarth and Turner (these four apart and above all the

English Classics), Goethe, Shelley, Schopenhaur, Wagner, Ibsen, Morris,

Tolstoy, and Nietzsche are among the writers whose peculiar sense of

the world I recognize as more or less akin to my own. Mark the word

peculiar. I read Dickens and Shakespear without shame or stint;

but their pregnant observations and demonstrations of life are not

co-ordinated into any philosophy or religion: on the contrary, Dickens's

sentimental assumptions are violently contradicted by his observations;

and Shakespear's pessimism is only his wounded humanity. Both have the

specific genius of the fictionist and the common sympathies of human

feeling and thought in pre-eminent degree. They are often saner and

shrewder than the philosophers just as Sancho-Panza was often saner and

shrewder than Don Quixote. They clear away vast masses of oppressive

gravity by their sense of the ridiculous, which is at bottom a

combination of sound moral judgment with lighthearted good humor. But

they are concerned with the diversities of the world instead of with its

unities: they are so irreligious that they exploit popular religion for

professional purposes without delicacy or scruple (for example, Sydney

Carton and the ghost in Hamlet!): they are anarchical, and cannot

balance their exposures of Angelo and Dogberry, Sir Leicester Dedlock

and Mr Tite Barnacle, with any portrait of a prophet or a worthy leader:

they have no constructive ideas: they regard those who have them as

dangerous fanatics: in all their fictions there is no leading thought or

inspiration for which any man could conceivably risk the spoiling of

his hat in a shower, much less his life. Both are alike forced to borrow

motives for the more strenuous actions of their personages from

the common stockpot of melodramatic plots; so that Hamlet has to

be stimulated by the prejudices of a policeman and Macbeth by the

cupidities of a bushranger. Dickens, without the excuse of having to

manufacture motives for Hamlets and Macbeths, superfluously punt his

crew down the stream of his monthly parts by mechanical devices which I

leave you to describe, my own memory being quite baffled by the simplest

question as to Monks in Oliver Twist, or the long lost parentage of

Smike, or the relations between the Dorrit and Clennam families so

inopportunely discovered by Monsieur Rigaud Blandois. The truth is, the

world was to Shakespear a great "stage of fools" on which he was utterly

bewildered. He could see no sort of sense in living at all; and Dickens

saved himself from the despair of the dream in The Chimes by taking the

world for granted and busying himself with its details. Neither of them

could do anything with a serious positive character: they could place a

human figure before you with perfect verisimilitude; but when the moment

came for making it live and move, they found, unless it made them laugh,

that they had a puppet on their hands, and had to invent some artificial

external stimulus to make it work. This is what is the matter with

Hamlet all through: he has no will except in his bursts of temper.

Foolish Bardolaters make a virtue of this after their fashion:

they declare that the play is the tragedy of irresolution; but all

Shakespear's projections of the deepest humanity he knew have the same

defect: their characters and manners are lifelike; but their actions

are forced on them from without, and the external force is grotesquely

inappropriate except when it is quite conventional, as in the case of

Henry V. Falstaff is more vivid than any of these serious reflective

characters, because he is self-acting: his motives are his own appetites

and instincts and humors. Richard III, too, is delightful as the

whimsical comedian who stops a funeral to make love to the corpse's

widow; but when, in the next act, he is replaced by a stage villain who

smothers babies and offs with people's heads, we are revolted at the

imposture and repudiate the changeling. Faulconbridge, Coriolanus,

Leontes are admirable descriptions of instinctive temperaments: indeed

the play of Coriolanus is the greatest of Shakespear's comedies; but

description is not philosophy; and comedy neither compromises the author

nor reveals him. He must be judged by those characters into which he

puts what he knows of himself, his Hamlets and Macbeths and Lears and

Prosperos. If these characters are agonizing in a void about factitious

melodramatic murders and revenges and the like, whilst the comic

characters walk with their feet on solid ground, vivid and amusing,

you know that the author has much to show and nothing to teach. The

comparison between Falstaff and Prospero is like the comparison

between Micawber and David Copperfield. At the end of the book you know

Micawber, whereas you only know what has happened to David, and are not

interested enough in him to wonder what his politics or religion might

be if anything so stupendous as a religious or political idea, or a

general idea of any sort, were to occur to him. He is tolerable as a

child; but he never becomes a man, and might be left out of his own

biography altogether but for his usefulness as a stage confidant, a

Horatio or "Charles his friend" what they call on the stage a feeder.

Now you cannot say this of the works of the artist-philosophers.

You cannot say it, for instance, of The Pilgrim's Progress. Put your

Shakespearian hero and coward, Henry V and Pistol or Parolles, beside

Mr Valiant and Mr Fearing, and you have a sudden revelation of the abyss

that lies between the fashionable author who could see nothing in the

world but personal aims and the tragedy of their disappointment or the

comedy of their incongruity, and the field preacher who achieved virtue

and courage by identifying himself with the purpose of the world as

he understood it. The contrast is enormous: Bunyan's coward stirs your

blood more than Shakespear's hero, who actually leaves you cold and

secretly hostile. You suddenly see that Shakespear, with all his flashes

and divinations, never understood virtue and courage, never conceived

how any man who was not a fool could, like Bunyan's hero, look back

from the brink of the river of death over the strife and labor of his

pilgrimage, and say "yet do I not repent me"; or, with the panache of

a millionaire, bequeath "my sword to him that shall succeed me in my

pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it." This

is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by

yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you

are thrown on the scrap heap; the being a force of Nature instead of a

feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that

the world will not devote itself to making you happy. And also the only

real tragedy in life is the being used by personally minded men for

purposes which you recognize to be base. All the rest is at worst mere

misfortune or mortality: this alone is misery, slavery, hell on earth;

and the revolt against it is the only force that offers a man's work

to the poor artist, whom our personally minded rich people would so

willingly employ as pandar, buffoon, beauty monger, sentimentalizer and

the like.

It may seem a long step from Bunyan to Nietzsche; but the difference

between their conclusions is purely formal. Bunyan's perception that

righteousness is filthy rags, his scorn for Mr Legality in the village

of Morality, his defiance of the Church as the supplanter of religion,

his insistence on courage as the virtue of virtues, his estimate of the

career of the conventionally respectable and sensible Worldly Wiseman

as no better at bottom than the life and death of Mr Badman: all

this, expressed by Bunyan in the terms of a tinker's theology, is what

Nietzsche has expressed in terms of post-Darwinian, post-Schopenhaurian

philosophy; Wagner in terms of polytheistic mythology; and Ibsen in

terms of mid-XIX century Parisian dramaturgy. Nothing is new in these

matters except their novelties: for instance, it is a novelty to

call Justification by Faith "Wille," and Justification by Works

"Vorstellung." The sole use of the novelty is that you and I buy and

read Schopenhaur's treatise on Will and Representation when we should

not dream of buying a set of sermons on Faith versus Works. At bottom

the controversy is the same, and the dramatic results are the same.

Bunyan makes no attempt to present his pilgrims as more sensible or

better conducted than Mr Worldly Wiseman. Mr W. W.'s worst enemies, as

Mr Embezzler, Mr Never-go-to-Church-on-Sunday, Mr Bad Form, Mr Murderer,

Mr Burglar, Mr Co-respondent, Mr Blackmailer, Mr Cad, Mr Drunkard, Mr

Labor Agitator and so forth, can read the Pilgrim's Progress without

finding a word said against them; whereas the respectable people who

snub them and put them in prison, such as Mr W.W. himself and his young

friend Civility; Formalist and Hypocrisy; Wildhead, Inconsiderate, and

Pragmatick (who were clearly young university men of good family

and high feeding); that brisk lad Ignorance, Talkative, By-Ends of

Fairspeech and his mother-in-law Lady Feigning, and other reputable

gentlemen and citizens, catch it very severely. Even Little Faith,

though he gets to heaven at last, is given to understand that it served

him right to be mobbed by the brothers Faint Heart, Mistrust, and

Guilt, all three recognized members of respectable society and veritable

pillars of the law. The whole allegory is a consistent attack on

morality and respectability, without a word that one can remember

against vice and crime. Exactly what is complained of in Nietzsche and

Ibsen, is it not? And also exactly what would be complained of in all

the literature which is great enough and old enough to have attained

canonical rank, officially or unofficially, were it not that books are

admitted to the canon by a compact which confesses their greatness in

consideration of abrogating their meaning; so that the reverend rector

can agree with the prophet Micah as to his inspired style without being

committed to any complicity in Micah's furiously Radical opinions. Why,

even I, as I force myself; pen in hand, into recognition and civility,

find all the force of my onslaught destroyed by a simple policy of

non-resistance. In vain do I redouble the violence of the language in

which I proclaim my heterodoxies. I rail at the theistic credulity of

Voltaire, the amoristic superstition of Shelley, the revival of tribal

soothsaying and idolatrous rites which Huxley called Science and

mistook for an advance on the Pentateuch, no less than at the welter

of ecclesiastical and professional humbug which saves the face of the

stupid system of violence and robbery which we call Law and Industry.

Even atheists reproach me with infidelity and anarchists with nihilism

because I cannot endure their moral tirades. And yet, instead of

exclaiming "Send this inconceivable Satanist to the stake," the

respectable newspapers pith me by announcing "another book by this

brilliant and thoughtful writer." And the ordinary citizen, knowing that

an author who is well spoken of by a respectable newspaper must be all

right, reads me, as he reads Micah, with undisturbed edification from

his own point of view. It is narrated that in the eighteen-seventies an

old lady, a very devout Methodist, moved from Colchester to a house in

the neighborhood of the City Road, in London, where, mistaking the Hall

of Science for a chapel, she sat at the feet of Charles Bradlaugh

for many years, entranced by his eloquence, without questioning

his orthodoxy or moulting a feather of her faith. I fear I small be

defrauded of my just martyrdom in the same way.

However, I am digressing, as a man with a grievance always does. And

after all, the main thing in determining the artistic quality of a book

is not the opinions it propagates, but the fact that the writer has

opinions. The old lady from Colchester was right to sun her simple soul

in the energetic radiance of Bradlaugh's genuine beliefs and disbeliefs

rather than in the chill of such mere painting of light and heat as

elocution and convention can achieve. My contempt for belles lettres,

and for amateurs who become the heroes of the fanciers of literary

virtuosity, is not founded on any illusion of mind as to the permanence

of those forms of thought (call them opinions) by which I strive to

communicate my bent to my fellows. To younger men they are already

outmoded; for though they have no more lost their logic than an

eighteenth century pastel has lost its drawing or its color, yet, like

the pastel, they grow indefinably shabby, and will grow shabbier until

they cease to count at all, when my books will either perish, or, if

the world is still poor enough to want them, will have to stand, with

Bunyan's, by quite amorphous qualities of temper and energy. With this

conviction I cannot be a bellettrist. No doubt I must recognize, as even

the Ancient Mariner did, that I must tell my story entertainingly if I

am to hold the wedding guest spellbound in spite of the siren sounds of

the loud bassoon. But "for art's sake" alone I would not face the toil

of writing a single sentence. I know that there are men who, having

nothing to say and nothing to write, are nevertheless so in love with

oratory and with literature that they keep desperately repeating as much

as they can understand of what others have said or written aforetime.

