HARLEQUIN. [Who is passing in and out.] To some extent he is, Sir George.
CLOWN. Gad, let me think a minute ... though the wine's in my head.
What sum did you lose to Sir Jeffrey last night? Your bride's name was
Clarissa.... I heard it. And Clarissa Mordaunt's the name of that fine
lady. Odds, Bobs and Buttons! You're not the fool fop, Eglantine, are you?
[Is it Eglantine who enters? There stands something for a moment
a dead thing dressed in a bridegroom's splendour. It is as if some
ice-cold hand had plucked at his heart. Yet he is calm; the poise
remains true, the subtle artifice is there. But the crushing blow to
his pride is in his pale face, and his voice rings bitterly when he
says:
EGLANTINE. I was.
CLOWN. I'm sorry. I might have guessed. I mean, of course I couldn't have
guessed ... that any man would be such a fool ... I mean ... oh, gad, I...
ALICE. He never opens his mouth but he puts his foot in it. That's what
he's trying to say.
CLOWN. But there's time yet. Old Talon can't have paid the money to her
lawyers by this. Jeffrey Rake boasted too soon. I'll run to stop it.
EGLANTINE. Pray, do nothing of the sort, George.
CLOWN. But I will. An't I your friend? What's the address?
EGLANTINE. My pistol, Quin.
[The pistol is in his hand.
CLOWN. And the fifteen thousand Rake won. Hold it back. We'll call him out
and do for him ... one of us.
EGLANTINE. Must I go so far as to shoot you in the leg, my dear George, to
convince you that it will be an errand ill run ... that they are welcome to
their gains ... that I count myself well rid of them.
CLOWN. Oh! You don't count on my not telling the story, do you?
EGLANTINE. Though I shot you as dead as mutton, every joint would squeak
it, I feel sure.
CLOWN. Oh!
EGLANTINE. Quin; the door.
CLOWN. Oh!
[Still he stands, grinning there.
EGLANTINE. George, we are keeping my servant in a draught.
[Clown waddles out. Harlequin vanishes too. He is back in a moment to
find Eglantine sunk in the chair facing the mirror to see--finery! And
what else?
Quin. In the glass there ... is that Eglantine?
HARLEQUIN. Till this moment your lordship has been pleased to think so.
EGLANTINE. The country girl that sang. I had her sent away.
HARLEQUIN. Since the song caused your lordship some discomfort.
EGLANTINE. Stop her before she goes. [He takes the parchment from the
table.] Stay, give me pen and ink. This is for her when the name is
altered. Her home I think you said....
[Harlequin vanishes again. Eglantine most carefully erases the
name and writes in the other. Then he rises, pistol in hand, and faces
himself in mirror, looks himself full in the face.
And now, Lord Eglantine, since you are he! Peg for clothes, scribbler of
epigrams, now to end and for ever your tailor's dream.
[And he fires. But he doesn't fall. Instead, the mirror cracks and a
puff of smoke comes from it. Alice must not interrupt the story or she
would; and she aches to, because she always fears the audience may not
grasp the point. Lord Eglantine was a reflection of his tim
the polished mirror of his age. Until he blew the reflection into
smithereens, he had no soul, no reality. A wig, a box of patches,
snuff, silk, lace, a clouded cane, a neat sense for words, that was
Eglantine, and now he has become, in all humility, a man. Back comes
Harlequin to find him.
HARLEQUIN. My lord!
EGLANTINE. A slight accident.
HARLEQUIN. The noise has wakened our neighbours.
EGLANTINE. On my honour it has wakened me.
HARLEQUIN. Richardson!
[Columbine appears.
Kindly pick up his lordship's pieces.
[She has her little dust-pan and brush, and most neatly she does so.
Eglantine--a new Eglantine--watches her, and the thought of a new life
is born in him.
EGLANTINE. We've a few guineas in the house, I suppose?
HARLEQUIN. A few, my lord.
EGLANTINE. Enough for a coach hire to the country. A penniless fellow such
as I am, Quin, would she welcome me to her home, I wonder?
HARLEQUIN. But I fear that this parchment fails of its effect unless your
lordship is married to the owner.
EGLANTINE. But not a bad idea, Quin. [Then he sighs doubtfully.] Would she
think so?
HARLEQUIN. Let us ask her when she has picked up the pieces.
