MAN AND SUPERMAN: A COMEDY AND A PLAY by George Bernard Shaw (1903)
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, began an epoch in the criticism of the theatre
and the opera house by making it the 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 etre 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 dont 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 force 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 tomorrow 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 beloved by
masters, Mozart, revealing 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 bolder poet than Wordsworth just as it
made Peter a bolder 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 tenth 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 Schopenhauer 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. Today 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
easy 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 commonwealths the resolve 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
Englishmen 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 charming him,
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 utter 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 than 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's 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 at
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, shews 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 from 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's old and satiated. Romance and Asceticism, Amorism and
Puritanism are equally unreal in the great Philistine world. The world
shewn 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 twentyfive 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 today,
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
today 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
shew 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 today? Nowhere. Plutocratic
inbreeding 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, parlormaids, 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 then 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 playgoing public of London.
I have certainly shewn 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 of 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 Barrie 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, Schopenhauer,
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 punts 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 son'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 shew 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 I do 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 merely 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-Darwin,
post-Schopenhauer 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 Schopenhauer'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, 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 eighteenseventies 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 shall 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
mine 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 belletrist. 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 delight in 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
Cherubini'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 dont
want to learn agree with him emphatically.
I pride myself on not being one of these susceptibles. 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
P.S.- Amid unprecedented critical cerebration over this book of
ours- alas! that your own voice should be dedicated to silence!- I
find myself warned to prepare a new edition. I take the opportunity to
correct a slip or two. You may have noticed (nobody else has, by the
way) that I fitted you with a quotation from Othello, and then
unconsciously referred it to A Winter's Tale. I correct this with
regret; for half its appropriateness goes with Florizel and Perdita:
still, one must not trifle with Shakespear; so I have given
Desdemona back her property.
On the whole, the book has done very well. The strong critics are
impressed; the weak intimidated; the connoisseurs tickled by my
literary bravura (put in to please you): the humorists alone, oddly
enough, sermonize me, scared out of their profession into the
quaintest tumults of conscience. Not all my reviewers have
understood me: like Englishmen in France, confidently uttering their
own island diphthongs as good French vowels, many of them offer, as
samples of the Shavian philosophy, the likest article from their own
stock. Others are the victims of association of ideas: they call me
Pessimist because my remarks wound their self-complacency, and
Renegade because I would have my mob all Caesars instead of Toms,
Dicks, and Harrys. Worst of all, I have been accused of preaching a
Final Ethical Superman: no other, in fact, than our friend the Just
Man made Perfect! This misunderstanding is so galling that I lay
down my pen without another word lest I should be tempted to make
the postcript longer even than the letter.
ACT ONE
ROEBUCK RAMSDEN is in his study, opening the morning's 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 today; 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 believes 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 Arts
hemicycle, representing the great men of all ages. On the wall
behind him, above the mantel-shelf, 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. Shew him in.
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 on 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 some day.
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! dont grieve. [Octavius masters himself and puts up
his handkerchief]. Thats 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! Doesnt 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 shouldnt have told you. But
he was in earnest.
OCTAVIUS. Oh, if only I thought I had a chance! You know, Mr
Ramsden, I dont care about money or about what people call
position; and I cant 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! Youre 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 dont 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 wouldnt
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 couldnt 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 couldnt. 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! youll ask her, wont you?
OCTAVIUS [with sad gaiety] At all events I promise you I shall
never ask anyone else.
RAMSDEN. Oh, you shant 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, dont 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 man 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
dont 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 youre sitting there that the will appoints me Annie's
trustee and guardian. [Forcibly] Now I tell you, once for all,
I cant and I wont 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 wont 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
drawing room with Miss Ramsden. He came with Mrs Whitefield and
Miss Ann and Miss Robinson, sir.
Ramsden's feelings are beyond words.
OCTAVIUS [grinning] Thats 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: thats 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 dont
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 wouldnt talk like that about Ann.
TANNER. This chap's in love with her: thats another complication.
Well, she'll either jilt him and say I didnt 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 shewn 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: thats 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 didnt 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. Whats the good of that? Ive been refusing all the way from
Richmond; but Ann keeps on saying that of course she's only an
orphan; and that she cant expect the people who were glad to
come to the house in her father's time to trouble much about her
now. Thats the latest game. An orphan! It's like hearing an
ironclad talk about being at the mercy of the wind 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 cant 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 didnt 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 cant take it. He was too
good to us.
TANNER. You wont 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
shews that he had his wits about him, doesnt 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. Dont, Tavy: youll 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
eighteensixty. We cant 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! Youve 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. Arnt 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 dont want to know how you feel towards me, Mr
Tanner.
TANNER. Ann will do just exactly what she likes. And whats 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 lets 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 dont 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,
youre ashamed to buy my book, ashamed to read it: the only thing
youre not ashamed of is to judge me for it without having read
it; and even that only means that youre 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 dont mean that I havnt 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 youve ever met. Thats
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 to me. Thief, liar,
forger, adulterer, perjurer, glutton, drunkard? Not one of these
names fits 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 Mr 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 inner 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 responses, continues] I dont
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 content 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. Dont 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 cant imagine you doing anything disgraceful, Granny.
TANNER [to Ramsden] You havnt 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 to be your
guardian; and I quite agree with him. He considers that if your
father had read my book, he wouldnt 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 havnt 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 [vehemently] 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 not if you dont 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 wont 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 in 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: thats all.
MRS WHITEFIELD. Why? Whats 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 dont
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 dont 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 cant 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 wont 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 dont, Jack. Thats 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 didnt know. Then I
certainly wont call you that. May I call you Jack until I can
think of something else?
TANNER. Oh, for Heaven's sake dont 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 bookcase] 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 youre 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: thats 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. Dont 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
child-bearing 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 blood-sucker, 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 shew 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 dont 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 cant. 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 wont tell us.
OCTAVIUS [collapsing into the 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. Dont be brutal, Jack.
TANNER. Brutal! Good Heavens, man, what are you crying for? Here is
a woman 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 grigs 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. Dont 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 mustnt 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 dont 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. Dont be absurd, Jack. Of course you are quite right, Tavy; but
we dont know who he is: Violet wont 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, dont talk so loud. It's most
shocking: we must all admit that; but if Violet wont 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!
dont 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 couldnt- you wouldnt-
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 doesnt 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 lets 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. Whats happening upstairs?
ANN. Violet is in the housekeeper's room- by herself, of course.
TANNER. Why not in the drawing room?
ANN. Dont be absurd, Jack. Miss Ramsden is in the drawing room 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. Dont 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: dont 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 youll 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: hadnt you better go up to
the drawing room 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 dont 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 bust] 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 cant 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 isnt 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 wont 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. Wasnt 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: youre 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 boy's 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 dont. 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 didnt notice
that you never told me anything.
ANN. You didnt 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 didnt hate; I lied about things I might
just as well have told the truth about; I stole things I didnt
want; I kissed little girls I didnt 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, thats 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
of 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 didnt like the true stories.
ANN. Of course I knew that some of the things couldnt 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 dont 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 didnt 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 shouldnt have asked for any of it if you had
grudged it.
TANNER. It wasnt a box of sweets, Ann. It was something youd never
have let me call my own.
ANN [incredulously] What?
TANNER. My soul.
ANN. Oh, do be sensible, Jack. You know youre talking nonsense.
TANNER. The most solemn earnest, Ann. You didnt 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 principle in myself.
ANN [quietly] Yes, I suppose youre 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. Dont 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 tunes? 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 couldnt 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. Thats because you confuse construction and destruction with
creation and murder. Theyre 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 chases 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, dont be alarmed-
ANN. I am not alarmed.
TANNER [whimisically] 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 dont say it was a bad one. But bad or good, I didnt choose
to be cut to your measure. And I wont be cut to it.
ANN. Nobody wants you to, Jack. I assure you- really on my word- I
dont 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. Thats the danger of it. I know you dont mind, because youve
found out that it doesnt matter. The boa constrictor doesnt 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 round his neck]. Doesnt 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 shouldnt
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 Ticky 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 dont 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 unhappy 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 dont 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, dont 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 wont know it, poor devil. He is a thousand times
too good for you. Thats 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 dont 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 shew 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 Mrs
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].
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 wont leave London.
I dont understand her.
MISS RAMSDEN. I do. It's as plain as the nose on your face, Roebuck,
that she wont go because she doesnt want to be separated from
this man, whoever he is.
ANN. Oh, surely, surely! Octavius: did you speak to her?
OCTAVIUS. She wont tell us anything. She wont make any arrangement
until she has consulted somebody. It cant 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 I offered to help her I didnt
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, maam.
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 dont 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. Hadnt you better go with her, Tavy?
OCTAVIUS. She wont have me.
MISS RAMSDEN. Of course she wont. 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 theres 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 theres 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-possessed 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. Goodbye.
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 towards 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 nor 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 dont know.
TANNER. Dont know what?
VIOLET. They dont 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 wont 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, I think.
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 kind; but then Ann knew.
TANNER [with a desperate gesture] Oh!!! Unfathomable deceit! Double
crossed!
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:
thats 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. Dont 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 that, at least.
RAMSDEN. But I assure you I never- at least it is a monstrous
perversion of something I said that-
MISS RAMSDEN. You neednt 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 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 dont 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.
ACT TWO
ON the carriage drive in the park of a country house near Richmond
an open touring car has broken down. It stands in front of a clump
of trees round which the drive sweeps to the house, which is partly
visible through them: indeed Tanner, standing in the drive with his
back to us, could get an unobstructed view of the west corner of the
house on his left were he not far too much interested in a pair of
supine legs in dungaree overalls which protrude from beneath the
machine. He is watching them intently with bent back and hands
supported on his knees. His leathern overcoat and peaked cap
proclaim him one of the dismounted passengers.
THE LEGS. Aha! I got him.
TANNER. All right now?
THE LEGS. Aw rawt nah.