I know that the leisurely tricks which their want of conviction leaves

them free to play with the diluted and misapprehended message supply

them with a pleasant parlor game which they call style. I can pity their

dotage and even sympathize with their fancy. But a true original style

is never achieved for its own sake: a man may pay from a shilling to a

guinea, according to his means, to see, hear, or read another man's act

of genius; but he will not pay with his whole life and soul to become a

mere virtuoso in literature, exhibiting an accomplishment which will not

even make money for him, like fiddle playing. Effectiveness of assertion

is the Alpha and Omega of style. He who has nothing to assert has no

style and can have none: he who has something to assert will go as far

in power of style as its momentousness and his conviction will carry

him. Disprove his assertion after it is made, yet its style remains.

Darwin has no more destroyed the style of Job nor of Handel than Martin

Luther destroyed the style of Giotto. All the assertions get disproved

sooner or later; and so we find the world full of a magnificent debris

of artistic fossils, with the matter-of-fact credibility gone clean out

of them, but the form still splendid. And that is why the old masters

play the deuce with our mere susceptibles. Your Royal Academician thinks

he can get the style of Giotto without Giotto's beliefs, and correct

his perspective into the bargain. Your man of letters thinks he can

get Bunyan's or Shakespear's style without Bunyan's conviction or

Shakespear's apprehension, especially if he takes care not to split

his infinitives. And so with your Doctors of Music, who, with their

collections of discords duly prepared and resolved or retarded or

anticipated in the manner of the great composers, think they can learn

the art of Palestrina from Cherubim's treatise. All this academic art

is far worse than the trade in sham antique furniture; for the man who

sells me an oaken chest which he swears was made in the XIII century,

though as a matter of fact he made it himself only yesterday, at least

does not pretend that there are any modern ideas in it, whereas your

academic copier of fossils offers them to you as the latest outpouring

of the human spirit, and, worst of all, kidnaps young people as pupils

and persuades them that his limitations are rules, his observances

dexterities, his timidities good taste, and his emptinesses purities.

And when he declares that art should not be didactic, all the people who

have nothing to teach and all the people who don't want to learn agree

with him emphatically.

I pride myself on not being one of these susceptible: If you study

the electric light with which I supply you in that Bumbledonian public

capacity of mine over which you make merry from time to time, you will

find that your house contains a great quantity of highly susceptible

copper wire which gorges itself with electricity and gives you no light

whatever. But here and there occurs a scrap of intensely insusceptible,

intensely resistant material; and that stubborn scrap grapples with the

current and will not let it through until it has made itself useful to

you as those two vital qualities of literature, light and heat. Now if I

am to be no mere copper wire amateur but a luminous author, I must also

be a most intensely refractory person, liable to go out and to go wrong

at inconvenient moments, and with incendiary possibilities. These are

the faults of my qualities; and I assure you that I sometimes dislike

myself so much that when some irritable reviewer chances at that moment

to pitch into me with zest, I feel unspeakably relieved and obliged. But

I never dream of reforming, knowing that I must take myself as I am and

get what work I can out of myself. All this you will understand; for

there is community of material between us: we are both critics of life

as well as of art; and you have perhaps said to yourself when I have

passed your windows, "There, but for the grace of God, go I." An awful

and chastening reflection, which shall be the closing cadence of this

immoderately long letter from yours faithfully,

G. BERNARD SHAW.

WOKING, 1903

ACT I

Roebuck Ramsden is in his study, opening the morning letters. The study,

handsomely and solidly furnished, proclaims the man of means. Not

a speck of dust is visible: it is clear that there are at least two

housemaids and a parlormaid downstairs, and a housekeeper upstairs who

does not let them spare elbow-grease. Even the top of Roebuck's head is

polished: on a sunshiny day he could heliograph his orders to distant

camps by merely nodding. In no other respect, however, does he suggest

the military man. It is in active civil life that men get his broad air

of importance, his dignified expectation of deference, his determinate

mouth disarmed and refined since the hour of his success by the

withdrawal of opposition and the concession of comfort and precedence

and power. He is more than a highly respectable man: he is marked out

as a president of highly respectable men, a chairman among directors,

an alderman among councillors, a mayor among aldermen. Four tufts of

iron-grey hair, which will soon be as white as isinglass, and are in

other respects not at all unlike it, grow in two symmetrical pairs above

his ears and at the angles of his spreading jaws. He wears a black frock

coat, a white waistcoat (it is bright spring weather), and trousers,

neither black nor perceptibly blue, of one of those indefinitely mixed

hues which the modern clothier has produced to harmonize with the

religions of respectable men. He has not been out of doors yet to-day;

so he still wears his slippers, his boots being ready for him on the

hearthrug. Surmising that he has no valet, and seeing that he has no

secretary with a shorthand notebook and a typewriter, one meditates

on how little our great burgess domesticity has been disturbed by new

fashions and methods, or by the enterprise of the railway and hotel

companies which sell you a Saturday to Monday of life at Folkestone as a

real gentleman for two guineas, first class fares both ways included.

How old is Roebuck? The question is important on the threshold of a

drama of ideas; for under such circumstances everything depends on

whether his adolescence belonged to the sixties or to the eighties. He

was born, as a matter of fact, in 1839, and was a Unitarian and Free

Trader from his boyhood, and an Evolutionist from the publication of

the Origin of Species. Consequently he has always classed himself as an

advanced thinker and fearlessly outspoken reformer.

Sitting at his writing table, he has on his right the windows giving

on Portland Place. Through these, as through a proscenium, the curious

spectator may contemplate his profile as well as the blinds will permit.

On his left is the inner wall, with a stately bookcase, and the door

not quite in the middle, but somewhat further from him. Against the wall

opposite him are two busts on pillars: one, to his left, of John Bright;

the other, to his right, of Mr Herbert Spencer. Between them hang an

engraved portrait of Richard Cobden; enlarged photographs of Martineau,

Huxley, and George Eliot; autotypes of allegories by Mr G.F. Watts (for

Roebuck believed in the fine arts with all the earnestness of a man who

does not understand them), and an impression of Dupont's engraving of

Delaroche's Beaux Artes hemicycle, representing the great men of

all ages. On the wall behind him, above the mantelshelf, is a family

portrait of impenetrable obscurity.

A chair stands near the writing table for the convenience of business

visitors. Two other chairs are against the wall between the busts.

A parlormaid enters with a visitor's card. Roebuck takes it, and nods,

pleased. Evidently a welcome caller.

RAMSDEN. Show him up.

The parlormaid goes out and returns with the visitor.

THE MAID. Mr Robinson.

Mr Robinson is really an uncommonly nice looking young fellow. He must,

one thinks, be the jeune premier; for it is not in reason to suppose

that a second such attractive male figure should appear in one story.

The slim shapely frame, the elegant suit of new mourning, the small head

and regular features, the pretty little moustache, the frank clear eyes,

the wholesome bloom and the youthful complexion, the well brushed glossy

hair, not curly, but of fine texture and good dark color, the arch of

good nature in the eyebrows, the erect forehead and neatly pointed chin,

all announce the man who will love and suffer later on. And that he will

not do so without sympathy is guaranteed by an engaging sincerity and

eager modest serviceableness which stamp him as a man of amiable nature.

The moment he appears, Ramsden's face expands into fatherly liking and

welcome, an expression which drops into one of decorous grief as the

young man approaches him with sorrow in his face as well as in his black

clothes. Ramsden seems to know the nature of the bereavement. As the

visitor advances silently to the writing table, the old man rises and

shakes his hand across it without a word: a long, affectionate shake

which tells the story of a recent sorrow common to both.

RAMSDEN. [concluding the handshake and cheering up] Well, well,

Octavius, it's the common lot. We must all face it someday. Sit down.

Octavius takes the visitor's chair. Ramsden replaces himself in his own.

OCTAVIUS. Yes: we must face it, Mr Ramsden. But I owed him a great deal.

He did everything for me that my father could have done if he had lived.

RAMSDEN. He had no son of his own, you see.

OCTAVIUS. But he had daughters; and yet he was as good to my sister as

to me. And his death was so sudden! I always intended to thank him--to

let him know that I had not taken all his care of me as a matter

of course, as any boy takes his father's care. But I waited for an

opportunity and now he is dead--dropped without a moment's warning. He

will never know what I felt. [He takes out his handkerchief and cries

unaffectedly].

RAMSDEN. How do we know that, Octavius? He may know it: we cannot

tell. Come! Don't grieve. [Octavius masters himself and puts up his

handkerchief]. That's right. Now let me tell you something to console

you. The last time I saw him--it was in this very room--he said to me:

"Tavy is a generous lad and the soul of honor; and when I see how little

consideration other men get from their sons, I realize how much better

than a son he's been to me." There! Doesn't that do you good?

OCTAVIUS. Mr Ramsden: he used to say to me that he had met only one man

in the world who was the soul of honor, and that was Roebuck Ramsden.

RAMSDEN. Oh, that was his partiality: we were very old friends, you

know. But there was something else he used to say about you. I wonder

whether I ought to tell you or not!

OCTAVIUS. You know best.

RAMSDEN. It was something about his daughter.

OCTAVIUS. [eagerly] About Ann! Oh, do tell me that, Mr Ramsden.

RAMSDEN. Well, he said he was glad, after all, you were not his son,

because he thought that someday Annie and you--[Octavius blushes

vividly]. Well, perhaps I shouldn't have told you. But he was in

earnest.

OCTAVIUS. Oh, if only I thought I had a chance! You know, Mr Ramsden, I

don't care about money or about what people call position; and I can't

bring myself to take an interest in the business of struggling for them.

Well, Ann has a most exquisite nature; but she is so accustomed to be

in the thick of that sort of thing that she thinks a man's character

incomplete if he is not ambitious. She knows that if she married me she

would have to reason herself out of being ashamed of me for not being a

big success of some kind.

RAMSDEN. [Getting up and planting himself with his back to the

fireplace] Nonsense, my boy, nonsense! You're too modest. What does she

know about the real value of men at her age? [More seriously] Besides,

she's a wonderfully dutiful girl. Her father's wish would be sacred to

her. Do you know that since she grew up to years of discretion, I don't

believe she has ever once given her own wish as a reason for doing

anything or not doing it. It's always "Father wishes me to," or "Mother

wouldn't like it." It's really almost a fault in her. I have often told

her she must learn to think for herself.

OCTAVIUS. [shaking his head] I couldn't ask her to marry me because her

father wished it, Mr Ramsden.

RAMSDEN. Well, perhaps not. No: of course not. I see that. No: you

certainly couldn't. But when you win her on your own merits, it will be

a great happiness to her to fulfil her father's desire as well as her

own. Eh? Come! you'll ask her, won't you?

OCTAVIUS. [with sad gaiety] At all events I promise you I shall never

ask anyone else.

RAMSDEN. Oh, you shan't need to. She'll accept you, my boy--although

[here he suddenly becomes very serious indeed] you have one great

drawback.

OCTAVIUS. [anxiously] What drawback is that, Mr Ramsden? I should rather

say which of my many drawbacks?