[And here Alice and Uncle Edward draw the curtains, for the scene is
over. But Alice still stands fingering their folds. Her eyes smile, but
her mouth droops a little doubtfully. She is never over-happy about
this scene. "Very pretty" she hears the front row people say; and then
they rustle their programmes and read about whiskey very old in bottle,
or cigarettes, a very special blend. "Very pretty" is so patronising.
Someone else remarks "How quaint"; and that is worse still. Miles away
from us is the meaning of that eighteenth century with its polished
perfections. So perfect, yet so partially perfect, that mankind could
only break them all to pieces and start again. But Alice, tidy little
soul, loves the fine order of it all. If they embroidered flowers so
well, they must, she thinks, have loved the very flowers, too, and such
good manners must have meant that somewhere underneath the silk and
stays they had kind and worthy souls. But her mouth does droop a
little, and she asks her uncle, almost whispering:
"Do you think they understood it?"
"Any child could understand it," Uncle Edward says, and back to his
paper he goes.
Alice gives a shy glance round. She doesn't mind now if they do hear.
"But that's the trouble, as poor Auntie used to say: 'They're not
children.' Don't we only wish they were."
Once more, then, Uncle Edward sizes up the house; a good house now, a
contented house, a bread-and-butter house not to be quarrelled with.
"You take your public as you find 'em, my Missie," he says, or rather,
this he only seems to say. His words are: "Alice, get on with your
bit."
So Alice smiles again, and smooths her frock and puts her heels
together and turns out her toes, and gets on.
* * * * *
ALICE. [As she faces them.] I beg your pardon. Well, that was in seventeen
hundred and something. And we skip the eighteen hundreds because they were
so busy: too busy to play, except just riotously, and we skip to-day, too,
because ... well, really because what we showed you about to-day with bits
of "you" put in it might seem rather rude. And we skip to-morrow, because
to-morrow really is too serious to make our sort of jokes about. So we go
right on to the day after. And you've noticed, haven't you, that we go
westward all the time? So next the scene's in America, which you get to
through New York. Things have been going from bad to worse with our four
poor gods, but what has principally knocked them endways is machinery. Now
America is full of machinery. And they can't understand it. For whatever
a machine is supposed to do in the end, there's one thing it always seems
sure to do in the beginning, if you're not very, very careful. And that is
to knock the spirit out of a man. Which is his magic. Clown and Pantaloon
and Harlequin and Columbine are very simple folk, you know. They let
themselves be just what it's most natural to be, and only try to give their
friends in front ... kind friends in front, they call them ... just what
will make them happiest quickest. So this is what they've come to be by
this time, Clown and Columbine, Harlequin and Pantaloon. No names but
those, no meaning, no real part at all in the rattle and clatter of
machinery which is now called Life. They're out of it. They clung to the
skirts of the theatre for a bit. But the theatre, aching to be "in it",
flung them off. The intellectual drama had no use for them, no use at all.
And so they found themselves (out of it indeed) busking on the pavement,
doing tricks and tumbling and singing silly songs to the unresponsive
profiles of long lines of ladies (high-nosed or stumpy-nosed ladies),
waiting admittance to the matinées of some highly intellectual play. And
with glasses on those noses they'd be reading while they waited the book of
that same play: so even then our poor gods busked in vain. But worse, far
worse....
Along came the Man of the World again. He calls himself the Man of Business
now. "Do the Public really want this sort of stuff?" he said. "Well, let
'em have it. But as a Business Proposition, if you please."
So he bought up all the theatres, and he said he'd make them pay. And his
cousin, the Man in the Street, took shares. And they organised the Theatre.
And they made it efficient. And they conducted it on sound commercial
lines. And the magic vanished and people wondered where and why. Now what
we're going to show you, you won't believe could ever happen at all. It
does seem like the cheapest of cheap jokes. But really if we will think
magic's to be bought and sold, and if we leave our gods to starve because
there isn't any money in their laughter or their tears ... well, it's more
than the Theatre that may suffer. But the poor pampered Theatre is our
business now, and here's our cheap, cheap joke about it. You aren't
expected to laugh ... in fact, perhaps you shouldn't. It's one of those
jokes you smile at, crookedly you know, this joke of the Theatre as it well
may be the day after to-morrow if some of us don't look out.