Tanner stoops and takes the legs by the ankles, drawing their
owner forth like a wheelbarrow, walking on his hands, with a hammer in
his mouth. He is a young man in a neat suit of blue serge, clean
shaven, dark eyed, square fingered, with short well brushed black hair
and rather irregular sceptically turned eye-brows. When he is
manipulating the car his movements are swift and sudden, yet attentive
and deliberate. With Tanner and Tanner's friends his manner is not
in the least deferential, but cool and reticent, keeping them quite
effectually at a distance whilst giving them no excuse for complaining
of him. Nevertheless he has a vigilant eye on them always, and that,
too, rather cynically, like a man who knows the world well from its
seamy side. He speaks slowly and with a touch of sarcasm; and as he
does not at all affect the gentleman in his speech, it may be inferred
that his smart appearance is a mark of respect to himself and his
own class, not to that which employs him.
He now gets into the car to stow away his tools and divest himself
of his overalls. Tanner takes off his leathern overcoat and pitches it
into the car with a sigh of relief, glad to be rid of it. The
Chauffeur, noting this, tosses his head contemptuously, and surveys
his employer sardonically.
THE CHAUFFEUR. Had enough of it, eh?
TANNER. I may as well walk to the house and stretch my legs and calm
my nerves a little. [Looking at his watch] I suppose you know
that we have come from Hyde Park Corner to Richmond in
twenty-one minutes.
THE CHAUFFEUR. I'd ha done it under fifteen if I'd had a clear road
all the way.
TANNER. Why do you do it? Is it for love of sport or for the fun of
terrifying your unfortunate employer?
THE CHAUFFEUR. What are you afraid of?
TANNER. The police, and breaking my neck.
THE CHAUFFEUR. Well, if you like easy going, you can take a bus, you
know. It's cheaper. You pay me to save your time and give you
the value of what you paid for the car. [He sits down calmly].
TANNER. I am the slave of that car and of you too. I dream of the
accursed thing at night.
THE CHAUFFEUR. Youll get over that all right. If youre going up to
the house, may I ask how long youre goin to stay? Because if you
mean to put in the whole morning in there talkin to the ladies,
I'll put the car in the garage and make myself agreeable with a
view to lunching here. If not, I'll keep the car on the go about
here til you come.
TANNER. Better wait here. We shant be long. Theres a young American
gentleman, a Mr Malone, who is driving Mr Robinson down in his
new American steam car.
THE CHAUFFEUR [springing up and coming hastily out of the car to
Tanner] American steam car! Wot! racin us dahn from London!
TANNER. Perhaps theyre here already.
THE CHAUFFEUR. If I'd known it! [With deep reproach] Why didnt you
tell me, Mr Tanner?
TANNER. Because Ive been told that this car is capable of 84 miles
an hour; and I already know what you are capable of when there
is a rival car on the road. No, Henry: there are things it is
not good for you to know; and this was one of them. However,
cheer up: we are going to have a day after your own heart. The
American is to take Mr Robinson and his sister and Miss
Whitefield. We are to take Miss Rhoda.
THE CHAUFFEUR [consoled and musing on another matter] Thats Miss
Whitefield's sister, isnt it?
TANNER. Yes.
THE CHAUFFEUR. And Miss Whitefield herself is goin in the other car?
Not with you?
TANNER. Why the devil should she come with me? Mr Robinson will be
in the other car. [The Chauffeur looks at Tanner with cool
incredulity, and turns to the car, whistling a popular air
softly to himself. Tanner, a little annoyed, is about to pursue
the subject when he hears the footsteps of Octavius on the
gravel. Octavius is coming from the house, dressed for motoring,
but without his overcoat]. Weve lost the race, thank heaven:
heres Mr Robinson. Well, Tavy, is the steam car a success?
OCTAVIUS. I think so. We came from Hyde Park Corner here in
seventeen minutes. [The Chauffeur, furious, kicks the car with
a groan of vexation]. How long were you?
TANNER. Oh, about three quarters of an hour or so.
THE CHAUFFEUR [remonstrating] Now, now, Mr Tanner, come now! We
could ha done it easy under fifteen.
TANNER. By the way, let me introduce you. Mr Octavius Robinson: Mr
Enry Straker.
STRAKER. Pleased to meet you, sir. Mr Tanner is gittin at you with
is Enry Straker, you know. You call it Henery. But I dont mind,
bless you!
TANNER. You think it's simply bad taste in me to chaff him, Tavy.
But youre wrong. This man takes more trouble to drop his aitches
than ever his father did to pick them up. It's a mark of caste
to him. I have never met anybody more swollen with the pride of
class than Enry is.
STRAKER. Easy, easy! A little moderation, Mr Tanner.
TANNER. A little moderation, Tavy, you observe. You would tell me to
draw it mild. But this chap has been educated. Whats more, he
knows that we havnt. What was that Board School of yours,
Straker?
STRAKER. Sherbrooke Road.
TANNER. Sherbrooke Road! Would any of us say Rugby! Harrow! Eton! in
that tone of intellectual snobbery? Sherbrooke Road is a place
where boys learn something: Eton is a boy farm where we are sent
because we are nuisances at home, and because in after life,
whenever a Duke is mentioned, we can claim him as an old
school-fellow.
STRAKER. You dont know nothing about it, Mr Tanner. It's not the
Board School that does it: it's the Polytechnic.
TANNER. His university, Octavius. Not Oxford, Cambridge, Durham,
Dublin, or Glasgow. Not even those Non-conformist holes in
Wales. No, Tavy. Regent Street! Chelsea! the Borough!- I dont
know half their confounded names: these are his universities,
not mere shops for selling class limitations like ours. You
despise Oxford, Enry, dont you?
STRAKER. No, I dont. Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should
think, for people that like that sort of place. They teach you
to be a gentleman there. In the Polytechnic they teach you to
be an engineer or such like. See?
TANNER. Sarcasm, Tavy, sarcasm! Oh, if you could only see into
Enry's soul, the depth of his contempt for a gentleman, the
arrogance of his pride in being an engineer, would appal you.
He positively likes the car to break down because it brings out
my gentlemanly helplessness and his workmanlike skill and
resource.
STRAKER. Never you mind him, Mr Robinson. He likes to talk. We know
him, dont we?
OCTAVIUS [earnestly] But theres a great truth at the bottom of what
he says. I believe most intensely in the dignity of labor.
STRAKER [unimpressed] Thats because you never done any, Mr Robinson.
My business is to do away with labor. Youll get more out of me
and a machine than you will out of twenty laborers, and not so
much to drink either.
TANNER. For heaven's sake, Tavy, dont start him on political
economy. He knows all about it; and we dont. Youre only a poetic
Socialist, Tavy: he's a scientific one.
STRAKER [unperturbed] Yes. Well, this conversation is very improvin;
but Ive got to look after the car; and you two want to talk
about your ladies. *I* know. [He pretends to busy himself about
the car, but presently saunters off to indulge in a cigaret].
TANNER. Thats a very momentous social phenomenon.
OCTAVIUS. What is?
TANNER. Straker is. Here have we literary and cultured persons been
for years setting up a cry of the New Woman whenever some
unusually old fashioned female came along, and never noticing
the advent of the New Man. Straker's the New Man.
OCTAVIUS. I see nothing new about him, except your way of chaffing
him. But I dont want to talk about him just now. I want to speak
to you about Ann.
TANNER. Straker knew even that. He learnt it at the Polytechnic,
probably. Well, what about Ann? Have you proposed to her?
OCTAVIUS [self-reproachfully] I was brute enough to do so last
night.
TANNER. Brute enough! What do you mean?
OCTAVIUS [dithyrambically] Jack: we men are all coarse: we never
understand how exquisite a woman's sensibilities are. How could
I have done such a thing!
TANNER. Done what, you maudlin idiot?
OCTAVIUS. Yes, I am an idiot. Jack: if you had heard her voice! if
you had seen her tears! I have lain awake all night thinking of
them. If she had reproached me, I could have borne it better.
TANNER. Tears! thats dangerous. What did she say?
OCTAVIUS. She asked me how she could think of anything now but her
dear father. She stifled a sob- [he breaks down].
TANNER [patting him on the back] Bear it like a man, Tavy, even if
you feel it like an ass. It's the old game: she's not tired of
playing with you yet.
OCTAVIUS [impatiently] Oh, dont be a fool, Jack. Do you suppose this
eternal shallow cynicism of yours has any real bearing on a
nature like hers?
TANNER. Hm! Did she say anything else?
OCTAVIUS. Yes; and that is why I expose myself and her to your
ridicule by telling you what passed.
TANNER [remorsefully] No, dear Tavy, not ridicule, on my honor!
However, no matter. Go on.
OCTAVIUS. Her sense of duty is so devout, so perfect, so-
TANNER. Yes: I know. Go on.
OCTAVIUS. You see, under this new arrangement, you and Ramsden are
her guardians; and she considers that all her duty to her father
is now transferred to you. She said she thought I ought to have
spoken to you both in the first instance. Of course she is
right; but somehow it seems rather absurd that I am to come to
you and formally ask to be received as a suitor for your ward's
hand.
TANNER. I am glad that love has not totally extinguished your sense
of humor, Tavy.
OCTAVIUS. That answer wont satisfy her.
TANNER. My official answer is, obviously, Bless you, my children:
may you be happy!
OCTAVIUS. I wish you would stop playing the fool about this. If it
is not serious to you, it is to me, and to her.
TANNER. You know very well that she is as free to choose as you are.
OCTAVIUS. She does not think so.
TANNER. Oh, doesnt she! just! However, say what you want me to do?
OCTAVIUS. I want you to tell her sincerely and earnestly what you
think about me. I want you to tell her that you can trust her to
me- that is, if you feel you can.
TANNER. I have no doubt that I can trust her to you. What worries me
is the idea of trusting you to her. Have you read Maeterlinck's
book about the bee?
OCTAVIUS [keeping his temper with difficulty] I am not discussing
literature at present.
TANNER. Be just a little patient with me. *I* am not discussing
literature: the book about the bee is natural history. It's an
awful lesson to mankind. You think that you are Ann's suitor;
that you are the pursuer and she the pursued; that it is your
part to woo, to persuade, to prevail, to overcome. Fool: it is
you who are the pursued, the marked down quarry, the destined
prey. You need not sit looking longingly at the bait through
the wires of the trap: the door is open, and will remain so
until it shuts behind you for ever.