RAMSDEN. I'll tell you, Octavius. [He takes from the table a book bound

in red cloth]. I have in my hand a copy of the most infamous, the most

scandalous, the most mischievous, the most blackguardly book that ever

escaped burning at the hands of the common hangman. I have not read

it: I would not soil my mind with such filth; but I have read what the

papers say of it. The title is quite enough for me. [He reads it]. The

Revolutionist's Handbook and Pocket Companion by John Tanner, M.I.R.C.,

Member of the Idle Rich Class.

OCTAVIUS. [smiling] But Jack--

RAMSDEN. [testily] For goodness' sake, don't call him Jack under my

roof [he throws the book violently down on the table, Then, somewhat

relieved, he comes past the table to Octavius, and addresses him at

close quarters with impressive gravity]. Now, Octavius, I know that my

dead friend was right when he said you were a generous lad. I know that

this man was your schoolfellow, and that you feel bound to stand by

him because there was a boyish friendship between you. But I ask you

to consider the altered circumstances. You were treated as a son in my

friend's house. You lived there; and your friends could not be turned

from the door. This Tanner was in and out there on your account almost

from his childhood. He addresses Annie by her Christian name as freely

as you do. Well, while her father was alive, that was her father's

business, not mine. This man Tanner was only a boy to him: his opinions

were something to be laughed at, like a man's hat on a child's head.

But now Tanner is a grown man and Annie a grown woman. And her father

is gone. We don't as yet know the exact terms of his will; but he often

talked it over with me; and I have no more doubt than I have that you're

sitting there that the will appoints me Annie's trustee and guardian.

[Forcibly] Now I tell you, once for all, I can't and I won't have Annie

placed in such a position that she must, out of regard for you, suffer

the intimacy of this fellow Tanner. It's not fair: it's not right: it's

not kind. What are you going to do about it?

OCTAVIUS. But Ann herself has told Jack that whatever his opinions are,

he will always be welcome because he knew her dear father.

RAMSDEN. [out of patience] That girl's mad about her duty to her

parents. [He starts off like a goaded ox in the direction of John

Bright, in whose expression there is no sympathy for him. As he speaks,

he fumes down to Herbert Spencer, who receives him still more coldly]

Excuse me, Octavius; but there are limits to social toleration. You

know that I am not a bigoted or prejudiced man. You know that I am plain

Roebuck Ramsden when other men who have done less have got handles to

their names, because I have stood for equality and liberty of conscience

while they were truckling to the Church and to the aristocracy.

Whitefield and I lost chance after chance through our advanced opinions.

But I draw the line at Anarchism and Free Love and that sort of thing.

If I am to be Annie's guardian, she will have to learn that she has a

duty to me. I won't have it: I will not have it. She must forbid John

Tanner the house; and so must you.

The parlormaid returns.

OCTAVIUS. But--

RAMSDEN. [calling his attention to the servant] Ssh! Well?

THE MAID. Mr Tanner wishes to see you, sir.

RAMSDEN. Mr Tanner!

OCTAVIUS. Jack!

RAMSDEN. How dare Mr Tanner call on me! Say I cannot see him.

OCTAVIUS. [hurt] I am sorry you are turning my friend from your door

like that.

THE MAID. [calmly] He's not at the door, sir. He's upstairs in the

drawingroom with Miss Ramsden. He came with Mrs Whitefield and Miss Ann

and Miss Robinson, sir.

Ramsden's feelings are beyond words.

OCTAVIUS. [grinning] That's very like Jack, Mr Ramsden. You must see

him, even if it's only to turn him out.

RAMSDEN. [hammering out his words with suppressed fury] Go upstairs and

ask Mr Tanner to be good enough to step down here. [The parlormaid goes

out; and Ramsden returns to the fireplace, as to a fortified position].

I must say that of all the confounded pieces of impertinence--well, if

these are Anarchist manners I hope you like them. And Annie with him!

Annie! A-- [he chokes].

OCTAVIUS. Yes: that's what surprises me. He's so desperately afraid of

Ann. There must be something the matter.

Mr John Tanner suddenly opens the door and enters. He is too young to be

described simply as a big man with a beard. But it is already plain that

middle life will find him in that category. He has still some of the

slimness of youth; but youthfulness is not the effect he aims at: his

frock coat would befit a prime minister; and a certain high chested

carriage of the shoulders, a lofty pose of the head, and the Olympian

majesty with which a mane, or rather a huge wisp, of hazel colored

hair is thrown back from an imposing brow, suggest Jupiter rather than

Apollo. He is prodigiously fluent of speech, restless, excitable (mark

the snorting nostril and the restless blue eye, just the thirty-secondth

of an inch too wide open), possibly a little mad. He is carefully

dressed, not from the vanity that cannot resist finery, but from a sense

of the importance of everything he does which leads him to make as

much of paying a call as other men do of getting married or laying a

foundation stone. A sensitive, susceptible, exaggerative, earnest man: a

megalomaniac, who would be lost without a sense of humor.

Just at present the sense of humor is in abeyance. To say that he is

excited is nothing: all his moods are phases of excitement. He is now in

the panic-stricken phase; and he walks straight up to Ramsden as if with

the fixed intention of shooting him on his own hearthrug. But what he

pulls from his breast pocket is not a pistol, but a foolscap document

which he thrusts under the indignant nose of Ramsden as he exclaims--

TANNER. Ramsden: do you know what that is?

RAMSDEN. [loftily] No, Sir.

TANNER. It's a copy of Whitefield's will. Ann got it this morning.

RAMSDEN. When you say Ann, you mean, I presume, Miss Whitefield.

TANNER. I mean our Ann, your Ann, Tavy's Ann, and now, Heaven help me,

my Ann!

OCTAVIUS. [rising, very pale] What do you mean?

TANNER. Mean! [He holds up the will]. Do you know who is appointed Ann's

guardian by this will?

RAMSDEN. [coolly] I believe I am.

TANNER. You! You and I, man. I! I!! I!!! Both of us! [He flings the will

down on the writing table].

RAMSDEN. You! Impossible.

TANNER. It's only too hideously true. [He throws himself into Octavius's

chair]. Ramsden: get me out of it somehow. You don't know Ann as well

as I do. She'll commit every crime a respectable woman can; and

she'll justify every one of them by saying that it was the wish of

her guardians. She'll put everything on us; and we shall have no more

control over her than a couple of mice over a cat.

OCTAVIUS. Jack: I wish you wouldn't talk like that about Ann.

TANNER. This chap's in love with her: that's another complication. Well,

she'll either jilt him and say I didn't approve of him, or marry him

and say you ordered her to. I tell you, this is the most staggering blow

that has ever fallen on a man of my age and temperament.

RAMSDEN. Let me see that will, sir. [He goes to the writing table and

picks it up]. I cannot believe that my old friend Whitefield would have

shown such a want of confidence in me as to associate me with-- [His

countenance falls as he reads].

TANNER. It's all my own doing: that's the horrible irony of it. He told

me one day that you were to be Ann's guardian; and like a fool I began

arguing with him about the folly of leaving a young woman under the

control of an old man with obsolete ideas.

RAMSDEN. [stupended] My ideas obsolete!!!!!

TANNER. Totally. I had just finished an essay called Down with

Government by the Greyhaired; and I was full of arguments and

illustrations. I said the proper thing was to combine the experience of

an old hand with the vitality of a young one. Hang me if he didn't take

me at my word and alter his will--it's dated only a fortnight after that

conversation--appointing me as joint guardian with you!

RAMSDEN. [pale and determined] I shall refuse to act.

TANNER. What's the good of that? I've been refusing all the way from

Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she's only an orphan;

and that she can't expect the people who were glad to come to the house

in her father's time to trouble much about her now. That's the latest

game. An orphan! It's like hearing an ironclad talk about being at the

mercy of the winds and waves.

OCTAVIUS. This is not fair, Jack. She is an orphan. And you ought to

stand by her.

TANNER. Stand by her! What danger is she in? She has the law on her

side; she has popular sentiment on her side; she has plenty of money

and no conscience. All she wants with me is to load up all her moral

responsibilities on me, and do as she likes at the expense of my

character. I can't control her; and she can compromise me as much as she

likes. I might as well be her husband.

RAMSDEN. You can refuse to accept the guardianship. I shall certainly

refuse to hold it jointly with you.

TANNER. Yes; and what will she say to that? what does she say to it?

Just that her father's wishes are sacred to her, and that she shall

always look up to me as her guardian whether I care to face the

responsibility or not. Refuse! You might as well refuse to accept the

embraces of a boa constrictor when once it gets round your neck.

OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is not kind to me, Jack.

TANNER. [rising and going to Octavius to console him, but still

lamenting] If he wanted a young guardian, why didn't he appoint Tavy?

RAMSDEN. Ah! why indeed?

OCTAVIUS. I will tell you. He sounded me about it; but I refused the

trust because I loved her. I had no right to let myself be forced on her

as a guardian by her father. He spoke to her about it; and she said I

was right. You know I love her, Mr Ramsden; and Jack knows it too. If

Jack loved a woman, I would not compare her to a boa constrictor in his

presence, however much I might dislike her [he sits down between the

busts and turns his face to the wall].

RAMSDEN. I do not believe that Whitefield was in his right senses

when he made that will. You have admitted that he made it under your

influence.

TANNER. You ought to be pretty well obliged to me for my influence. He

leaves you two thousand five hundred for your trouble. He leaves Tavy a

dowry for his sister and five thousand for himself.

OCTAVIUS. [his tears flowing afresh] Oh, I can't take it. He was too

good to us.

TANNER. You won't get it, my boy, if Ramsden upsets the will.

RAMSDEN. Ha! I see. You have got me in a cleft stick.

TANNER. He leaves me nothing but the charge of Ann's morals, on the

ground that I have already more money than is good for me. That shows

that he had his wits about him, doesn't it?

RAMSDEN. [grimly] I admit that.

OCTAVIUS. [rising and coming from his refuge by the wall] Mr Ramsden:

I think you are prejudiced against Jack. He is a man of honor, and

incapable of abusing--

TANNER. Don't, Tavy: you'll make me ill. I am not a man of honor: I am

a man struck down by a dead hand. Tavy: you must marry her after all and

take her off my hands. And I had set my heart on saving you from her!

OCTAVIUS. Oh, Jack, you talk of saving me from my highest happiness.

TANNER. Yes, a lifetime of happiness. If it were only the first half

hour's happiness, Tavy, I would buy it for you with my last penny. But

a lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it: it would be hell on

earth.

RAMSDEN. [violently] Stuff, sir. Talk sense; or else go and waste

someone else's time: I have something better to do than listen to your

fooleries [he positively kicks his way to his table and resumes his

seat].

TANNER. You hear him, Tavy! Not an idea in his head later than

eighteen-sixty. We can't leave Ann with no other guardian to turn to.

RAMSDEN. I am proud of your contempt for my character and opinions, sir.

Your own are set forth in that book, I believe.

TANNER. [eagerly going to the table] What! You've got my book! What do

you think of it?

RAMSDEN. Do you suppose I would read such a book, sir?

TANNER. Then why did you buy it?

RAMSDEN. I did not buy it, sir. It has been sent me by some foolish

lady who seems to admire your views. I was about to dispose of it when

Octavius interrupted me. I shall do so now, with your permission. [He

throws the book into the waste paper basket with such vehemence that

Tanner recoils under the impression that it is being thrown at his

head].