[And with that we hear music. It's a ragtime tune, and something about
it hurts us. After ten bars we find out what and why. It is the theme
of the gods cheapened and degraded. Music is of all the arts the
directest epitome of life. Not a noble thing in it that cannot, it
would seem, with just a turn or two, be turned to baseness.
Alice and Uncle Edward draw back the curtains, and there's another
curtain to be seen. It is not beautiful to look at--but it's useful. It
has six advertisements painted on it in "screaming" colour.
and "keep thin" says one. "Drink and keep sober" says the next, and
Somebody's Patent Something is the way. "Indulge freely; we take the
consequence", the motto runs beneath the two. "Patent pearls that will
deceive an oyster" says the third. The fourth's a Face Cream, and the
fifth's for Shattered Nerves. The sixth says, "Believe in our Patent
God and you shall assuredly be saved." From one side comes the Man of
the World--Man of Business--Business Manager. Silk hat, dress coat,
white waistcoat, shiny shirt, patent boots, and big cigar; he's very
smart and prosperous indeed. From the other side come the four poor
gods, out of work buskers of the streets, down at heel and weary. But
still gods, and with a god-like snap of ill-temper to them for you to
know them by.
CLOWN. Morning.
MAN OF THE WORLD. Afternoon.
CLOWN. Is it? Now [Says he to the others], you leave it to me, and let's
all keep our tempers. See here, Mr. Man, is this the old 99th Street
Theayter?
MAN OF THE WORLD. This, sir, and you know it as well as I do, is nothing
so out of date. It is Number 2613 of the five thousand Attraction Houses
controlled by the Hustle Trust Circuit of Automatic Drama: President, Mr.
Theodor B. Kedger. But it is located on 99th Street, New York City.
CLOWN. Are you the boss?
MAN OF THE WORLD. I am a deputy sub-inspector of the New York and New
Jersey division of the circuit.
CLOWN. Can we have a job, me and my pals, here?
MAN OF THE WORLD. You cannot.
CLOWN. And why not?
MAN OF THE WORLD. Because you are superseded.
CLOWN. What's that?
PANTALOON. I'll super if there's nothing better.
CLOWN. Where is the durn President?
MAN OF THE WORLD. I learn from the fashionable intelligence that he is at
present cruising the Mediterranean on his electric yacht.
CLOWN. Where's the author of the piece?
MAN OF THE WORLD. There ain't no author of the piece. This present item is
turned out by our Number Two Factory of Automatic Dramaturgy; Plunkville,
Tennessee.
CLOWN. Where are the other actors... God help 'em?
MAN OF THE WORLD. There ain't no actors; we froze all them out way back.
Where've you been that you've grown all these mossy ideas on you?
CLOWN. Never you mind. Tell us, what's come to the poor old 99th Street
Theayter... and how.
MAN OF THE WORLD. Well, I guess I need only quote you from Volume One of
the Life of Mr. Theodor B. Kedger, our esteemed President ...Nit! [And as
he says "Nit," if it were not for all the anti-expectoration notices hung
round he would certainly spit.] It is stacked ready to put on the market
the day he passes in his checks. Hold on now. About the year 1918 Mr.
Kedger, who had already financially made good over the manipulation of
wood-pulp potatoes, synthetic bread, and real estate, turned his attention
to the Anglo-American Theatre. For the Anglo-American Theatre did not pay.
Here was Mr. Kedger's opportunity. Forming a small trust, he bought up the
theatres, both of the Variety and of the Monotonous kind, bought up the
dramatists with their copyrights present and future, bought up the actors--
PANTALOON. Didn't buy me.
MAN OF THE WORLD. Didn't count you.
CLOWN. Cost much?
MAN OF THE WORLD. [He winks.] The payment was partly made in shares. He
then paid the Dramatists considerable sums not to go on writing, which was,
of course, a clear profit. He paid the actors to stop acting, which was in
some cases a needless expenditure of money. He also brought in the Cinema
and Gramophone interests, organising the whole affair upon a strictly
business basis.
PANTALOON. He left us out. We've had cruel hard times, but I'm glad he left
us out.