OCTAVIUS. I wish I could believe that, vilely as you put it.
TANNER. Why, man, what other work has she in life but to get a
husband? It is a woman's business to get married as soon as
possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can. You
have your poems and your tragedies to work at: Ann has nothing.
OCTAVIUS. I cannot write without inspiration. And nobody can give me
that except Ann.
TANNER. Well, hadnt you better get it from her at a safe distance?
Petrarch didnt see half as much of Laura, nor Dante of Beatrice,
as you see of Ann now; and yet they wrote first-rate poetry- at
least so I'm told. They never exposed their idolatry to the test
of domestic familiarity; and it lasted them to their graves.
Marry Ann; and at the end of a week youll find no more
inspiration in her than in a plate of muffins.
OCTAVIUS. You think I shall tire of her!
TANNER. Not at all: you dont get tired of muffins. But you dont find
inspiration in them; and you wont in her when she ceases to be a
poet's dream and becomes a solid eleven stone wife. Youll be
forced to dream about somebody else; and then there will be a
row.
OCTAVIUS. This sort of talk is no use, Jack. You dont understand.
You have never been in love.
TANNER. I! I have never been out of it. Why, I am in love even with
Ann. But I am neither the slave of love nor its dupe. Go to the
bee, thou poet: consider her ways and be wise. By Heaven, Tavy,
if women could do without our work, and we ate their children's
bread instead of making it, they would kill us as the spider
kills her mate or as the bees kill the drone. And they would be
right if we were good for nothing but love.
OCTAVIUS. Ah, if we were only good enough for Love! There is nothing
like Love: there is nothing else but Love: without it the world
would be a dream of sordid horror.
TANNER. And this- this is the man who asks me to give him the hand
of my ward! Tavy: I believe we were changed in our cradles, and
that you are the real descendant of Don Juan.
OCTAVIUS. I beg you not to say anything like that to Ann.
TANNER. Dont be afraid. She has marked you for her own; and nothing
will stop her now. You are doomed. [Straker comes back with a
newspaper]. Here comes the New Man, demoralizing himself with a
halfpenny paper as usual.
STRAKER. Now would you believe it, Mr Robinson, when we're out
motoring we take in two papers: the Times for him, the Leader or
the Echo for me. And do you think I ever see my paper? Not much.
He grabs the Leader and leaves me to stodge myself with his
Times.
OCTAVIUS. Are there no winners in the Times?
TANNER. Enry dont old with bettin, Tavy. Motor records are his
weakness. Whats the latest?
STRAKER. Paris to Biskra at forty mile an hour average, not countin
the Mediterranean.
TANNER. How many killed?
STRAKER. Two silly sheep. What does it matter? Sheep dont cost such
a lot: they were glad to ave the price without the trouble o
sellin em to the butcher. All the same, d'y'see, therell be a
clamor agin it presently; and then the French Government'll stop
it; an our chance'll be gone, see? Thats what makes me fairly
mad: Mr Tanner wont do a good run while he can.
TANNER. Tavy: do you remember my uncle James?
OCTAVIUS. Yes. Why?
TANNER. Uncle James had a first rate cook: he couldnt digest
anything except what she cooked. Well, the poor man was shy and
hated society. But his cook was proud of her skill, and wanted
to serve up dinners to princes and ambassadors. To prevent her
from leaving him, that poor old man had to give a big dinner
twice a month, and suffer agonies of awkwardness. Now here am I;
and here is this chap Enry Straker, the New Man. I loathe
travelling; but I rather like Enry. He cares for nothing but
tearing along in a leather coat and goggles, with two inches of
dust all over him, at sixty miles an hour and the risk of his
life and mine. Except, of course, when he is lying on his back
in the mud under the machine trying to find out where it has
given way. Well, if I dont give him a thousand mile run at least
once a fortnight I shall lose him. He will give me the sack and
go to some American millionaire; and I shall have to put up with
a nice respectful groom-gardener-amateur, who will touch his hat
and know his place. I am Enry's slave, just as Uncle James was
his cook's slave.
STRAKER [exasperated] Garn! I wish I had a car that would go as fast
as you can talk, Mr Tanner. What I say is that you lose money by
a motor car unless you keep it workin. Might as well ave a pram
and a nussmaid to wheel you in it as that car and me if you dont
git the last inch out of us both.
TANNER [soothingly] All right, Henry, all right. We'll go out for
half an hour presently.
STRAKER [in disgust] Arf an ahr! [He returns to his machine; seats
himself in it; and turns up a fresh page of his paper in search
of more news].
OCTAVIUS. Oh, that reminds me. I have a note for you from Rhoda. [He
gives Tanner a note].
TANNER [opening it] I rather think Rhoda is heading for a row with
Ann. As a rule there is only one person an English girl hates
more than she hates her eldest sister; and thats her mother. But
Rhoda positively prefers her mother to Ann. She- [indignantly]
Oh, I say!
OCTAVIUS. Whats the matter?
TANNER. Rhoda was to have come with me for a ride in the motor car.
She says Ann has forbidden her to go out with me.
Straker suddenly begins whistling his favorite air with remarkable
deliberation. Surprised by this burst of larklike melody, and jarred
by a sardonic note in its cheerfulness, they turn and look inquiringly
at him. But he is busy with his paper; and nothing comes of their
movement.
OCTAVIUS [recovering himself] Does she give any reason?
TANNER. Reason! An insult is not a reason. Ann forbids her to be
alone with me on any occasion. Says I am not a fit person for a
young girl to be with. What do you think of your paragon now?
OCTAVIUS. You must remember that she has a very heavy responsibility
now that her father is dead. Mrs Whitefield is too weak to
control Rhoda.
TANNER [staring at him] In short, you agree with Ann.
OCTAVIUS. No; but I think I understand her. You must admit that your
views are hardly suited for the formation of a young girl's mind
and character.
TANNER. I admit nothing of the sort. I admit that the formation of a
young lady's mind and character usually consists in telling her
lies; but I object to the particular lie that I am in the habit
of abusing the confidence of girls.
OCTAVIUS. Ann doesnt say that, Jack.
TANNER. What else does she mean?
STRAKER [catching sight of Ann coming from the house] Miss
Whitefield, gentlemen. [He dismounts and strolls away down the
avenue with the air of a man who knows he is no longer wanted].
ANN [coming between Octavius and Tanner] Good morning, Jack. I have
come to tell you that poor Rhoda has got one of her headaches
and cannot go out with you today in the car. It is a cruel
disappointment to her, poor child!
TANNER. What do you say now, Tavy?
OCTAVIUS. Surely you cannot misunderstand, Jack. Ann is shewing you
the kindest consideration, even at the cost of deceiving you.
ANN. What do you mean?
TANNER. Would you like to cure Rhoda's headache, Ann?
ANN. Of course.
TANNER. Then tell her what you said just now; and add that you
arrived about two minutes after I had received her letter and
read it!
ANN. Rhoda has written to you!
TANNER. With full particulars.
OCTAVIUS. Never mind him, Ann. You were right- quite right. Ann was
only doing her duty, Jack; and you know it. Doing it in the
kindest way, too.
ANN [going to Octavius] How kind you are, Tavy! How helpful! How
well you understand!
Octavius beams.
TANNER. Ay: tighten the coils. You love her, Tavy, dont you?
OCTAVIUS. She knows I do.
ANN. Hush. For shame, Tavy!
TANNER. Oh, I give you leave. I am your guardian; and I commit you
to Tavy's care for the next hour. I am off for a turn in the
car.
ANN. No, Jack. I must speak to you about Rhoda. Ricky: will you go
back to the house and entertain your American friend. He's
rather on Mamma's hands so early in the morning. She wants to
finish her housekeeping.
OCTAVIUS. I fly, dearest Ann [he kisses her hand].
ANN [tenderly] Ricky Ticky Tavy!
He looks at her with an eloquent blush, and runs off.
TANNER [bluntly] Now look here, Ann. This time youve landed
yourself; and if Tavy were not in love with you past all
salvation he'd have found out what an incorrigible liar you are.
ANN. You misunderstand, Jack. I didnt dare tell Tavy the truth.
TANNER. No: your daring is generally in the opposite direction. What
the devil do you mean by telling Rhoda that I am too vicious to
associate with her? How can I ever have any human or decent
relations with her again, now that you have poisoned her mind in
that abominable way?
ANN. I know you are incapable of behaving badly-
TANNER. Then why did you lie to her?
ANN. I had to.
TANNER. Had to!
ANN. Mother made me.
TANNER [his eye flashing] Ha! I might have known it. The mother!
Always the mother!
ANN. It was that dreadful book of yours. You know how timid mother
is. All timid women are conventional: we must be conventional,
Jack, or we are so cruelly, so vilely misunderstood. Even you,
who are a man, cannot say what you think without being
misunderstood and vilified- yes: I admit it: I have had to
vilify you. Do you want to have poor Rhoda misunderstood and
vilified in the same way? Would it be right for mother to let
her expose herself to such treatment before she is old enough
to judge for herself?
TANNER. In short, the way to avoid misunderstanding is for everybody
to lie and slander and insinuate and pretend as hard as they
can. That is what obeying your mother comes to.
ANN. I love my mother, Jack.
TANNER [working himself up into a sociological rage] Is that any
reason why you are not to call your soul your own? Oh, I protest
against this vile abjection of youth to age! Look at fashionable
society as you know it. What does it pretend to be? An exquisite
dance of nymphs. What is it? A horrible procession of wretched
girls, each in the claws of a cynical, cunning, avaricious,
disillusioned, ignorantly experienced, foul-minded old woman
whom she calls mother, and whose duty it is to corrupt her mind
and sell her to the highest bidder. Why do these unhappy slaves
marry anybody, however old and vile, sooner than not marry at
all? Because marriage is their only means of escape from these
decrepit fiends who hide their selfish ambitions, their jealous
hatreds of the young rivals who have supplanted them, under the
mask of maternal duty and family affection. Such things are
abominable: the voice of nature proclaims for the daughter a
father's care and for the son a mother's. The law for father and
son and mother and daughter is not the law of love: it is the
law of revolution, of emancipation, of final supersession of the
old and worn-out by the young and capable. I tell you, the first
duty of manhood and womanhood is a Declaration of Independence:
the man who pleads his father's authority is no man: the woman
who pleads her mother's authority is unfit to bear citizens to a
free people.