TANNER. You have no more manners than I have myself. However, that saves

ceremony between us. [He sits down again]. What do you intend to do

about this will?

OCTAVIUS. May I make a suggestion?

RAMSDEN. Certainly, Octavius.

OCTAVIUS. Aren't we forgetting that Ann herself may have some wishes in

this matter?

RAMSDEN. I quite intend that Annie's wishes shall be consulted in every

reasonable way. But she is only a woman, and a young and inexperienced

woman at that.

TANNER. Ramsden: I begin to pity you.

RAMSDEN. [hotly] I don't want to know how you feel towards me, Mr

Tanner.

TANNER. Ann will do just exactly what she likes. And what's more, she'll

force us to advise her to do it; and she'll put the blame on us if it

turns out badly. So, as Tavy is longing to see her--

OCTAVIUS. [shyly] I am not, Jack.

TANNER. You lie, Tavy: you are. So let's have her down from the

drawing-room and ask her what she intends us to do. Off with you, Tavy,

and fetch her. [Tavy turns to go]. And don't be long for the strained

relations between myself and Ramsden will make the interval rather

painful [Ramsden compresses his lips, but says nothing--].

OCTAVIUS. Never mind him, Mr Ramsden. He's not serious. [He goes out].

RAMSDEN [very deliberately] Mr Tanner: you are the most impudent person

I have ever met.

TANNER. [seriously] I know it, Ramsden. Yet even I cannot wholly conquer

shame. We live in an atmosphere of shame. We are ashamed of everything

that is real about us; ashamed of ourselves, of our relatives, of our

incomes, of our accents, of our opinions, of our experience, just as

we are ashamed of our naked skins. Good Lord, my dear Ramsden, we are

ashamed to walk, ashamed to ride in an omnibus, ashamed to hire a hansom

instead of keeping a carriage, ashamed of keeping one horse instead of

two and a groom-gardener instead of a coachman and footman. The more

things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is. Why, you're

ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing you're not

ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read it; and even that

only means that you're ashamed to have heterodox opinions. Look at the

effect I produce because my fairy godmother withheld from me this gift

of shame. I have every possible virtue that a man can have except--

RAMSDEN. I am glad you think so well of yourself.

TANNER. All you mean by that is that you think I ought to be ashamed of

talking about my virtues. You don't mean that I haven't got them: you

know perfectly well that I am as sober and honest a citizen as yourself,

as truthful personally, and much more truthful politically and morally.

RAMSDEN. [touched on his most sensitive point] I deny that. I will

not allow you or any man to treat me as if I were a mere member of

the British public. I detest its prejudices; I scorn its narrowness; I

demand the right to think for myself. You pose as an advanced man. Let

me tell you that I was an advanced man before you were born.

TANNER. I knew it was a long time ago.

RAMSDEN. I am as advanced as ever I was. I defy you to prove that I have

ever hauled down the flag. I am more advanced than ever I was. I grow

more advanced every day.

TANNER. More advanced in years, Polonius.

RAMSDEN. Polonius! So you are Hamlet, I suppose.

TANNER. No: I am only the most impudent person you've ever met. That's

your notion of a thoroughly bad character. When you want to give me a

piece of your mind, you ask yourself, as a just and upright man, what

is the worst you can fairly say of me. Thief, liar, forger, adulterer,

perjurer, glutton, drunkard? Not one of these names fit me. You have

to fall back on my deficiency in shame. Well, I admit it. I even

congratulate myself; for if I were ashamed of my real self, I should

cut as stupid a figure as any of the rest of you. Cultivate a little

impudence, Ramsden; and you will become quite a remarkable man.

RAMSDEN. I have no--

TANNER. You have no desire for that sort of notoriety. Bless you, I knew

that answer would come as well as I know that a box of matches will come

out of an automatic machine when I put a penny in the slot: you would be

ashamed to say anything else.

The crushing retort for which Ramsden has been visibly collecting his

forces is lost for ever; for at this point Octavius returns with Miss

Ann Whitefield and her mother; and Ramsden springs up and hurries to the

door to receive them. Whether Ann is good-looking or not depends upon

your taste; also and perhaps chiefly on your age and sex. To Octavius

she is an enchantingly beautiful woman, in whose presence the world

becomes transfigured, and the puny limits of individual consciousness

are suddenly made infinite by a mystic memory of the whole life of the

race to its beginnings in the east, or even back to the paradise from

which it fell. She is to him the reality of romance, the leaner good

sense of nonsense, the unveiling of his eyes, the freeing of his soul,

the abolition of time, place and circumstance, the etherealization of

his blood into rapturous rivers of the very water of life itself,

the revelation of all the mysteries and the sanctification of all the

dogmas. To her mother she is, to put it as moderately as possible,

nothing whatever of the kind. Not that Octavius's admiration is in any

way ridiculous or discreditable. Ann is a well formed creature, as far

as that goes; and she is perfectly ladylike, graceful, and comely, with

ensnaring eyes and hair. Besides, instead of making herself an eyesore,

like her mother, she has devised a mourning costume of black and

violet silk which does honor to her late father and reveals the family

tradition of brave unconventionality by which Ramsden sets such store.

But all this is beside the point as an explanation of Ann's charm.

Turn up her nose, give a cast to her eye, replace her black and violet

confection by the apron and feathers of a flower girl, strike all the

aitches out of her speech, and Ann would still make men dream. Vitality

is as common as humanity; but, like humanity, it sometimes rises to

genius; and Ann is one of the vital geniuses. Not at all, if you please,

an oversexed person: that is a vital defect, not a true excess. She is

a perfectly respectable, perfectly self-controlled woman, and looks

it; though her pose is fashionably frank and impulsive. She inspires

confidence as a person who will do nothing she does not mean to do; also

some fear, perhaps, as a woman who will probably do everything she means

to do without taking more account of other people than may be necessary

and what she calls right. In short, what the weaker of her own sex

sometimes call a cat.

Nothing can be more decorous than her entry and her reception by

Ramsden, whom she kisses. The late Mr Whitefield would be gratified

almost to impatience by the long faces of the men (except Tanner, who is

fidgety), the silent handgrasps, the sympathetic placing of chairs, the

sniffing of the widow, and the liquid eye of the daughter, whose heart,

apparently, will not let her control her tongue to speech. Ramsden and

Octavius take the two chairs from the wall, and place them for the two

ladies; but Ann comes to Tanner and takes his chair, which he offers

with a brusque gesture, subsequently relieving his irritation by sitting

down on the corner of the writing table with studied indecorum. Octavius

gives Mrs Whitefield a chair next Ann, and himself takes the vacant

one which Ramsden has placed under the nose of the effigy of Mr Herbert

Spencer.

Mrs Whitefield, by the way, is a little woman, whose faded flaxen hair

looks like straw on an egg. She has an expression of muddled shrewdness,

a squeak of protest in her voice, and an odd air of continually elbowing

away some larger person who is crushing her into a corner. One guesses

her as one of those women who are conscious of being treated as silly

and negligible, and who, without having strength enough to assert

themselves effectually, at any rate never submit to their fate. There

is a touch of chivalry in Octavius's scrupulous attention to her, even

whilst his whole soul is absorbed by Ann.

Ramsden goes solemnly back to his magisterial seat at the writing table,

ignoring Tanner, and opens the proceedings.

RAMSDEN. I am sorry, Annie, to force business on you at a sad time like

the present. But your poor dear father's will has raised a very serious

question. You have read it, I believe?

[Ann assents with a nod and a catch of her breath, too much affected to

speak].

I must say I am surprised to find Mr Tanner named as joint guardian

and trustee with myself of you and Rhoda. [A pause. They all look

portentous; but they have nothing to say. Ramsden, a little ruffled by

the lack of any response, continues] I don't know that I can consent to

act under such conditions. Mr Tanner has, I understand, some objection

also; but I do not profess to understand its nature: he will no doubt

speak for himself. But we are agreed that we can decide nothing until we

know your views. I am afraid I shall have to ask you to choose between

my sole guardianship and that of Mr Tanner; for I fear it is impossible

for us to undertake a joint arrangement.

ANN. [in a low musical voice] Mamma--

MRS WHITEFIELD. [hastily] Now, Ann, I do beg you not to put it on me. I

have no opinion on the subject; and if I had, it would probably not be

attended to. I am quite with whatever you three think best.

Tanner turns his head and looks fixedly at Ramsden, who angrily refuses

to receive this mute communication.

ANN. [resuming in the same gentle voice, ignoring her mother's bad

taste] Mamma knows that she is not strong enough to bear the whole

responsibility for me and Rhoda without some help and advice. Rhoda

must have a guardian; and though I am older, I do not think any young

unmarried woman should be left quite to her own guidance. I hope you

agree with me, Granny?

TANNER. [starting] Granny! Do you intend to call your guardians Granny?

ANN. Don't be foolish, Jack. Mr Ramsden has always been Grandpapa

Roebuck to me: I am Granny's Annie; and he is Annie's Granny. I

christened him so when I first learned to speak.

RAMSDEN. [sarcastically] I hope you are satisfied, Mr Tanner. Go on,

Annie: I quite agree with you.

ANN. Well, if I am to have a guardian, CAN I set aside anybody whom my

dear father appointed for me?

RAMSDEN. [biting his lip] You approve of your father's choice, then?

ANN. It is not for me to approve or disapprove. I accept it. My father

loved me and knew best what was good for me.

RAMSDEN. Of course I understand your feeling, Annie. It is what I should

have expected of you; and it does you credit. But it does not settle the

question so completely as you think. Let me put a case to you. Suppose

you were to discover that I had been guilty of some disgraceful

action--that I was not the man your poor dear father took me for. Would

you still consider it right that I should be Rhoda's guardian?

ANN. I can't imagine you doing anything disgraceful, Granny.

TANNER. [to Ramsden] You haven't done anything of the sort, have you?

RAMSDEN. [indignantly] No sir.

MRS. WHITEFIELD. [placidly] Well, then, why suppose it?

ANN. You see, Granny, Mamma would not like me to suppose it.

RAMSDEN. [much perplexed] You are both so full of natural and

affectionate feeling in these family matters that it is very hard to put

the situation fairly before you.

TANNER. Besides, my friend, you are not putting the situation fairly

before them.

RAMSDEN. [sulkily] Put it yourself, then.

TANNER. I will. Ann: Ramsden thinks I am not fit be your guardian; and I

quite agree with him. He considers that if your father had read my book,

he wouldn't have appointed me. That book is the disgraceful action he

has been talking about. He thinks it's your duty for Rhoda's sake to ask

him to act alone and to make me withdraw. Say the word and I will.

ANN. But I haven't read your book, Jack.

TANNER. [diving at the waste-paper basket and fishing the book out for

her] Then read it at once and decide.

RAMSDEN. If I am to be your guardian, I positively forbid you to read

that book, Annie. [He smites the table with his fist and rises].

ANN. Of course, if you don't wish it. [She puts the book on the table].

TANNER. If one guardian is to forbid you to read the other guardian's

book, how are we to settle it? Suppose I order you to read it! What

about your duty to me?

ANN. [gently] I am sure you would never purposely force me into a

painful dilemma, Jack.

RAMSDEN. [irritably] Yes, yes, Annie: this is all very well, and, as I

said, quite natural and becoming. But you must make a choice one way or

the other. We are as much in a dilemma as you.