MAN OF THE WORLD. Then followed some years of experiment in the scientific
manufacture and blending of drama. As I speak, no less than twenty-three
factories dot the grassy meads of America. The work is done by clerks
employed at moderate salaries for eight hours a day. For the cerebration of
whatever new ideas may be needed, several French literary men are kept
in chains in the backyard, being fed exclusively on absinthe and caviare
sandwiches during their periods of creative activity. No less than forty
different brands of drama are turned out, each with its description stamped
clearly on the can. While a complete equipment for anyone can be travelled
by the operator in his valise, still leaving room for toothbrush and
slumber-suit.
CLOWN. Do the public like the stuff?
MAN OF THE WORLD. They've got to like it. They get none else.
CLOWN. Can't you give us another chance? I'll lay we could make good.
MAN OF THE WORLD. Sorry, sonny, but I don't see how you'd fit in. Watch
this attraction I'm going to try over.
CLOWN. You still rehearse, do you?
MAN OF THE WORLD. Once. Would you like to watch? Then you'll see.
CLOWN. What's it called?
MAN OF THE WORLD. It's called "Love: a Disease", and it's Number
seventy-six of the High Brow Ibsen series. It ain't got nothing to do with
Ibsen really, but his is still a name that sells. He was a German professor
of mathematics and highly respected in his day. I'll have you see a bit of
one act.
COLUMBINE. What's the plot?
MAN OF THE WORLD. No plot. It's a home life story, a conversation. A man is
telling a woman that he is just bored stiff with everything on earth.
PANTALOON. Ah!
MAN OF THE WORLD. And she doesn't know what to say. That's the first act.
CLOWN. Gosh!
MAN OF THE WORLD. In the next he's asking her advice as to whether a really
tired man ought to marry. And she doesn't know.
CLOWN. How long does that take?
MAN OF THE WORLD. Quite a while.
CLOWN. Which is the act we are going to see?
MAN OF THE WORLD. The third. It contains the action. About half-way through
he moves across to her and says: "Don't cry, little girl, I can always
shoot myself!" And then he finds out that she is stone deaf from birth, and
hasn't really heard a word he said. So she goes forth into the world to
learn the Oral system, while he awaits her return, when he will begin
again. Are you ready? I'll ring up.
[Quite wonderfully the big cigar shifts to one corner of his mouth,
almost in line with his ear, and he whistles shrilly. The curtain of
the "six ads." flies away, and there's the automatic drama in full
swing. Three canvas walls, liberally stencilled in the worst Munich
style. And in this space are two pink gramophones on two green
pedestals. One is gilt-lettered "Arthur." The other silver-lettered
"Grace." The trumpets incline to each other a little, for this is a
love scene going on. On a white framed space in the back wall, stage
directions are written moviely. This one spells out "Arthur is still
speaking. He crosses his legs and takes an asthma cigarette." Then the
gilt-lettered phonograph croaks:--
ARTHUR. After all, what is love but a disease of the imagination? Don't
cry, little girl, I can always shoot myself!
GRACE. [Who croaks an octave higher.] I'm not crying. Tell me more.
[Moviely the stage direction comes: "He leans forward."
ARTHUR. But why should there be one law for women and another for men? One
law for childhood and another for old age? Why skirts, why trousers? Why
those monotonies of sensation and experience? Why this unreality, this
hypocrisy, this cowardice, this exaltation of the super-sham? Why...?
[Moviely at the back is written: "She leans forward, too."
MAN OF THE WORLD. Now the emotion thickens!
GRACE. Let us go back to the beginning.
PANTALOON. I can't hear none of this.
CLOWN. If you worked Pictures with it, it mightn't be so bad...for them as
likes this sort of stuff.
MAN OF THE WORLD. We do work Pictures with the lighter and fruitier forms
of drama. But here they would only obfuscate the cerebration. Wait till she
cerebrates. And she cerebrates some!
GRACE. No child at her mother's knee was more innocent than I. How then did
knowledge of good and evil come? I will tell you. I will tell you of the
evil first ...
PANTALOON. Columbine, you go and wait outside.
GRACE. [With a louder croak.] Passion...!
CLOWN. Stop!
MAN OF THE WORLD. Don't interrupt.
CLOWN. She ain't got no right to it with a voice like that.
GRACE. Laughter...!
CLOWN. Never laughed in her life! Never had a life to laugh in!
MAN OF THE WORLD. Young man, if this were a performance, you would be dealt
with by our aesthetic policewoman. Vulgar comments made in public upon
works of art are now an indictable offence.