ANN [watching him with quiet curiosity] I suppose you will go in
seriously for politics some day, Jack.
TANNER [heavily let down] Eh? What? Wh-? [Collecting his scattered
wits] What has that got to do with what I have been saying?
ANN. You talk so well.
TANNER. Talk! Talk! It means nothing to you but talk. Well, go back
to your mother, and help her to poison Rhoda's imagination as
she has poisoned yours. It is the tame elephants who enjoy
capturing the wild ones.
ANN. I am getting on. Yesterday I was a boa constrictor: today I am
an elephant.
TANNER. Yes. So pack your trunk and begone: I have no more to say to
you.
ANN. You are so utterly unreasonable and impracticable. What can I
do?
TANNER. Do! Break your chains. Go your way according to your own
conscience and not according to your mother's. Get your mind
clean and vigorous; and learn to enjoy a fast ride in a motor
car instead of seeing nothing in it but an excuse for a
detestable intrigue. Come with me to Marseilles and across to
Algiers and to Biskra, at sixty miles an hour. Come right down
to the Cape if you like. That will be a Declaration of
Independence with a vengeance. You can write a book about it
afterwards. That will finish your mother and make a woman of
you.
ANN [thoughtfully] I dont think there would be any harm in that,
Jack. You are my guardian: you stand in my father's place, by
his own wish. Nobody could say a word against our travelling
together. It would be delightful: thank you a thousand times,
Jack. I'll come.
TANNER [aghast] Youll come!!!
ANN. Of course.
TANNER. But- [he stops, utterly appalled; then resumes feebly] No:
look here, Ann: if theres no harm in it theres no point in doing
it.
ANN. How absurd you are! You dont want to compromise me, do you?
TANNER. Yes: thats the whole sense of my proposal.
ANN. You are talking the greatest nonsense; and you know it. You
would never do anything to hurt me.
TANNER. Well, if you dont want to be compromised, dont come.
ANN [with simple earnestness] Yes, I will come, Jack, since you wish
it. You are my guardian; and I think we ought to see more of one
another and come to know one another better. [Gratefully] It's
very thoughtful and very kind of you, Jack, to offer me this
lovely holiday, especially after what I said about Rhoda. You
really are good- much better than you think. When do we start?
TANNER. But-
The conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Mrs Whitefield
from the house. She is accompanied by the American gentleman, and
followed by Ramsden and Octavius.
Hector Malone is an Eastern American; but he is not at all ashamed
of his nationality. This makes English people of fashion think well of
him, as of a young fellow who is manly enough to confess to an obvious
disadvantage without any attempt to conceal or extenuate it. They feel
that he ought not to be made to suffer for what is clearly not his
fault, and make a point of being specially kind to him. His chivalrous
manners to women, and his elevated moral sentiments, being both
gratuitous and unusual, strike them as perhaps a little unfortunate;
and though they find his vein of easy humor rather amusing when it has
ceased to puzzle them (as it does at first), they have had to make him
understand that he really must not tell anecdotes unless they are
strictly personal and scandalous, and also that oratory is an
accomplishment which belongs to a cruder stage of civilization than
that in which his migration has landed him. On these points Hector
is not quite convinced: he still thinks that the British are apt to
make merits of their stupidities, and to represent their various
incapacities as points of good breeding. English life seems to him
to suffer from a lack of edifying rhetoric (which he calls moral
tone); English behavior to shew a want of respect for womanhood;
English pronunciation to fail very vulgarly in tackling such words
as world, girl, bird, etc.; English society to be plain spoken to an
extent which stretches occasionally to intolerable coarseness; and
English intercourse to need enlivening by games and stories and
other pastimes; so he does not feel called upon to acquire these
defects after taking great pains to cultivate himself in a first
rate manner before venturing across the Atlantic. To this culture he
finds English people either totally indifferent, as they very commonly
are to all culture, or else politely evasive, the truth being that
Hector's culture is nothing but a state of saturation with our
literary exports of thirty years ago, reimported by him to be unpacked
at a moment's notice and hurled at the head of English literature,
science, and art, at every conversational opportunity. The dismay
set up by these sallies encourages him in his belief that he is
helping to educate England. When he finds people chattering harmlessly
about Anatole France and Nietzsche, he devastates them with Matthew
Arnold, the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, and even Macaulay; and as
he is devoutly religious at bottom, he first leads the unwary, by
humorous irreverence, to leave popular theology out of account in
discussing moral questions with him, and then scatters them in
confusion by demanding whether the carrying out of his ideals of
conduct was not the manifest object of God Almighty in creating honest
men and pure women. The engaging freshness of his personality and
the dumbfoundering staleness of his culture make it extremely
difficult to decide whether he is worth knowing; for whilst his
company is undeniably pleasant and enlivening, there is intellectually
nothing new to be got out of him, especially as he despises
politics, and is careful not to talk commercial shop, in which
department he is probably much in advance of his English capitalist
friends. He gets on best with romantic Christians of the amoristic
sect: hence the friendship which has sprung up between him and
Octavius.
In appearance Hector is a neatly built young man of twenty-four,
with a short, smartly trimmed black beard, clear, well shaped eyes,
and an ingratiating vivacity of expression. He is, from the
fashionable point of view, faultlessly dressed. As he comes along
the drive from the house with Mrs Whitefield he is sedulously making
himself agreeable and entertaining, and thereby placing on her slender
wit a burden it is unable to hear. An Englishman would let her
alone, accepting boredom and indifference as their common lot; and the
poor lady wants to be either let alone or let prattle about the things
that interest her.
Ramsden strolls over to inspect the motor car. Octavius joins
Hector.
ANN [pouncing on her mother joyously] Oh, Mamma, what do you think!
Jack is going to take me to Nice in his motor car. Isnt it
lovely? I am the happiest person in London.
TANNER [desperately] Mrs Whitefield objects. I am sure she objects.
Doesnt she, Ramsden?
RAMSDEN. I should think it very likely indeed.
ANN. You dont object, do you, Mother?
MRS WHITEFIELD. *I* object! Why should I? I think it will do you
good, Ann. [Trotting over to Tanner] I meant to ask you to take
Rhoda out for a run occasionally: she is too much in the house;
but it will do when you come back.
TANNER. Abyss beneath abyss of perfidy!
ANN [hastily, to distract attention from this outburst] Oh, I
forgot: you have not met Mr Malone. Mr Tanner, my guardian: Mr
Hector Malone.
HECTOR. Pleased to meet you, Mr Tanner. I should like to suggest an
extension of the travelling party to Nice, if I may.
ANN. Oh, we're all coming. Thats understood, isnt it?
HECTOR. I also am the mawdest possessor of a motor car. If Miss
Rawbnsn will allow me the privilege of taking her, my car is at
her service.
OCTAVIUS. Violet!
General constraint.
ANN [subduedly] Come, mother: we must leave them to talk over the
arrangements. I must see to my travelling kit.
Mrs Whitefield looks bewildered; but Ann draws her discreetly
away; and they disappear round the corner towards the house.
HECTOR. I think I may go so far as to say that I can depend on Miss
Rawbnsn's consent.
Continued embarrassment.
OCTAVIUS. I'm afraid we must leave Violet behind. There are
circumstances which make it impossible for her to come on such
an expedition.
HECTOR [amused and not at all convinced] Too American, eh? Must the
young lady have a chaperone?
OCTAVIUS. It's not that, Malone- at least not altogether.
HECTOR. Indeed! May I ask what other objection applies?
TANNER [impatiently] Oh, tell him, tell him. We shall never be able
to keep the secret unless everybody knows what it is. Mr Malone:
if you go to Nice with Violet, you go with another man's wife.
She is married.
HECTOR [thunderstruck] You dont tell me so!
TANNER. We do. In confidence.
RAMSDEN [with an air of importance, lest Malone should suspect a
misalliance] Her marriage has not yet been made known: she
desires that it shall not be mentioned for the present.
HECTOR. I shall respect the lady's wishes. Would it be indiscreet to
ask who her husband is, in case I should have an opportunity of
cawnsulting him about this trip?
TANNER. We dont know who he is.
HECTOR [retiring into his shell in a very marked manner] In that
case, I have no more to say.
They become more embarrassed than ever.
OCTAVIUS. You must think this very strange.
HECTOR. A little singular. Pardn mee for saying so.
RAMSDEN [half apologetic, half huffy] The young lady was married
secretly; and her husband has forbidden her, it seems, to
declare his name. It is only right to tell you, since you are
interested in Miss- er- in Violet.
OCTAVIUS [sympathetically] I hope this is not a disappointment to
you.
HECTOR [softened, coming out of his shell again] Well: it is a blow.
I can hardly understand how a man can leave his wife in such a
position. Surely it's not custoMary. It's not manly. It's not
considerate.
OCTAVIUS. We feel that, as you may imagine, pretty deeply.
RAMSDEN [testily] It is some young fool who has not enough
experience to know what mystifications of this kind lead to.
HECTOR [with strong symptoms of moral repugnance] I hope so. A man
need be very young and pretty foolish too to be excused for such
conduct. You take a very lenient view, Mr Ramsden. Too lenient
to my mind. Surely marriage should ennoble a man.
TANNER [sardonically] Ha!
HECTOR. Am I to gather from that cacchination that you dont agree
with me, Mr Tanner?
TANNER [drily] Get married and try. You may find it delightful for a
while: you certainly wont find it ennobling. The greatest common
measure of a man and a woman is not necessarily greater than the
man's single measure.
HECTOR. Well, we think in America that a woman's morl number is
higher than a man's, and that the purer nature of a woman lifts
a man right out of himself, and makes him better than he was.
OCTAVIUS [with conviction] So it does.
TANNER. No wonder American women prefer to live in Europe! It's more
comfortable than standing all their lives on an altar to be
worshipped. Anyhow, Violet's husband has not been ennobled. So
whats to be done?