ANN. I feel that I am too young, too inexperienced, to decide. My

father's wishes are sacred to me.

MRS WHITEFIELD. If you two men won't carry them out I must say it is

rather hard that you should put the responsibility on Ann. It seems to

me that people are always putting things on other people in this world.

RAMSDEN. I am sorry you take it that way.

ANN. [touchingly] Do you refuse to accept me as your ward, Granny?

RAMSDEN. No: I never said that. I greatly object to act with Mr Tanner:

that's all.

MRS. WHITEFIELD. Why? What's the matter with poor Jack?

TANNER. My views are too advanced for him.

RAMSDEN. [indignantly] They are not. I deny it.

ANN. Of course not. What nonsense! Nobody is more advanced than Granny.

I am sure it is Jack himself who has made all the difficulty. Come,

Jack! Be kind to me in my sorrow. You don't refuse to accept me as your

ward, do you?

TANNER. [gloomily] No. I let myself in for it; so I suppose I must face

it. [He turns away to the bookcase, and stands there, moodily studying

the titles of the volumes].

ANN. [rising and expanding with subdued but gushing delight] Then we are

all agreed; and my dear father's will is to be carried out. You don't

know what a joy that is to me and to my mother! [She goes to Ramsden and

presses both his hands, saying] And I shall have my dear Granny to help

and advise me. [She casts a glance at Tanner over her shoulder]. And

Jack the Giant Killer. [She goes past her mother to Octavius]. And

Jack's inseparable friend Ricky-ticky-tavy [he blushes and looks

inexpressibly foolish].

MRS WHITEFIELD. [rising and shaking her widow's weeds straight] Now that

you are Ann's guardian, Mr Ramsden, I wish you would speak to her about

her habit of giving people nicknames. They can't be expected to like it.

[She moves towards the door].

ANN. How can you say such a thing, Mamma! [Glowing with affectionate

remorse] Oh, I wonder can you be right! Have I been inconsiderate? [She

turns to Octavius, who is sitting astride his chair with his elbows on

the back of it. Putting her hand on his forehead she turns his face up

suddenly]. Do you want to be treated like a grown up man? Must I call

you Mr Robinson in future?

OCTAVIUS. [earnestly] Oh please call me Ricky-ticky-tavy, "Mr Robinson"

would hurt me cruelly. [She laughs and pats his cheek with her finger;

then comes back to Ramsden]. You know I'm beginning to think that Granny

is rather a piece of impertinence. But I never dreamt of its hurting

you.

RAMSDEN. [breezily, as he pats her affectionately on the back] My dear

Annie, nonsense. I insist on Granny. I won't answer to any other name

than Annie's Granny.

ANN. [gratefully] You all spoil me, except Jack.

TANNER. [over his shoulder, from the bookcase] I think you ought to call

me Mr Tanner.

ANN. [gently] No you don't, Jack. That's like the things you say on

purpose to shock people: those who know you pay no attention to them.

But, if you like, I'll call you after your famous ancestor Don Juan.

RAMSDEN. Don Juan!

ANN. [innocently] Oh, is there any harm in it? I didn't know. Then I

certainly won't call you that. May I call you Jack until I can think of

something else?

TANKER. Oh, for Heaven's sake don't try to invent anything worse. I

capitulate. I consent to Jack. I embrace Jack. Here endeth my first and

last attempt to assert my authority.

ANN. You see, Mamma, they all really like to have pet names.

MRS WHITEFIELD. Well, I think you might at least drop them until we are

out of mourning.

ANN. [reproachfully, stricken to the soul] Oh, how could you remind me,

mother? [She hastily leaves the room to conceal her emotion].

MRS WHITEFIELD. Of course. My fault as usual! [She follows Ann].

TANNER. [coming from the bockcase] Ramsden: we're

beaten--smashed--nonentitized, like her mother.

RAMSDEN. Stuff, Sir. [He follows Mrs Whitefield out of the room].

TANNER. [left alone with Octavius, stares whimsically at him] Tavy: do

you want to count for something in the world?

OCTAVIUS. I want to count for something as a poet: I want to write a

great play.

TANNER. With Ann as the heroine?

OCTAVIUS. Yes: I confess it.

TANNER. Take care, Tavy. The play with Ann as the heroine is all right;

but if you're not very careful, by Heaven she'll marry you.

OCTAVIUS. [sighing] No such luck, Jack!

TANNER. Why, man, your head is in the lioness's mouth: you are half

swallowed already--in three bites--Bite One, Ricky; Bite Two, Ticky;

Bite Three, Tavy; and down you go.

OCTAVIUS. She is the same to everybody, Jack: you know her ways.

TANNER. Yes: she breaks everybody's back with the stroke of her paw; but

the question is, which of us will she eat? My own opinion is that she

means to eat you.

OCTAVIUS. [rising, pettishly] It's horrible to talk like that about her

when she is upstairs crying for her father. But I do so want her to eat

me that I can bear your brutalities because they give me hope.

TANNER. Tavy; that's the devilish side of a woman's fascination: she

makes you will your own destruction.

OCTAVIUS. But it's not destruction: it's fulfilment.

TANNER. Yes, of HER purpose; and that purpose is neither her happiness

nor yours, but Nature's. Vitality in a woman is a blind fury of

creation. She sacrifices herself to it: do you think she will hesitate

to sacrifice you?

OCTAVIUS. Why, it is just because she is self-sacrificing that she will

not sacrifice those she loves.

TANNER. That is the profoundest of mistakes, Tavy. It is the

self-sacrificing women that sacrifice others most recklessly. Because

they are unselfish, they are kind in little things. Because they have a

purpose which is not their own purpose, but that of the whole universe,

a man is nothing to them but an instrument of that purpose.

OCTAVIUS. Don't be ungenerous, Jack. They take the tenderest care of us.

TANNER. Yes, as a soldier takes care of his rifle or a musician of his

violin. But do they allow us any purpose or freedom of our own? Will

they lend us to one another? Can the strongest man escape from them when

once he is appropriated? They tremble when we are in danger, and weep

when we die; but the tears are not for us, but for a father wasted, a

son's breeding thrown away. They accuse us of treating them as a mere

means to our pleasure; but how can so feeble and transient a folly as

a man's selfish pleasure enslave a woman as the whole purpose of Nature

embodied in a woman can enslave a man?

OCTAVIUS. What matter, if the slavery makes us happy?

TANNER. No matter at all if you have no purpose of your own, and are,

like most men, a mere breadwinner. But you, Tavy, are an artist: that

is, you have a purpose as absorbing and as unscrupulous as a woman's

purpose.

OCTAVIUS. Not unscrupulous.

TANNER. Quite unscrupulous. The true artist will let his wife starve,

his children go barefoot, his mother drudge for his living at

seventy, sooner than work at anything but his art. To women he is half

vivisector, half vampire. He gets into intimate relations with them to

study them, to strip the mask of convention from them, to surprise their

inmost secrets, knowing that they have the power to rouse his deepest

creative energies, to rescue him from his cold reason, to make him see

visions and dream dreams, to inspire him, as he calls it. He persuades

women that they may do this for their own purpose whilst he really means

them to do it for his. He steals the mother's milk and blackens it to

make printer's ink to scoff at her and glorify ideal women with. He

pretends to spare her the pangs of childbearing so that he may have

for himself the tenderness and fostering that belong of right to her

children. Since marriage began, the great artist has been known as a

bad husband. But he is worse: he is a child-robber, a bloodsucker, a

hypocrite and a cheat. Perish the race and wither a thousand women if

only the sacrifice of them enable him to act Hamlet better, to paint

a finer picture, to write a deeper poem, a greater play, a profounder

philosophy! For mark you, Tavy, the artist's work is to show us

ourselves as we really are. Our minds are nothing but this knowledge of

ourselves; and he who adds a jot to such knowledge creates new mind as

surely as any woman creates new men. In the rage of that creation he

is as ruthless as the woman, as dangerous to her as she to him, and

as horribly fascinating. Of all human struggles there is none so

treacherous and remorseless as the struggle between the artist man

and the mother woman. Which shall use up the other? that is the issue

between them. And it is all the deadlier because, in your romanticist

cant, they love one another.

OCTAVIUS. Even if it were so--and I don't admit it for a moment--it is

out of the deadliest struggles that we get the noblest characters.

TANNER. Remember that the next time you meet a grizzly bear or a Bengal

tiger, Tavy.

OCTAVIUS. I meant where there is love, Jack.

TANNER. Oh, the tiger will love you. There is no love sincerer than the

love of food. I think Ann loves you that way: she patted your cheek as

if it were a nicely underdone chop.

OCTAVIUS. You know, Jack, I should have to run away from you if I did

not make it a fixed rule not to mind anything you say. You come out with

perfectly revolting things sometimes.

Ramsden returns, followed by Ann. They come in quickly, with their

former leisurely air of decorous grief changed to one of genuine

concern, and, on Ramsden's part, of worry. He comes between the two men,

intending to address Octavius, but pulls himself up abruptly as he sees

Tanner.

RAMSDEN. I hardly expected to find you still here, Mr Tanner.

TANNER. Am I in the way? Good morning, fellow guardian [he goes towards

the door].

ANN. Stop, Jack. Granny: he must know, sooner or later.

RAMSDEN. Octavius: I have a very serious piece of news for you. It is of

the most private and delicate nature--of the most painful nature too, I

am sorry to say. Do you wish Mr Tanner to be present whilst I explain?

OCTAVIUS. [turning pale] I have no secrets from Jack.

RAMSDEN. Before you decide that finally, let me say that the news

concerns your sister, and that it is terrible news.

OCTAVIUS. Violet! What has happened? Is she--dead?

RAMSDEN. I am not sure that it is not even worse than that.

OCTAVIUS. Is she badly hurt? Has there been an accident?

RAMSDEN. No: nothing of that sort.

TANNER. Ann: will you have the common humanity to tell us what the

matter is?

ANN. [half whispering] I can't. Violet has done something dreadful. We

shall have to get her away somewhere. [She flutters to the writing

table and sits in Ramsden's chair, leaving the three men to fight it out

between them].

OCTAVIUS. [enlightened] Is that what you meant, Mr Ramsden?

RAMSDEN. Yes. [Octavius sinks upon a chair, crushed]. I am afraid there

is no doubt that Violet did not really go to Eastbourne three weeks ago

when we thought she was with the Parry Whitefields. And she called on a

strange doctor yesterday with a wedding ring on her finger. Mrs. Parry

Whitefield met her there by chance; and so the whole thing came out.

OCTAVIUS. [rising with his fists clenched] Who is the scoundrel?

ANN. She won't tell us.

OCTAVIUS. [collapsing upon his chair again] What a frightful thing!

TANNER. [with angry sarcasm] Dreadful. Appalling. Worse than death, as

Ramsden says. [He comes to Octavius]. What would you not give, Tavy, to

turn it into a railway accident, with all her bones broken or something

equally respectable and deserving of sympathy?

OCTAVIUS. Don't be brutal, Jack.