CLOWN. Works of what?
GRACE. ...And the joy of life!
CLOWN. Stop, I say!
MAN OF THE WORLD. For the last time... don't interrupt.
CLOWN. I will interrupt. And I'll smash those durned machines, though the
last Clown in the world is hung for it. For that's me ...that's me! Oh, has
it come to this, after all we've done for the theatre! Haven't we loved it,
Grandfer, haven't we? My red-hot poker's in pawn, and I've worn out the
sausages. But let's have a try to make him laugh. Take the starch out of
him! Take the banknote rustle out of him! Take the Theatre from him.
Save it and save him, too! Come on, old 'un. Kiss your hand, Columbine.
Harlequin, if you love me, if you love the drama, have one more try.
Magic...Magic! Turn these clicking clocks there back into wholesome human
bad actors again, and turn the Deputy Inspector of the New York Circuit of
the Hustle Bustle Trust of Automatic...
[Columbine trips across the stage. Pantaloon chuckles. Clown tumbles
head over heels and sends the Man of the World flying. Harlequin leaps
in the air and smites with his wand the two pink gramophones on
two green stands. They vanish! Down through a trap goes the Man of the
World. Red Fire! And Alice, as she tugs the curtains to, calls in her
most stentorian tones...
ALICE. Grand transformation scene! I always draw the curtains rather quick
because it never works quite right.
[She waits a little, and then, very simply, says
The gods go back...
[And stops and swallows. Poor dear, her throat is dry.
UNCLE EDWARD. You want your glass of milk.
ALICE. They don't ever really go. For what would become of us without them?
But it rounds off the play. They just go back as flowers die to come again
forever. For the seed of the gods is sown in the hearts of men. The
seeds of Love and of the Magic of High Adventure and of Laughter and of
Foolishness, too. Well, when they reach the Styx there still sits that
philosopher, who wasn't a philosopher at all because he sought no wisdom
but his own. Because of that, you see, he has found none. There he sits,
deaf and blind, while Olympus flashes and thunders behind him. There he
sits, chattering that there are no gods.
* * * * *
The curtains are drawn back on the last scene. The Styx again, flowing
black beneath its black mountains. There sits the Philosopher, patiently.
He is dressed now as a Member of Parliament, or worse. He has a fountain
pen and a notebook. And the gods arrive. Mercury, Charon, Momus, and
Psyche.
PHILOSOPHER. Who are you?
MERCURY. We are the gods returning.
PHILOSOPHER. [Very definitely indeed.] There are no gods. Though from time
to time it has been necessary to invent them.
PANTALOON. Why, it's my friend, the philosopher!
PHILOSOPHER. Pardon me. Nothing so unpractical. I am a Political Economist.
I write Blue Books. I make laws.
MERCURY. Can you row us over?
PHILOSOPHER. What a question! I have established several rowing academies.
I know how rowing is done. But, as a matter of fact, I cannot row. Still
it's of little consequence, for the boat was given to a museum some time
ago. Besides, the latest theories tell us that there is no other side.
CLOWN. Ain't there? Well, I'm going to swim and see.
PHILOSOPHER. Pardon me, bathing is not allowed in the Styx.
CLOWN. Ain't it?
[Off tumbles Momus, and you hear him splash in the river. The Political
Economist has risen indignantly. Under the bench, dusty and neglected,
Psyche spies something. She runs to see. With a little cry she picks
them up, and shakes and smooths them. They are the Talaria. (Do you
know what Talaria are? Look up Mercurius in Lempriere's Classical
Dictionary.)
MERCURY. Wings! My wings!
PHILOSOPHER. Yes, they are wings. Left here by two children, and I hadn't
the heart to destroy them. But I hid them away; they are dangerous. The
very sight of wings makes men and women feel above themselves.
MERCURY. Bind them on.
[And Psyche kneels to bind them on his feet.
Sir, I return you your rags and your mask. They are at least more
picturesque than your present attire. Listen, the great gods are waking!
Monday morning in Olympus. Charon, stay with this fellow. He means well by
the world; but teach him to rebuild the boat. For when his work is done
he'll be glad to escape and to rest as you row him across the river.
Psyche, we're late. Let us fly.
[For the last time the blue curtains close.
UNCLE EDWARD. Now, your last bit ... the bit the journalist wrote in your
album.