HECTOR [shaking his head] I cant dismiss that man's cawnduct as
lightly as you do, Mr Tanner. However, I'll say no more. Whoever
he is, he's Miss Rawbnsn's husband; and I should be glad for her
sake to think better of him.
OCTAVIUS [touched; for he divines a secret sorrow] I'm very sorry,
Malone. Very sorry.
HECTOR [gratefully] Youre a good fellow, Rawbnsn. Thank you.
TANNER. Talk about something else. Violet's coming from the house.
HECTOR. I should esteem it a very great favor, gentlemen, if you
would take the opportunity to let me have a few words with the
lady alone. I shall have to cry off this trip; and it's rather a
dullicate-
RAMSDEN [glad to escape] Say no more. Come, Tanner. Come, Tavy. [He
strolls away into the park with Octavius and Tanner, past the
motor car].
Violet comes down the avenue to Hector.
VIOLET. Are they looking?
HECTOR. No.
She kisses him.
VIOLET. Have you been telling lies for my sake?
HECTOR. Lying! Lying hardly describes it. I overdo it. I get carried
away in an ecstasy of mendacity. Violet: I wish youd let me own
up.
VIOLET [instantly becoming serious and resolute] No, no, Hector: you
promised me not to.
HECTOR. I'll keep my prawmis until you release me from it. But I
feel mean, lying to those men, and denying my wife. Just
dastardly.
VIOLET. I wish your father were not so unreasonable.
HECTOR. He's not unreasonable. He's right from his point of view.
He has a prejudice against the English middle class.
VIOLET. It's too ridiculous. You know how I dislike saying such
things to you, Hector; but if I were to- oh, well, no matter.
HECTOR. I know. If you were to marry the son of an English
manufacturer of awffice furniture, your friends would consider
it a misalliance. And here's my silly old dad, who is the
biggest awffice furniture man in the world, would shew me the
door for marrying the most perfect lady in England merely
because she has no handle to her name. Of course it's just
absurd. But I tell you, Violet, I dont like deceiving him. I
feel as if I was stealing his money. Why wont you let me own up?
VIOLET. We cant afford it. You can be as romantic as you please
about love, Hector; but you mustnt be romantic about money.
HECTOR [divided between his uxoriousness and his habitual elevation
of moral sentiment] Thats very English. [Appealing to her
impulsively] Violet: Dad's bound to find us out someday.
VIOLET. Oh yes, later on of course. But dont lets go over this
everytime we meet, dear. You promised-
HECTOR. All right, all right, I-
VIOLET [not to be silenced] It is I and not you who suffer by this
concealment; and as to facing a struggle and poverty and all
that sort of thing I simply will not do it. It's too silly.
HECTOR. You shall not. I'll sort of borrow the money from my dad
until I get on my own feet; and then I can own up and pay up at
the same time.
VIOLET [alarmed and indignant] Do you mean to work? Do you want to
spoil our marriage?
HECTOR. Well, I dont mean to let marriage spoil my character. Your
friend Mr Tanner has got the laugh on me a bit already about
that; and-
VIOLET. The beast! I hate Jack Tanner.
HECTOR [magnanimously] Oh, hee's all right: he only needs the love
of a good woman to ennoble him. Besides, he's proposed a
motoring trip to Nice; and I'm going to take you.
VIOLET. How jolly!
HECTOR. Yes; but how are we going to manage? You see, theyve warned
me off going with you, so to speak. Theyve told me in cawnfidnce
that youre married. Thats just the most overwhelming cawnfidnce
Ive ever been honored with.
Tanner returns with Straker, who goes to his car.
TANNER. Your car is a great success, Mr Malone. Your engineer is
showing it off to Mr Ramsden.
HECTOR [eagerly- forgetting himself] Lets come, Vi.
VIOLET [coldly, warning him with her eyes] I beg your pardon, Mr
Malone: I did not quite catch-
HECTOR [recollecting himself] I ask to be allowed the pleasure of
shewing you my little American steam car, Miss Rawbnsn.
VIOLET. I shall be very pleased. [They go off together down the
avenue].
TANNER. About this trip, Straker.
STRAKER [preoccupied with the car] Yes?
TANNER. Miss Whitefield is supposed to be coming with me.
STRAKER. So I gather.
TANNER. Mr Robinson is to be one of the party.
STRAKER. Yes.
TANNER. Well, if you can manage so as to be a good deal occupied
with me, and leave Mr Robinson a good deal occupied with Miss
Whitefield, he will be deeply grateful to you.
STRAKER [looking round at him] Evidently.
TANNER. "Evidently"! Your grandfather would have simply winked.
STRAKER. My grandfather would have touched his at.
TANNER. And I should have given your good nice respectful
grandfather a sovereign.
STRAKER. Five shillings, more likely. [He leaves the car and
approaches Tanner]. What about the lady's views?
TANNER. She is just as willing to be left to Mr Robinson as Mr
Robinson is to be left to her. [Straker looks at his principal
with cool scepticism; then turns to the car whistling his
favorite air]. Stop that aggravating noise. What do you mean by
it? [Straker calmly resumes the melody and finishes it. Tanner
politely hears it out before he again addresses Straker, this
time with elaborate seriousness]. Enry: I have ever been a warm
advocate of the spread of music among the masses; but I object
to your obliging the company whenever Miss Whitefield's name is
mentioned. You did it this morning, too.
STRAKER [obstinately] It's not a bit o use. Mr Robinson may as well
give it up first as last.
TANNER. Why?
STRAKER. Garn! You know why. Course it's not my business; but you
neednt start kiddin me about it.
TANNER. I am not kidding. I dont know why.
STRAKER [cheerfully sulky] Oh, very well. All right. It aint my
business.
TANNER [impressively] I trust, Enry, that, as between employer and
engineer, I shall always know how to keep my proper distance,
and not intrude my private affairs on you. Even our business
arrangements are subject to the approval of your Trade Union.
But dont abuse your advantages. Let me remind you that Voltaire
said that what was too silly to be said could be sung.
STRAKER. It wasnt Voltaire: it was Bow Mar Shay.
TANNER. I stand corrected: Beaumarchais of course. Now you seem to
think that what is too delicate to be said can be whistled.
Unfortunately your whistling, though melodious, is
unintelligible. Come! theres nobody listening: neither my
genteel relatives nor the secretary of your confounded Union. As
man to man, Enry, why do you think that my friend has no chance
with Miss Whitefield?
STRAKER. Cause she's arter summun else.
TANNER. Bosh! who else?
STRAKER. You.
TANNER. Me!!!
STRAKER. Mean to tell me you didnt know? Oh, come, Mr Tanner!
TANNER [in fierce earnest] Are you playing the fool, or do you mean
it?
STRAKER [with a flash of temper] I'm not playin no fool. [More
coolly] Why, it's as plain as the nose on your face. If you aint
spotted that, you dont know much about these sort of things.
[Serene again] Excuse me, you know, Mr Tanner; but you asked me
as man to man; and I told you as man to man.
TANNER [wildly appealing to the heavens] Then I- *I* am the bee, the
spider, the marked down victim, the destined prey.
STRAKER. I dunno about the bee and the spider. But the marked down
victim, thats what you are and no mistake; and a jolly good job
for you, too, I should say.
TANNER [momentously] Henry Straker: the golden moment of your life
has arrived.
STRAKER. What d'y'mean?
TANNER. That record to Biskra.
STRAKER [eagerly] Yes?
TANNER. Break it.
STRAKER [rising to the height of his destiny] D'y'mean it?
TANNER. I do.
STRAKER. When?
TANNER. Now. Is that machine ready to start?
STRAKER [quailing] But you cant-
TANNER [cutting him short by getting into the car] Off we go. First
to the bank for money; then to my rooms for my kit; then to your
rooms for your kit; then break the record from London to Dover
or Folkestone; then across the channel and away like mad to
Marseilles, Gibraltar, Genoa, any port from which we can sail to
a Mahometan country where men are protected from women.
STRAKER. Garn! youre kiddin.
TANNER [resolutely] Stay behind then. If you wont come I'll do it
alone. [He starts the motor].
STRAKER [running after him] Here! Mister! arf a mo! steady on! [He
scrambles in as the car plunges forward].
ACT THREE
Evening in the Sierra Nevada. Rolling slopes of brown with olive
trees instead of apple trees in the cultivated patches, and occasional
prickly pears instead of gorse and bracken in the wilds. Higher up,
tall stone peaks and precipices, all handsome and distinguished. No
wild nature here: rather a most aristocratic mountain landscape made
by a fastidious artist-creator. No vulgar profusion of vegetation:
even a touch of aridity in the frequent patches of stones: Spanish
magnificence and Spanish economy everywhere.
Not very far north of a spot at which the high road over one of
the passes crosses a tunnel on the railway from Malaga to Granada,
is one of the mountain amphitheatres of the Sierra. Looking at it from
the wide end of the horse-shoe, one sees, a little to the right, in
the face of the cliff, a romantic cave which is really an abandoned
quarry, and towards the left a little hill, commanding a view of the
road, which skirts the amphitheatre on the left, maintaining its
higher level on embankments and an occasional stone arch. On the hill,
watching the road, is a man who is either a Spaniard or a Scotchman.
Probably a Spaniard, since he wears the dress of a Spanish goatherd
and seems at home in the Sierra Nevada, but very like a Scotchman
for all that. In the hollow, on the slope leading to the
quarry-cave, are about a dozen men who, as they recline at their
ease round a heap of smouldering white ashes of dead leaf and
brushwood, have an air of being conscious of themselves as picturesque
scoundrels honoring the Sierra by using it as an effective pictorial
background. As a matter of artistic fact they are not picturesque; and
the mountains tolerate them as lions tolerate lice. An English
policeman or Poor Law Guardian would recognize them as a selected hand
of tramps and ablebodied paupers.