TANNER. Brutal! Good Heavens, man, what are you crying for? Here is

a woman whom we all supposed to be making bad water color sketches,

practising Grieg and Brahms, gadding about to concerts and parties,

wasting her life and her money. We suddenly learn that she has turned

from these sillinesses to the fulfilment of her highest purpose and

greatest function--to increase, multiply and replenish the earth. And

instead of admiring her courage and rejoicing in her instinct; instead

of crowning the completed womanhood and raising the triumphal strain of

"Unto us a child is born: unto us a son is given," here you are--you who

have been as merry as Brigs in your mourning for the dead--all pulling

long faces and looking as ashamed and disgraced as if the girl had

committed the vilest of crimes.

RAMSDEN. [roaring with rage] I will not have these abominations uttered

in my house [he smites the writing table with his fist].

TANNER. Look here: if you insult me again I'll take you at your word and

leave your house. Ann: where is Violet now?

ANN. Why? Are you going to her?

TANNER. Of course I am going to her. She wants help; she wants money;

she wants respect and congratulation. She wants every chance for her

child. She does not seem likely to get it from you: she shall from me.

Where is she?

ANN. Don't be so headstrong, Jack. She's upstairs.

TANNER. What! Under Ramsden's sacred roof! Go and do your miserable

duty, Ramsden. Hunt her out into the street. Cleanse your threshold from

her contamination. Vindicate the purity of your English home. I'll go

for a cab.

ANN. [alarmed] Oh, Granny, you mustn't do that.

OCTAVIUS. [broken-heartedly, rising] I'll take her away, Mr Ramsden. She

had no right to come to your house.

RAMSDEN. [indignantly] But I am only too anxious to help her. [turning

on Tanner] How dare you, sir, impute such monstrous intentions to me?

I protest against it. I am ready to put down my last penny to save her

from being driven to run to you for protection.

TANNER. [subsiding] It's all right, then. He's not going to act up to

his principles. It's agreed that we all stand by Violet.

OCTAVIUS. But who is the man? He can make reparation by marrying her;

and he shall, or he shall answer for it to me.

RAMSDEN. He shall, Octavius. There you speak like a man.

TANNER. Then you don't think him a scoundrel, after all?

OCTAVIUS. Not a scoundrel! He is a heartless scoundrel.

RAMSDEN. A damned scoundrel. I beg your pardon, Annie; but I can say no

less.

TANNER. So we are to marry your sister to a damned scoundrel by way of

reforming her character! On my soul, I think you are all mad.

ANN. Don't be absurd, Jack. Of course you are quite right, Tavy; but we

don't know who he is: Violet won't tell us.

TANNER. What on earth does it matter who he is? He's done his part; and

Violet must do the rest.

RAMSDEN. [beside himself] Stuff! lunacy! There is a rascal in our midst,

a libertine, a villain worse than a murderer; and we are not to

learn who he is! In our ignorance we are to shake him by the hand; to

introduce him into our homes; to trust our daughters with him; to--to--

ANN. [coaxingly] There, Granny, don't talk so loud. It's most shocking:

we must all admit that; but if Violet won't tell us, what can we do?

Nothing. Simply nothing.

RAMSDEN. Hmph! I'm not so sure of that. If any man has paid Violet any

special attention, we can easily find that out. If there is any man of

notoriously loose principles among us--

TANNER. Ahem!

RAMSDEN. [raising his voice] Yes sir, I repeat, if there is any man of

notoriously loose principles among us--

TANNER. Or any man notoriously lacking in self-control.

RAMSDEN. [aghast] Do you dare to suggest that I am capable of such an

act?

TANNER. My dear Ramsden, this is an act of which every man is capable.

That is what comes of getting at cross purposes with Nature. The

suspicion you have just flung at me clings to us all. It's a sort of mud

that sticks to the judge's ermine or the cardinal's robe as fast as to

the rags of the tramp. Come, Tavy: don't look so bewildered: it might

have been me: it might have been Ramsden; just as it might have been

anybody. If it had, what could we do but lie and protest as Ramsden is

going to protest.

RAMSDEN. [choking] I--I--I--

TANNER. Guilt itself could not stammer more confusedly, And yet you know

perfectly well he's innocent, Tavy.

RAMSDEN. [exhausted] I am glad you admit that, sir. I admit, myself,

that there is an element of truth in what you say, grossly as you

may distort it to gratify your malicious humor. I hope, Octavius, no

suspicion of me is possible in your mind.

OCTAVIUS. Of you! No, not for a moment.

TANNER. [drily] I think he suspects me just a little.

OCTAVIUS. Jack: you couldn't--you wouldn't--

TANNER. Why not?

OCTAVIUS. [appalled] Why not!

TANNER. Oh, well, I'll tell you why not. First, you would feel bound

to quarrel with me. Second, Violet doesn't like me. Third, if I had

the honor of being the father of Violet's child, I should boast of it

instead of denying it. So be easy: our Friendship is not in danger.

OCTAVIUS. I should have put away the suspicion with horror if only you

would think and feel naturally about it. I beg your pardon.

TANNER. MY pardon! nonsense! And now let's sit down and have a family

council. [He sits down. The rest follow his example, more or less under

protest]. Violet is going to do the State a service; consequently she

must be packed abroad like a criminal until it's over. What's happening

upstairs?

ANN. Violet is in the housekeeper's room--by herself, of course.

TANNER. Why not in the drawingroom?

ANN. Don't be absurd, Jack. Miss Ramsden is in the drawingroom with my

mother, considering what to do.

TANNER. Oh! the housekeeper's room is the penitentiary, I suppose; and

the prisoner is waiting to be brought before her judges. The old cats!

ANN. Oh, Jack!

RAMSDEN. You are at present a guest beneath the roof of one of the old

cats, sir. My sister is the mistress of this house.

TANNER. She would put me in the housekeeper's room, too, if she dared,

Ramsden. However, I withdraw cats. Cats would have more sense. Ann: as

your guardian, I order you to go to Violet at once and be particularly

kind to her.

ANN. I have seen her, Jack. And I am sorry to say I am afraid she is

going to be rather obstinate about going abroad. I think Tavy ought to

speak to her about it.

OCTAVIUS. How can I speak to her about such a thing [he breaks down]?

ANN. Don't break down, Ricky. Try to bear it for all our sakes.

RAMSDEN. Life is not all plays and poems, Octavius. Come! face it like a

man.

TANNER. [chafing again] Poor dear brother! Poor dear friends of the

family! Poor dear Tabbies and Grimalkins. Poor dear everybody except the

woman who is going to risk her life to create another life! Tavy: don't

you be a selfish ass. Away with you and talk to Violet; and bring her

down here if she cares to come. [Octavius rises]. Tell her we'll stand

by her.

RAMSDEN. [rising] No, sir--

TANNER. [rising also and interrupting him] Oh, we understand: it's

against your conscience; but still you'll do it.

OCTAVIUS. I assure you all, on my word, I never meant to be selfish.

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

TANNER. My dear Tavy, your pious English habit of regarding the world

as a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in,

occasionally leads you to think about your own confounded principles

when you should be thinking about other people's necessities. The need

of the present hour is a happy mother and a healthy baby. Bend your

energies on that; and you will see your way clearly enough.

Octavius, much perplexed, goes out.

RAMSDEN. [facing Tanner impressively] And Morality, sir? What is to

become of that?

TANNER. Meaning a weeping Magdalen and an innocent child branded with

her shame. Not in our circle, thank you. Morality can go to its father

the devil.

RAMSDEN. I thought so, sir. Morality sent to the devil to please our

libertines, male and female. That is to be the future of England, is it?

TANNER. Oh, England will survive your disapproval. Meanwhile, I

understand that you agree with me as to the practical course we are to

take?

RAMSDEN. Not in your spirit sir. Not for your reasons.

TANNER. You can explain that if anybody calls you to account, here or

hereafter. [He turns away, and plants himself in front of Mr Herbert

Spencer, at whom he stares gloomily].

ANN. [rising and coming to Ramsden] Granny: hadn't you better go up to

the drawingroom and tell them what we intend to do?

RAMSDEN. [looking pointedly at Tanner] I hardly like to leave you alone

with this gentleman. Will you not come with me?

ANN. Miss Ramsden would not like to speak about it before me, Granny. I

ought not to be present.

RAMSDEN. You are right: I should have thought of that. You are a good

girl, Annie.

He pats her on the shoulder. She looks up at him with beaming eyes and

he goes out, much moved. Having disposed of him, she looks at Tanner.

His back being turned to her, she gives a moment's attention to her

personal appearance, then softly goes to him and speaks almost into his

ear.

ANN. Jack [he turns with a start]: are you glad that you are my

guardian? You don't mind being made responsible for me, I hope.

TANNER. The latest addition to your collection of scapegoats, eh?

ANN. Oh, that stupid old joke of yours about me! Do please drop it. Why

do you say things that you know must pain me? I do my best to please

you, Jack: I suppose I may tell you so now that you are my guardian. You

will make me so unhappy if you refuse to be friends with me.

TANNER. [studying her as gloomily as he studied the dust] You need not

go begging for my regard. How unreal our moral judgments are! You seem

to me to have absolutely no conscience--only hypocrisy; and you can't

see the difference--yet there is a sort of fascination about you. I

always attend to you, somehow. I should miss you if I lost you.

ANN. [tranquilly slipping her arm into his and walking about with him]

But isn't that only natural, Jack? We have known each other since we

were children. Do you remember?

TANNER. [abruptly breaking loose] Stop! I remember EVERYTHING.

ANN. Oh, I daresay we were often very silly; but--

TANNER. I won't have it, Ann. I am no more that schoolboy now than I

am the dotard of ninety I shall grow into if I live long enough. It is

over: let me forget it.

ANN. Wasn't it a happy time? [She attempts to take his arm again].

TANNER. Sit down and behave yourself. [He makes her sit down in the

chair next the writing table]. No doubt it was a happy time for you. You

were a good girl and never compromised yourself. And yet the wickedest

child that ever was slapped could hardly have had a better time. I can

understand the success with which you bullied the other girls: your

virtue imposed on them. But tell me this: did you ever know a good boy?

ANN. Of course. All boys are foolish sometimes; but Tavy was always a

really good boy.

TANNER. [struck by this] Yes: you're right. For some reason you never

tempted Tavy.

ANN. Tempted! Jack!

TANNER. Yes, my dear Lady Mephistopheles, tempted. You were insatiably

curious as to what a boy might be capable of, and diabolically clever at

getting through his guard and surprising his inmost secrets.

ANN. What nonsense! All because you used to tell me long stories of the

wicked things you had done--silly boys tricks! And you call such things

inmost secrets: Boys' secrets are just like men's; and you know what

they are!

TANNER. [obstinately] No I don't. What are they, pray?

ANN. Why, the things they tell everybody, of course.

TANNER. Now I swear I told you things I told no one else. You lured me

into a compact by which we were to have no secrets from one another. We

were to tell one another everything, I didn't notice that you never told

me anything.

ANN. You didn't want to talk about me, Jack. You wanted to talk about

yourself.

TANNER. Ah, true, horribly true. But what a devil of a child you must

have been to know that weakness and to play on it for the satisfaction

of your own curiosity! I wanted to brag to you, to make myself

interesting. And I found myself doing all sorts of mischievous things

simply to have something to tell you about. I fought with boys I didn't

hate; I lied about things I might just as well have told the truth

about; I stole things I didn't want; I kissed little girls I didn't care

for. It was all bravado: passionless and therefore unreal.