This description of them is not wholly contemptuous. Whoever has
intelligently observed the tramp, or visited the ablebodied ward of
a workhouse, will admit that our social failures are not all drunkards
and weaklings. Some of them are men who do not fit the class they were
born into. Precisely the same qualities that make the educated
gentleman an artist may make an uneducated manual laborer an
ablebodied pauper. There are men who fall helplessly into the
workhouse because they are good for nothing; but there are also men
who are there because they are strongminded enough to disregard the
social convention (obviously not a disinterested one on the part of
the ratepayer) which bids a man live by heavy and badly paid
drudgery when he has the alternative of walking into the workhouse,
announcing himself as a destitute person, and legally compelling the
Guardians to feed, clothe, and house him better than he could feed,
clothe, and house himself without great exertion. When a man who is
born a poet refuses a stool in a stockbroker's office, and starves
in a garret, spunging on a poor landlady or on his friends and
relatives sooner than work against his grain; or when a lady,
because she is a lady, will face any extremity of parasitic dependence
rather than take a situation as cook or parlormaid, we make large
allowances for them. To such allowances the ablebodied pauper, and his
nomadic variant the tramp, are equally entitled.
Further, the imaginative man, if his life is to be tolerable to
him, must have leisure to tell himself stories, and a position which
lends itself to imaginative decoration. The ranks of unskilled labor
offer no such positions. We misuse our laborers horribly; and when a
man refuses to he misused, we have no right to say that he is refusing
honest work. Let us be frank in this matter before we go on with our
play; so that we may enjoy it without hypocrisy. If we were reasoning,
far-sighted people, four fifths of us would go straight to the
Guardians for relief, and knock the whole social system to pieces with
most beneficial reconstructive results. The reason we do not do this
is because we work like bees or ants, by instinct or habit, not
reasoning about the matter at all. Therefore when a man comes along
who can and does reason, and who, applying the Kantian test to his
conduct, can truly say to us, If everybody did as I do, the world
would be compelled to reform itself industrially, and abolish
slavery and squalor, which exist only because everybody does as you
do, let us honor that man and seriously consider the advisability of
following his example. Such a man is the ablebodied, ableminded
pauper. Were he a gentleman doing his best to get a pension or a
sinecure instead of sweeping a crossing, nobody would blame him for
deciding that so long as the alternative lies between living mainly at
the expense of the community and allowing the community to live mainly
at his, it would be folly to accept what is to him personally the
greater of the two evils.
We may therefore contemplate the tramps of the Sierra without
prejudice, admitting cheerfully that our objects- briefly, to be
gentlemen of fortune- are much the same as theirs, and the
difference in our position and methods merely accidental. One or two
of them, perhaps, it would be wiser to kill without malice in a
friendly and frank manner; for there are bipeds, just as there are
quadrupeds, who are too dangerous to be left unchained and
unmuzzled; and these cannot fairly expect to have other men's lives
wasted in the work of watching them. But as society has not the
courage to kill them, and, when it catches them, simply wreaks on them
some superstitious expiatory rites of torture and degradation, and
then lets them loose with heightened qualifications for mischief, it
is just as well that they are at large in the Sierra, and in the hands
of a chief who looks as if he might possibly, on provocation, order
them to be shot.
This chief, seated in the centre of the group on a squared block
of stone from the quarry, is a tall strong man, with a striking
cockatoo nose, glossy black hair, pointed beard, upturned moustache,
and a Mephistophelean affectation which is fairly imposing, perhaps
because the scenery admits of a larger swagger than Piccadilly,
perhaps because of a certain sentimentality in the man which gives him
that touch of grace which alone can excuse deliberate picturesqueness.
His eyes and mouth are by no means rascally; he has a fine voice and a
ready wit; and whether he is really the strongest man in the patty
or not, he looks it. He is certainly the best fed, the best dressed,
and the best trained. The fact that he speaks English is not
unexpected, in spite of the Spanish landscape; for with the
exception of one man who might be guessed as a bullfighter ruined by
drink, and one unmistakeable Frenchman, they are all cockney or
American; therefore, in a land of cloaks and sombreros, they mostly
wear seedy overcoats, woollen mufflers, hard hemispherical hats, and
dirty brown gloves. Only a very few dress after their leader, whose
broad sombrero with a cock's feather in the band, and voluminous cloak
descending to his high boots, are as un-English as possible. None of
them are armed; and the ungloved ones keep their hands in their
pockets because it is their national belief that it must be
dangerously cold in the open air with the night coming on. (It is as
warm an evening as any reasonable man could desire.)
Except the bullfighting inebriate there is only one person in
the company who looks more than, say, thirty-three, He is a small
man with reddish whiskers, weak eyes, and the anxious look of a
small tradesman in difficulties. He wears the only tall hat visible:
it shines in the sunset with the sticky glow of some sixpenny patent
hat reviver, often applied and constantly tending to produce a worse
state of the original surface than the ruin it was applied to
remedy. He has a collar and cuffs of celluloid; and his brown
Chesterfield overcoat, with velvet collar, is still presentable. He is
pre-eminently the respectable man of the party, and is certainly
over forty, possibly over fifty. He is the corner man on the
leader's right, opposite three men in scarlet ties on his left. One of
these three is the Frenchman. Of the remaining two, who are both
English, one is argumentative, solemn, and obstinate; the other
rowdy and mischievous.
The chief, with a magnificent fling of the end of his cloak across
his left shoulder, rises to address them. The applause which greets
him shews that he is a favorite orator.
THE CHIEF. Friends and fellow brigands. I have a proposal to make to
this meeting. We have now spent three evenings in discussing the
question Have Anarchists or Social-Democrats the most personal
courage? We have gone into the principles of Anarchism and
Social-Democracy at great length. The cause of Anarchy has been
ably represented by our one Anarchist, who doesnt know what
Anarchism means [laughter]-
THE ANARCHIST [rising] A point of order, Mendoza-
MENDOZA [forcibly] No, by thunder: your last point of order took
half an hour. Besides, Anarchists dont believe in order.
THE ANARCHIST [mild, polite but persistent: he is, in fact, the
respectable looking elderly man in the celluloid collar and
cuffs] That is a vulgar error. I can prove-
MENDOZA. Order, order.
THE OTHERS [shouting] Order, order. Sit down. Chair! Shut up.
The Anarchist is suppressed.
MENDOZA. On the other hand we have three Social-Democrats among us.
They are not on speaking terms; and they have put before us
three distinct and incompatible views of Social-Democracy.
THE THREE MEN IN SCARLET TIES. 1. Mr Chairman, I protest. A personal
explanation. 2. It's a lie. I never said so. Be fair, Mendoza.
3. Je demande la parole. C'est absolument faux. C'est faux!
faux!! faux!!! Assas-s-s-s-sin!!!!!!
MENDOZA. Order, order.
THE OTHERS. Order, order, order! Chair!
The Social-Democrats are suppressed.
MENDOZA. Now, we tolerate all opinions here. But after all,
comrades, the vast majority of us are neither Anarchists nor
Socialists, but gentlemen and Christians.
THE MAJORITY [shouting assent] Hear, hear! So we are. Right.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [smarting under suppression] You aint no
Christian. Youre a Sheeny, you are.
MENDOZA [with crushing magnanimity] My friend: I am an exception to
all rules. It is true that I have the honor to be a Jew; and
when the Zionists need a leader to reassemble our race on its
historic soil of Palestine, Mendoza will not be the last to
volunteer [sympathetic applause- Hear, hear, etc.]. But I am not
a slave to any superstition. I have swallowed all the formulas,
even that of Socialism; though, in a sense, once a Socialist,
always a Socialist.
THE SOCIAL-DEOMCRATS. Hear, hear!
MENDOZA. But I am well aware that the ordinary man- even the
ordinary brigand, who can scarcely be called an ordinary man
[Hear, hear!]- is not a philosopher. Common sense is good enough
for him; and in our business affairs common sense is good enough
for me. Well, what is our business here in the Sierra Nevada,
chosen by the Moors as the fairest spot in Spain? Is it to
discuss abstruse questions of political economy? No: it is to
hold up motor cars and secure a more equitable distribution of
wealth.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. All made by labor, mind you.
MENDOZA [urbanely] Undoubtedly. All made by labor, and on its way to
be squandered by wealthy vagabonds in the dens of vice that
disfigure the sunny shores of the Mediterranean. We intercept
that wealth. We restore it to circulation among the class that
produced it and that chiefly needs it: the working class. We do
this at the risk of our lives and liberties, by the exercise of
the virtues of courage, endurance, foresight, and abstinence-
especially abstinence. I myself have eaten nothing but prickly
pears and broiled rabbit for three days.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [stubbornly] No more aint we.
MENDOZA [indignantly] Have I taken more than my share?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [unmoved] Why should you?
THE ANARCHIST. Why should he not? To each according to his needs:
from each according to his means.
THE FRENCHMAN [shaking his fist at the Anarchist] Fumiste!
MENDOZA [diplomatically] I agree with both of you.
THE GENUINELY ENGLISH BRIGANDS. Hear, hear! Bravo Mendoza!
MENDOZA. What I say is, let us treat one another as gentlemen, and
strive to excel in personal courage only when we take the field.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [derisively] Shikespear.
A whistle comes from the goatherd on the hill. He springs up and
points excitedly forward along the road to the north.
THE GOATHERD. Automobile! Automobile! [He rushes down the hill and
joins the rest, who all scramble to their feet].
MENDOZA [in ringing tones] To arms! Who has the gun?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [handing the rifle to Mendoza] Here.
MENDOZA. Have the nails been strewn in the road?
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Two ahnces of em.
MENDOZA. Good! [To the Frenchman] With me, Duval. If the nails fail,
puncture their tires with a bullet. [He gives the rifle to
Duval, who follows him up the hill. Mendoza produces an opera
glass. The others hurry across to the road and disappear to the
north].
MENDOZA [on the hill, using his glass] Two only, a capitalist and
his chauffeur. They look English.
DUVAL. Angliche! Aoh yess. Cochons! [Handling the rifle] Faut tirer,
n'est-ce-pas?
MENDOZA. No: the nails have gone home. Their tire is down: they
stop.
DUVAL [shouting to the others] Fondez sur eux, nom de Dieu!
MENDOZA [rebuking his excitement] Du calme, Duval: keep your hair
on. They take it quietly. Let us descend and receive them.
Mendoza descends, passing behind the fire and coming forward,
whilst Tanner and Straker, in their motoring goggles, leather coats,
and caps, are led in from the road by the brigands.
TANNER. Is this the gentleman you describe as your boss? Does he
speak English?
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. Course e daz. Y' downt suppowz we
Hinglishmen luts ahrselves be bossed by a bloomin Spenniard, do
you?
MENDOZA [with dignity] Allow me to introduce myself. Mendoza,
President of the League of the Sierra! [Posing loftily] I am a
brigand: I live by robbing the rich.
TANNER [promptly] I am a gentleman: I live by robbing the poor.
Shake hands.
THE ENGLISH SOCIAL-DEMOCRATS. Hear, hear!
General laughter and good humor. Tanner and Mendoza shake hands.
The Brigands drop into their former places.
STRAKER. Ere! where do I come in?
TANNER [introducing] My friend and chauffeur.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [suspiciously] Well, which is he? friend
or show-foor? It makes all the difference, you know.
MENDOZA [explaining] We should expect ransom for a friend. A
professional chauffeur is free of the mountains. He even takes a
trifling percentage of his principal's ransom if he will honor
us by accepting it.
STRAKER. I see. Just to encourage me to come this way again. Well,
I'll think about it.
DUVAL [impulsively rushing across to Straker] Mon frere! [He
embraces him rapturously and kisses him on both cheeks].
STRAKER [disgusted] Ere, git aht: dont be silly. Who are you, pray?
DUVAL. Duval: Social-Democrat.
STRAKER. Oh, youre a Social-Democrat, are you?
THE ANARCHIST. He means that he has sold out to the parliamentary
humbugs and the bourgeoisie. Compromise! that is his faith.
DUVAL [furiously] I understand what he say. He say Bourgeois. He say
Compromise. Jamais de la vie! Miserable menteur-
STRAKER. See here, Captain Mendoza, ah mach o this sort o thing do
you put up with here? Are we avin a pleasure trip in the
mountains, or are we at a Socialist meetin?
THE MAJORITY. Hear, hear! Shut up. Chuck it. Sit down, etc., etc.
[The Social-Democrats and the Anarchist are hustled into the
background. Straker, after superintending this proceeding with
satisfaction, places himself on Mendoza's left, Tanner being on
his right].
MENDOZA. Can we offer you anything? Broiled rabbit and prickly
pears-
TANNER. Thank you: we have dined.
MENDOZA [to his followers] Gentlemen: business is over for the day.
Go as you please until morning.
The Brigands disperse into groups lazily. Some go into the cave.
Others sit down or lie down to sleep in the open. A few produce a pack
of cards and move off towards the road; for it is now starlight; and
they know that motor cars have lamps which can be turned to account
for lighting a card party.
STRAKER [calling after them] Dont none of you go fooling with that
car, d'ye hear?
MENDOZA. No fear, Monsieur le Chauffeur. The first one we captured
cured us of that.
STRAKER [interested] What did it do?
MENDOZA. It carried three brave comrades of ours, who did not know
how to stop it, into Granada, and capsized them opposite the
police station. Since then we never touch one without sending
for the chauffeur. Shall we chat at our ease?
TANNER. By all means.
Tanner, Mendoza, and Straker sit down on the turf by the fire.
Mendoza delicately waives his presidential dignity, of which the right
to sit on the squared stone block is the appanage, by sitting on the
ground like his guests, and using the stone only as a support for
his back.
MENDOZA. It is the custom in Spain always to put off business until
tomorrow. In fact, you have arrived out of office hours.
However, if you would prefer to settle the question of ransom
at once, I am at your service.
TANNER. Tomorrow will do for me. I am rich enough to pay anything in
reason.
MENDOZA [respectfully, much struck by this admission] You are a
remarkable man, sir. Our guests usually describe themselves as
miserably poor.
TANNER. Pooh! Miserably poor people dont own motor cars.
MENDOZA. Precisely what we say to them.
TANNER. Treat us well: we shall not prove ungrateful.
STRAKER. No prickly pears and broiled rabbits, you know. Dont tell
me you cant do us a bit better than that if you like.
MENDOZA. Wine, kids, milk, cheese, and bread can be procured for
ready money.
STRAKER [graciously] Now youre talkin.
TANNER. Are you all Socialists here, may I ask?
MENDOZA [repudiating this humiliating misconception] Oh no, no, no:
nothing of the kind, I assure you. We naturally have modern
views as to the injustice of the existing distribution of
wealth: otherwise we should lose our self-respect. But nothing
that you could take exception to, except two or three faddists.
TANNER. I had no intention of suggesting anything discreditable. In
fact, I am a bit of a Socialist myself.
STRAKER [drily] Most rich men are, I notice.
MENDOZA. Quite so. It has reached us, I admit. It is in the air of
the century.
STRAKER. Socialism must be lookin up a bit if your chaps are taking
to it.
MENDOZA. That is true, sir. A movement which is confined to
philosophers and honest men can never exercise any real
political influence: there are too few of them. Until a movement
shews itself capable of spreading among brigands, it can never
hope for a political majority.
TANNER. But are your brigands any less honest than ordinary
citizens?
MENDOZA. Sir: I will be frank with you. Brigandage is abnormal.
Abnormal professions attract two classes: those who are not good
enough for ordinary bourgeois life and those who are too good
for it. We are dregs and scum, sir: the dregs very filthy, the
scum very superior.
STRAKER. Take care! some o the dregs'll hear you.
MENDOZA. It does not matter: each brigand thinks himself scum, and
likes to hear the others called dregs.
TANNER. Come! you are a wit. [Mendoza inclines his head, flattered].
May one ask you a blunt question?
MENDOZA. As blunt as you please.
TANNER. How does it pay a man of your talent to shepherd such a
flock as this on broiled rabbit and prickly pears? I have seen
men less gifted, and I'll swear less honest, supping at the
Savoy on foie gras and champagne.
MENDOZA. Pooh! they have all had their turn at the broiled rabbit,
just as I shall have my turn at the Savoy. Indeed, I have had a
turn there already- as waiter.
TANNER. A waiter! You astonish me!
MENDOZA [reflectively] Yes: I, Mendoza of the Sierra, was a waiter.
Hence, perhaps, my cosmopolitanism. [With sudden intensity]
Shall I tell you the story of my life?
STRAKER [apprehensively] If it aint too long, old chap-
TANNER [interrupting him] Tsh-sh: you are a Philistine, Henry: you
have no romance in you. [To Mendoza] You interest me extremely,
President. Never mind Henry: he can go to sleep.
MENDOZA. The woman I loved-
STRAKER. Oh, this is a love story, is it? Right you are. Go on: I
was only afraid you were going to talk about yourself.
MENDOZA. Myself! I have thrown myself away for her sake: that is why
I am here. No matter: I count the world well lost for her. She
had, I pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair I
ever saw. She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to
perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her
uncertain, incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, in a word,
enchanting.
STRAKER. A six shillin novel sort o woman, all but the cookin. Er
name was Lady Gladys Plantagenet, wasnt it?
MENDOZA. No, sir: she was not an earl's daughter. Photography,
reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with
the appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I
can honestly say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries,
clothes, titles, and all, for a smile from this woman. Yet she
was a woman of the people, a worker: otherwise- let me
reciprocate your bluntness- I should have scorned her.
TANNER. Very properly. And did she respond to your love?
MENDOZA. Should I be here if she did? She objected to marry a Jew.
TANNER. On religious grounds?
MENDOZA. No: she was a freethinker. She said that every Jew
considers in his heart that English people are dirty in their
habits.
TANNER [surprised] Dirty!
MENDOZA. It shewed her extraordinary knowledge of the world; for it
is undoubtedly true. Our elaborate sanitary code makes us unduly
contemptuous of the Gentile.
TANNER. Did you ever hear that, Henry?
STRAKER. Ive heard my sister say so. She was cook in a Jewish family
once.
MENDOZA. I could not deny it; neither could I eradicate the
impression it made on her mind. I could have got round any other
objection; but no woman can stand a suspicion of indelicacy as
to her person. My entreaties were in vain: she always retorted
that she wasnt good enough for me, and recommended me to marry
an accursed barmaid named Rebecca Lazarus, whom I loathed. I
talked of suicide: she offered me a packet of beetle poison to
do it with. I hinted at murder: she went into hysterics; and as
I am a living man I went to America so that she might sleep
without dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat.
In America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted
by the police for holding up trains. It was he who had the idea
of holding up motor cars in the South of Europe: a welcome idea
to a desperate and disappointed man. He gave me some valuable
introductions to capitalists of the right sort. I formed a
syndicate; and the present enterprise is the result. I became
leader, as the Jew always becomes leader, by his brains and
imagination. But with all my pride of race I would give
everything I possess to be an Englishman. I am like a boy: I cut
her name on the trees and her initials on the sod. When I am
alone I lie down and tear my wretched hair and cry Louisa-
STRAKER [startled] Louisa!
MENDOZA. It is her name- Louisa- Louisa Straker-
TANNER. Straker!
STRAKER [scrambling up on his knees most indignantly] Look here:
Louisa Straker is my sister, see? Wot do you mean by gassin
about her like this? Wotshe got to do with you?
MENDOZA. A dramatic coincidence! You are Enry, her favorite brother!
STRAKER. Oo are you callin Enry? What call have you to take a
liberty with my name or with hers? For two pins I'd punch your
fat edd, so I would.
MENDOZA [with grandiose calm] If I let you do it, will you promise
to brag of it afterwards to her? She will be reminded of her
Mendoza: that is all I desire.
TANNER. This is genuine devotion, Henry. You should respect it.
STRAKER [fiercely] Funk, more likely.
MENDOZA [springing to his feet] Funk! Young man: I come of a famous
family of fighters; and as your sister well knows, you would
have as much chance against me as a perambulator against your
motor car.
STRAKER [secretly daunted, but rising from his knees with an air of
reckless pugnacity] I aint afraid of you. With your Louisa!
Louisa! Miss Straker is good enough for you, I should think.
MENDOZA. I wish you could persuade her to think so.