ANN. I never told of you, Jack.

TANNER. No; but if you had wanted to stop me you would have told of me.

You wanted me to go on.

ANN. [flashing out] Oh, that's not true: it's NOT true, Jack. I never

wanted you to do those dull, disappointing, brutal, stupid, vulgar

things. I always hoped that it would be something really heroic at last.

[Recovering herself] Excuse me, Jack; but the things you did were never

a bit like the things I wanted you to do. They often gave me great

uneasiness; but I could not tell on you and get you into trouble. And

you were only a boy. I knew you would grow out of them. Perhaps I was

wrong.

TANNER. [sardonically] Do not give way to remorse, Ann. At least

nineteen twentieths of the exploits I confessed to you were pure lies. I

soon noticed that you didn't like the true stories.

ANN. Of course I knew that some of the things couldn't have happened.

But--

TANNER. You are going to remind me that some of the most disgraceful

ones did.

ANN. [fondly, to his great terror] I don't want to remind you of

anything. But I knew the people they happened to, and heard about them.

TANNER. Yes; but even the true stories were touched up for telling.

A sensitive boy's humiliations may be very good fun for ordinary

thickskinned grown-ups; but to the boy himself they are so acute,

so ignominious, that he cannot confess them--cannot but deny them

passionately. However, perhaps it was as well for me that I romanced a

bit; for, on the one occasion when I told you the truth, you threatened

to tell of me.

ANN. Oh, never. Never once.

TANNER. Yes, you did. Do you remember a dark-eyed girl named Rachel

Rosetree? [Ann's brows contract for an instant involuntarily]. I got up

a love affair with her; and we met one night in the garden and walked

about very uncomfortably with our arms round one another, and kissed at

parting, and were most conscientiously romantic. If that love affair had

gone on, it would have bored me to death; but it didn't go on; for the

next thing that happened was that Rachel cut me because she found out

that I had told you. How did she find it out? From you. You went to her

and held the guilty secret over her head, leading her a life of abject

terror and humiliation by threatening to tell on her.

ANN. And a very good thing for her, too. It was my duty to stop her

misconduct; and she is thankful to me for it now.

TANNER. Is she?

ANN. She ought to be, at all events.

TANNER. It was not your duty to stop my misconduct, I suppose.

ANN. I did stop it by stopping her.

TANNER. Are you sure of that? You stopped my telling you about my

adventures; but how do you know that you stopped the adventures?

ANN. Do you mean to say that you went on in the same way with other

girls?

TANNER. No. I had enough of that sort of romantic tomfoolery with

Rachel.

ANN. [unconvinced] Then why did you break off our confidences and become

quite strange to me?

TANNER. [enigmatically] It happened just then that I got something that

I wanted to keep all to myself instead of sharing it with you.

ANN. I am sure I shouldn't have asked for any of it if you had grudged

it.

TANNER. It wasn't a box of sweets, Ann. It was something you'd never

have let me call my own.

ANN. [incredulously] What?

TANNER. My soul.

ANN. Oh, do be sensible, Jack. You know you're talking nonsense.

TANNER. The most solemn earnest, Ann. You didn't notice at that time

that you were getting a soul too. But you were. It was not for nothing

that you suddenly found you had a moral duty to chastise and reform

Rachel. Up to that time you had traded pretty extensively in being a

good child; but you had never set up a sense of duty to others. Well, I

set one up too. Up to that time I had played the boy buccaneer with no

more conscience than a fox in a poultry farm. But now I began to have

scruples, to feel obligations, to find that veracity and honor were no

longer goody-goody expressions in the mouths of grown up people, but

compelling principles in myself.

ANN. [quietly] Yes, I suppose you're right. You were beginning to be a

man, and I to be a woman.

TANNER. Are you sure it was not that we were beginning to be something

more? What does the beginning of manhood and womanhood mean in most

people's mouths? You know: it means the beginning of love. But love

began long before that for me. Love played its part in the earliest

dreams and follies and romances I can remember--may I say the earliest

follies and romances we can remember?--though we did not understand it

at the time. No: the change that came to me was the birth in me of moral

passion; and I declare that according to my experience moral passion is

the only real passion.

ANN. All passions ought to be moral, Jack.

TANNER. Ought! Do you think that anything is strong enough to impose

oughts on a passion except a stronger passion still?

ANN. Our moral sense controls passion, Jack. Don't be stupid.

TANNER. Our moral sense! And is that not a passion? Is the devil to

have all the passions as well as all the good times? If it were not a

passion--if it were not the mightiest of the passions, all the other

passions would sweep it away like a leaf before a hurricane. It is the

birth of that passion that turns a child into a man.

ANN. There are other passions, Jack. Very strong ones.

TANNER. All the other passions were in me before; but they were idle

and aimless--mere childish greedinesses and cruelties, curiosities

and fancies, habits and superstitions, grotesque and ridiculous to the

mature intelligence. When they suddenly began to shine like newly lit

flames it was by no light of their own, but by the radiance of the

dawning moral passion. That passion dignified them, gave them conscience

and meaning, found them a mob of appetites and organized them into an

army of purposes and principles. My soul was born of that passion.

ANN. I noticed that you got more sense. You were a dreadfully

destructive boy before that.

TANNER. Destructive! Stuff! I was only mischievous.

ANN. Oh Jack, you were very destructive. You ruined all the young fir

trees by chopping off their leaders with a wooden sword. You broke all

the cucumber frames with your catapult. You set fire to the common: the

police arrested Tavy for it because he ran away when he couldn't stop

you. You--

TANNER. Pooh! pooh! pooh! these were battles, bombardments, stratagems

to save our scalps from the red Indians. You have no imagination, Ann. I

am ten times more destructive now than I was then. The moral passion has

taken my destructiveness in hand and directed it to moral ends. I have

become a reformer, and, like all reformers, an iconoclast. I no longer

break cucumber frames and burn gorse bushes: I shatter creeds and

demolish idols.

ANN. [bored] I am afraid I am too feminine to see any sense in

destruction. Destruction can only destroy.

TANNER. Yes. That is why it is so useful. Construction cumbers the

ground with institutions made by busybodies. Destruction clears it and

gives us breathing space and liberty.

ANN. It's no use, Jack. No woman will agree with you there.

TANNER. That's because you confuse construction and destruction with

creation and murder. They're quite different: I adore creation and abhor

murder. Yes: I adore it in tree and flower, in bird and beast, even

in you. [A flush of interest and delight suddenly clears the growing

perplexity and boredom from her face]. It was the creative instinct that

led you to attach me to you by bonds that have left their mark on me

to this day. Yes, Ann: the old childish compact between us was an

unconscious love compact.

ANN. Jack!

TANNER. Oh, don't be alarmed--

ANN. I am not alarmed.

TANNER. [whimsically] Then you ought to be: where are your principles?

ANN. Jack: are you serious or are you not?

TANNER. Do you mean about the moral passion?

ANN. No, no; the other one. [Confused] Oh! you are so silly; one never

knows how to take you.

TANNER. You must take me quite seriously. I am your guardian; and it is

my duty to improve your mind.

ANN. The love compact is over, then, is it? I suppose you grew tired of

me?

TANNER. No; but the moral passion made our childish relations

impossible. A jealous sense of my new individuality arose in me.

ANN. You hated to be treated as a boy any longer. Poor Jack!

TANNER. Yes, because to be treated as a boy was to be taken on the old

footing. I had become a new person; and those who knew the old person

laughed at me. The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took

my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with

their old measurements and expected them to fit me.

ANN. You became frightfully self-conscious.

TANNER. When you go to heaven, Ann, you will be frightfully conscious of

your wings for the first year or so. When you meet your relatives there,

and they persist in treating you as if you were still a mortal, you will

not be able to bear them. You will try to get into a circle which has

never known you except as an angel.

ANN. So it was only your vanity that made you run away from us after

all?

TANNER. Yes, only my vanity, as you call it.

ANN. You need not have kept away from ME on that account.

TANNER. From you above all others. You fought harder than anybody

against my emancipation.

ANN. [earnestly] Oh, how wrong you are! I would have done anything for

you.

TANNER. Anything except let me get loose from you. Even then you had

acquired by instinct that damnable woman's trick of heaping obligations

on a man, of placing yourself so entirely and helplessly at his mercy

that at last he dare not take a step without running to you for leave.

I know a poor wretch whose one desire in life is to run away from his

wife. She prevents him by threatening to throw herself in front of the

engine of the train he leaves her in. That is what all women do. If we

try to go where you do not want us to go there is no law to prevent us,

but when we take the first step your breasts are under our foot as it

descends: your bodies are under our wheels as we start. No woman shall

ever enslave me in that way.

ANN. But, Jack, you cannot get through life without considering other

people a little.

TANNER. Ay; but what other people? It is this consideration of other

people or rather this cowardly fear of them which we call consideration

that makes us the sentimental slaves we are. To consider you, as you

call it, is to substitute your will for my own. How if it be a baser

will than mine? Are women taught better than men or worse? Are mobs of

voters taught better than statesmen or worse? Worse, of course, in both

cases. And then what sort of world are you going to get, with its public

men considering its voting mobs, and its private men considering their

wives? What does Church and State mean nowadays? The Woman and the

Ratepayer.

ANN. [placidly] I am so glad you understand politics, Jack: it will

be most useful to you if you go into parliament [he collapses like a

pricked bladder]. But I am sorry you thought my influence a bad one.

TANNER. I don't say it was a bad one. But bad or good, I didn't choose

to be cut to your measure. And I won't be cut to it.

ANN. Nobody wants you to, Jack. I assure you--really on my word--I

don't mind your queer opinions one little bit. You know we have all been

brought up to have advanced opinions. Why do you persist in thinking me

so narrow minded?

TANNER. That's the danger of it. I know you don't mind, because you've

found out that it doesn't matter. The boa constrictor doesn't mind the

opinions of a stag one little bit when once she has got her coils round

it.

ANN. [rising in sudden enlightenment] O-o-o-o-oh! NOW I understand why

you warned Tavy that I am a boa constrictor. Granny told me. [She laughs

and throws her boa around her neck]. Doesn't it feel nice and soft,

Jack?

TANNER. [in the toils] You scandalous woman, will you throw away even

your hypocrisy?

ANN. I am never hypocritical with you, Jack. Are you angry? [She

withdraws the boa and throws it on a chair]. Perhaps I shouldn't have

done that.

TANNER. [contemptuously] Pooh, prudery! Why should you not, if it amuses

you?

ANN. [Shyly] Well, because--because I suppose what you really meant by

the boa constrictor was THIS [she puts her arms round his neck].

TANNER. [Staring at her] Magnificent audacity! [She laughs and pats his

cheeks]. Now just to think that if I mentioned this episode not a soul

would believe me except the people who would cut me for telling, whilst

if you accused me of it nobody would believe my denial.

ANN. [taking her arms away with perfect dignity] You are incorrigible,

Jack. But you should not jest about our affection for one another.

Nobody could possibly misunderstand it. YOU do not misunderstand it, I

hope.

TANNER. My blood interprets for me, Ann. Poor Ricky Tiky Tavy!

ANN. [looking quickly at him as if this were a new light] Surely you are

not so absurd as to be jealous of Tavy.

TANNER. Jealous! Why should I be? But I don't wonder at your grip of

him. I feel the coils tightening round my very self, though you are only

playing with me.

ANN. Do you think I have designs on Tavy?

TANNER. I know you have.

ANN. [earnestly] Take care, Jack. You may make Tavy very happy if you

mislead him about me.

TANNER. Never fear: he will not escape you.

ANN. I wonder are you really a clever man!

TANNER. Why this sudden misgiving on the subject?

ANN. You seem to understand all the things I don't understand; but you

are a perfect baby in the things I do understand.

TANNER. I understand how Tavy feels for you, Ann; you may depend on

that, at all events.

ANN. And you think you understand how I feel for Tavy, don't you?

TANNER. I know only too well what is going to happen to poor Tavy.

ANN. I should laugh at you, Jack, if it were not for poor papa's death.

Mind! Tavy will be very unhappy.

TANNER. Yes; but he won't know it, poor devil. He is a thousand times

too good for you. That's why he is going to make the mistake of his life

about you.

ANN. I think men make more mistakes by being too clever than by being

too good [she sits down, with a trace of contempt for the whole male sex

in the elegant carriage of her shoulders].

TANNER. Oh, I know you don't care very much about Tavy. But there is

always one who kisses and one who only allows the kiss. Tavy will kiss;

and you will only turn the cheek. And you will throw him over if anybody

better turns up.

ANN. [offended] You have no right to say such things, Jack. They are not

true, and not delicate. If you and Tavy choose to be stupid about me,

that is not my fault.

TANNER. [remorsefully] Forgive my brutalities, Ann. They are levelled

at this wicked world, not at you. [She looks up at him, pleased and

forgiving. He becomes cautious at once]. All the same, I wish Ramsden

would come back. I never feel safe with you: there is a devilish

charm--or no: not a charm, a subtle interest [she laughs]. Just so: you

know it; and you triumph in it. Openly and shamelessly triumph in it!

ANN. What a shocking flirt you are, Jack!

TANNER. A flirt!! I!!

ANN. Yes, a flirt. You are always abusing and offending people, but you

never really mean to let go your hold of them.

TANNER. I will ring the bell. This conversation has already gone further

than I intended.

Ramsden and Octavius come back with Miss Ramsden, a hardheaded old

maiden lady in a plain brown silk gown, with enough rings, chains and

brooches to show that her plainness of dress is a matter of principle,

not of poverty. She comes into the room very determinedly: the two men,

perplexed and downcast, following her. Ann rises and goes eagerly to

meet her. Tanner retreats to the wall between the busts and pretends

to study the pictures. Ramsden goes to his table as usual; and Octavius

clings to the neighborhood of Tanner.

MISS RAMSDEN. [almost pushing Ann aside as she comes to Mr. Whitefield's

chair and plants herself there resolutely] I wash my hands of the whole

affair.

OCTAVIUS. [very wretched] I know you wish me to take Violet away, Miss

Ramsden. I will. [He turns irresolutely to the door].

RAMSDEN. No no--

MISS RAMSDEN. What is the use of saying no, Roebuck? Octavius knows that

I would not turn any truly contrite and repentant woman from your doors.

But when a woman is not only wicked, but intends to go on being wicked,

she and I part company.

ANN. Oh, Miss Ramsden, what do you mean? What has Violet said?

RAMSDEN. Violet is certainly very obstinate. She won't leave London. I

don't understand her.

MISS RAMSDEN. I do. It's as plain as the nose on your face, Roebuck,

that she won't go because she doesn't want to be separated from this

man, whoever he is.

ANN. Oh, surely, surely! Octavius: did you speak to her?

OCTAVIUS. She won't tell us anything. She won't make any arrangement

until she has consulted somebody. It can't be anybody else than the

scoundrel who has betrayed her.

TANNER. [to Octavius] Well, let her consult him. He will be glad enough

to have her sent abroad. Where is the difficulty?

MISS RAMSDEN. [Taking the answer out of Octavius's mouth]. The

difficulty, Mr Jack, is that when he offered to help her I didn't offer

to become her accomplice in her wickedness. She either pledges her word

never to see that man again, or else she finds some new friends; and the

sooner the better.

[The parlormaid appears at the door. Ann hastily resumes her seat, and

looks as unconcerned as possible. Octavius instinctively imitates her].

THE MAID. The cab is at the door, ma'am.

MISS RAMSDEN. What cab?

THE MAID. For Miss Robinson.

MISS RAMSDEN. Oh! [Recovering herself] All right. [The maid withdraws].

She has sent for a cab.

TANNER. I wanted to send for that cab half an hour ago.

MISS RAMSDEN. I am glad she understands the position she has placed

herself in.

RAMSDEN. I don't like her going away in this fashion, Susan. We had

better not do anything harsh.

OCTAVIUS. No: thank you again and again; but Miss Ramsden is quite

right. Violet cannot expect to stay.

ANN. Hadn't you better go with her, Tavy?

OCTAVIUS. She won't have me.

MISS RAMSDEN. Of course she won't. She's going straight to that man.

TANNER. As a natural result of her virtuous reception here.

RAMSDEN. [much troubled] There, Susan! You hear! and there's some truth

in it. I wish you could reconcile it with your principles to be a little

patient with this poor girl. She's very young; and there's a time for

everything.

MISS RAMSDEN. Oh, she will get all the sympathy she wants from the men.

I'm surprised at you, Roebuck.

TANNER. So am I, Ramsden, most favorably.

Violet appears at the door. She is as impenitent and self-assured a

young lady as one would desire to see among the best behaved of her sex.

Her small head and tiny resolute mouth and chin; her haughty crispness

of speech and trimness of carriage; the ruthless elegance of her

equipment, which includes a very smart hat with a dead bird in it, mark

a personality which is as formidable as it is exquisitely pretty. She is

not a siren, like Ann: admiration comes to her without any compulsion

or even interest on her part; besides, there is some fun in Ann, but in

this woman none, perhaps no mercy either: if anything restrains her, it

is intelligence and pride, not compassion. Her voice might be the

voice of a schoolmistress addressing a class of girls who had disgraced

themselves, as she proceeds with complete composure and some disgust to

say what she has come to say.

VIOLET. I have only looked in to tell Miss Ramsden that she will find

her birthday present to me, the filagree bracelet, in the housekeeper's

room.

TANNER. Do come in, Violet, and talk to us sensibly.

VIOLET. Thank you: I have had quite enough of the family conversation

this morning. So has your mother, Ann: she has gone home crying. But

at all events, I have found out what some of my pretended friends are

worth. Good bye.

TANNER. No, no: one moment. I have something to say which I beg you

to hear. [She looks at him without the slightest curiosity, but waits,

apparently as much to finish getting her glove on as to hear what he

has to say]. I am altogether on your side in this matter. I congratulate

you, with the sincerest respect, on having the courage to do what you

have done. You are entirely in the right; and the family is entirely in

the wrong.

Sensation. Ann and Miss Ramsden rise and turn toward the two. Violet,

more surprised than any of the others, forgets her glove, and comes

forward into the middle of the room, both puzzled and displeased.

Octavius alone does not move or raise his head; he is overwhelmed with

shame.

ANN. [pleading to Tanner to be sensible] Jack!

MISS RAMSDEN. [outraged] Well, I must say!

VIOLET. [sharply to Tanner] Who told you?

TANNER. Why, Ramsden and Tavy of course. Why should they not?

VIOLET. But they don't know.

TANNER. Don't know what?

VIOLET. They don't know that I am in the right, I mean.

TANNER. Oh, they know it in their hearts, though they think themselves

bound to blame you by their silly superstitions about morality and

propriety and so forth. But I know, and the whole world really knows,

though it dare not say so, that you were right to follow your instinct;

that vitality and bravery are the greatest qualities a woman can have,

and motherhood her solemn initiation into womanhood; and that the fact

of your not being legally married matters not one scrap either to your

own worth or to our real regard for you.

VIOLET. [flushing with indignation] Oh! You think me a wicked woman,

like the rest. You think I have not only been vile, but that I share

your abominable opinions. Miss Ramsden: I have borne your hard words

because I knew you would be sorry for them when you found out the truth.

But I won't bear such a horrible insult as to be complimented by Jack on

being one of the wretches of whom he approves. I have kept my marriage

a secret for my husband's sake. But now I claim my right as a married

woman not to be insulted.

OCTAVIUS. [raising his head with inexpressible relief] You are married!

VIOLET. Yes; and I think you might have guessed it. What business had

you all to take it for granted that I had no right to wear my wedding

ring? Not one of you even asked me: I cannot forget that.

TANNER. [in ruins] I am utterly crushed. I meant well--I

apologize--abjectly apologize.

VIOLET. I hope you will be more careful in future about the things

you say. Of course one does not take them seriously. But they are very

disagreeable, and rather in bad taste.

TANNER. [bowing to the storm] I have no defence: I shall know better in

future than to take any woman's part. We have all disgraced ourselves in

your eyes, I am afraid, except Ann, SHE befriended you. For Ann's sake,

forgive us.

VIOLET. Yes: Ann has been very kind; but then Ann knew.

TANNER. Oh!

MISS RAMSDEN. [stiffly] And who, pray, is the gentleman who does not

acknowledge his wife?

VIOLET. [promptly] That is my business, Miss Ramsden, and not yours. I

have my reasons for keeping my marriage a secret for the present.

RAMSDEN. All I can say is that we are extremely sorry, Violet. I am

shocked to think of how we have treated you.

OCTAVIUS. [awkwardly] I beg your pardon, Violet. I can say no more.

MISS RAMSDEN. [still loth to surrender] Of course what you say puts

a very different complexion on the matter. All the same, I owe it to

myself--

VIOLET. [cutting her short] You owe me an apology, Miss Ramsden: that's

what you owe both to yourself and to me. If you were a married woman you

would not like sitting in the housekeeper's room and being treated like

a naughty child by young girls and old ladies without any serious duties

and responsibilities.

TANNER. Don't hit us when we're down, Violet. We seem to have made fools

of ourselves; but really it was you who made fools of us.

VIOLET. It was no business of yours, Jack, in any case.

TANNER. No business of mine! Why, Ramsden as good as accused me of being

the unknown gentleman.

Ramsden makes a frantic demonstration; but Violet's cool keen anger

extinguishes it.

VIOLET. You! Oh, how infamous! how abominable! How disgracefully you

have all been talking about me! If my husband knew it he would never let

me speak to any of you again. [To Ramsden] I think you might have spared

me, at least.

RAMSDEN. But I assure you I never--at least it is a monstrous perversion

of something I said that--

MISS RAMSDEN. You needn't apologize, Roebuck. She brought it all on

herself. It is for her to apologize for having deceived us.

VIOLET. I can make allowances for you, Miss Ramsden: you cannot

understand how I feel on this subject though I should have expected

rather better taste from people of greater experience. However, I quite

feel that you have all placed yourselves in a very painful position;

and the most truly considerate thing for me to do is to go at once. Good

morning.

She goes, leaving them staring.

Miss RAMSDEN. Well, I must say--!

RAMSDEN. [plaintively] I don't think she is quite fair to us.

TANNER. You must cower before the wedding ring like the rest of us,

Ramsden. The cup of our ignominy is full.