STRAKER [exasperated] Here-
TANNER [rising quickly and interposing] Oh come, Henry: even if you
could fight the President you cant fight the whole League of the
Sierra. Sit down again and be friendly. A cat may look at a
king; and even a President of brigands may look at your sister.
All this family pride is really very old fashioned.
STRAKER [subdued, but grumbling] Let him look at her. But wot does
he mean by makin out that she ever looked at im? [Reluctantly
resuming his couch on the turf] Ear him talk, one ud think she
was keepin company with him. [He turns his back on them and
composes himself to sleep].
MENDOZA [to Tanner, becoming more confidential as he finds himself
virtually alone with a sympathetic listener in the still
starlight of the mountains, for all the rest are asleep by this
time] It was just so with her, sir. Her intellect reached
forward into the twentieth century: her social prejudices and
family affections reached back into the dark ages. Ah, sir, how
the words of Shakespear seem to fit every crisis in our
emotions!
I loved Louisa: 40,000 brothers
Could not with all their quantity of love
Make up my sum.
And so on. I forget the rest. Call it madness if you will-
infatuation. I am an able man, a strong man: in ten years I
should have owned a first-class hotel. I met her; and- you see!-
I am a brigand, an outcast. Even Shakespear cannot do justice
to what I feel for Louisa. Let me read you some lines that I
have written about her myself. However slight their literary
merit may be, they express what I feel better than any casual
words can. [He produces a packet of hotel bills, scrawled with
manuscript, and kneels at the fire to decipher them, poking it
with a stick to make it glow].
TANNER [slapping him rudely on the shoulder] Put them in the fire,
President.
MENDOZA [startled] Eh?
TANNER. You are sacrificing your career to a monomania.
MENDOZA. I know it.
TANNER. No you dont. No man would commit such a crime against
himself if he really knew what he was doing. How can you look
round at these august hills, look up at this divine sky, taste
this finely tempered air, and then talk like a literary hack on
a second floor in Bloomsbury?
MENDOZA [shaking his head] The Sierra is no better than Bloomsbury
when once the novelty has worn off. Besides, these mountains
make you dream of women- of women with magnificent hair.
TANNER. Of Louisa, in short. They will not make me dream of women,
my friend: I am heartwhole.
MENDOZA. Do not boast until morning, sir. This is a strange country
for dreams.
TANNER. Well, we shall see. Goodnight. [He lies down and composes
himself to sleep].
Mendoza, with a sigh, follows his example: and for a few moments
there is peace in the Sierra. Then Mendoza sits up suddenly and says
pleadingly to Tanner-
MENDOZA. Just allow me to read a few lines before you go to sleep. I
should really like your opinion of them.
TANNER [drowsily] Go on. I am listening.
MENDOZA. I saw thee first in Whitsun week
Louisa, Louisa-
TANNER [rousing himself] My dear President, Louisa is a very pretty
name; but it really doesnt rhyme well to Whitsun week.
MENDOZA. Of course not. Louisa is not the rhyme, but the refrain.
TANNER [subsiding] Ah, the refrain. I beg your pardon. Go on.
MENDOZA. Perhaps you do not care for that one: I think you will like
this better. [He recites, in rich soft tones, and in slow time]
Louisa, I love thee.
I love thee, Louisa.
Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee.
One name and one phrase make my music, Louisa.
Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I love thee.
Mendoza thy lover,
Thy lover, Mendoza,
Mendoza adoringly lives for Louisa.
Theres nothing but that in the world for Mendoza.
Louisa, Louisa, Mendoza adores thee.
[Affected] There is no merit in producing beautiful lines upon
such a name. Louisa is an exquisite name, is it not?
TANNER [all but asleep, responds with faint groan].
MENDOZA. O wert thou, Louisa,
The wife of Mendoza,
Mendoza's Louisa, Louisa Mendoza,
How blest were the life of Louisa's Mendoza!
How painless his longing of love for Louisa!
That is real poetry- from the heart- from the heart of hearts.
Dont you think it will move her?
No answer.
[Resignedly] Asleep, as usual. Doggrel to all the world:
heavenly music to me! Idiot that I am to wear my heart on my
sleeve! [He composes himself to sleep, murmuring] Louisa, I love
thee; I love thee, Louisa; Louisa, Louisa, Louisa, I-
Straker snores; rolls over on his side; and relapses into sleep.
Stillness settles on the Sierra; and the darkness deepens. The fire
has again buried itself in white ash and ceased to glow. The peaks
shew unfathomably dark against the starry firmament; but now the stars
dim and vanish; and the sky seems to steal away out of the universe.
Instead of the Sierra there is nothing: omnipresent nothing. No sky,
no peaks, no light, no sound, no time nor space, utter void. Then
somewhere the beginning of a pallor, and with it a faint throbbing
buzz as of a ghostly violoncello palpitating on the same note
endlessly. A couple of ghostly violins presently take advantage of
this bass (see illustration):
and therewith the pallor reveals a man in the void, an incorporeal
but visible man, seated, absurdly enough, on nothing. For a moment
he raises his head as the music passes him by. Then, with a heavy
sigh, he droops in utter dejection; and the violins, discouraged,
retrace their melody in despair and at last give it up, extinguished
by wailings from uncanny wind instruments, thus (see
illustration):-
It is all very odd. One recognizes the Mozartian strain; and on
this hint, and by the aid of certain sparkles of violet light in the
pallor, the man's costume explains itself as that of a Spanish
nobleman of the XV-XVI century. Don Juan, of course; but where? why?
how? Besides, in the brief lifting of his face, now hidden by his
hat brim, there was a curious suggestion of Tanner. A more critical,
fastidious, handsome face, paler and colder, without Tanner's
impetuous credulity and enthusiasm, and without a touch of his
modern plutocratic vulgarity, but still a resemblance, even an
identity. The name too: Don Juan Tenorio, John Tanner. Where on earth-
or elsewhere- have we got to from the XX century and the Sierra?
Another pallor in the void, this time not violet, but a
disagreeable smoky yellow. With it, the whisper of a ghostly
clarinet turning this tune into infinite sadness (see
illustration):
The yellowish pallor moves: there is an old crone wandering in the
void, bent and toothless; draped, as well as one can guess, in the
coarse brown frock of some religious order. She wanders and wanders in
her slow hopeless way, much as a wasp flies in its rapid busy way,
until she blunders against the thing she seeks: companionship. With
a sob of relief the poor old creature clutches at the presence of
the man and addresses him in her dry unlovely voice, which can still
express pride and resolution as well as suffering.
THE OLD WOMAN. Excuse me; but I am so lonely; and this place is so
awful.
DON JUAN. A new comer?
THE OLD WOMAN. Yes: I suppose I died this morning. I confessed; I
had extreme unction; I was in bed with my family about me and my
eyes fixed on the cross. Then it grew dark; and when the light
came back it was this light by which I walk seeing nothing. I
have wandered for hours in horrible loneliness.
DON JUAN [sighing] Ah! you have not yet lost the sense of time. One
soon does, in eternity.
THE OLD WOMAN. Where are we?
DON JUAN. In hell.
THE OLD WOMAN [proudly] Hell! I in hell! How dare you?
DON JUAN [unimpressed] Why not, Senora!
THE OLD WOMAN. You do not know to whom you are speaking. I am a
lady, and a faithful daughter of the Church.
DON JUAN. I do not doubt it.
THE OLD WOMAN. But how then can I be in hell? Purgatory, perhaps: I
have not been perfect: who has? But hell! oh, you are lying.
DON JUAN. Hell, Senora, I assure you; hell at its best: that is, its
most solitary- though perhaps you would prefer company.
THE OLD WOMAN. But I have sincerely repented; I have confessed-
DON JUAN. How much?
THE OLD WOMAN. More sins than I really committed. I loved
confession.
DON JUAN. Ah, that is perhaps as bad as confessing too little. At
all events, Senora, whether by oversight or intention, you are
certainly damned, like myself; and there is nothing for it now
but to make the best of it.
THE OLD WOMAN [indignantly] Oh! and I might have been so much
wickeder! All my good deeds wasted! It is unjust.
DON JUAN. No: you were fully and clearly warned. For your bad deeds,
vicarious atonement, mercy without justice. For your good deeds,
justice without mercy. We have many good people here.
THE OLD WOMAN. Were you a good man?
DON JUAN. I was a murderer.
THE OLD WOMAN. A murderer! Oh, how dare they send me to herd with
murderers! I was not as bad as that: I was a good woman. There
is some mistake: where can I have it set right?
DON JUAN. I do not know whether mistakes can be corrected here.
Probably they will not admit a mistake even if they have made
one.
THE OLD WOMAN. But whom can I ask?
DON JUAN. I should ask the Devil, Senora: he understands the ways of
this place, which is more than I ever could.
THE OLD WOMAN. The Devil! *I* speak to the Devil!
DON JUAN. In hell, Senora, the Devil is the leader of the best
society.
THE OLD WOMAN. I tell you, wretch, I know I am not in hell.
DON JUAN. How do you know?
THE OLD WOMAN. Because I feel no pain.
DON JUAN. Oh, then there is no mistake: you are intentionally
damned.
THE OLD WOMAN. Why do you say that?
DON JUAN. Because hell, Senora, is a place for the wicked. The
wicked are quite comfortable in it: it was made for them. You
tell me you feel no pain. I conclude you are one of those for
whom hell exists.
THE OLD WOMAN. Do you feel no pain?
DON JUAN. I am not one of the wicked, Senora; therefore it bores me,
bores me beyond description, beyond belief.
THE OLD WOMAN. Not one of the wicked! You said you were a murderer.
DON JUAN. Only a duel. I ran my sword through an old man who was
trying to run his through me.
THE OLD WOMAN. If you were a gentleman, that was not a murder.
DON JUAN. The old man called it murder, because he was, he said,
defending his daughter's honor. By this he meant that because I
foolishly fell in love with her and told her so, she screamed;
and he tried to assassinate me after calling me insulting names.
THE OLD WOMAN. You were like all men. Libertines and murderers all,
all, all!
DON JUAN. And yet we meet here, dear lady.
THE OLD WOMAN. Listen to me. My father was slain by just such a
wretch as you, in just such a duel, for just such a cause. I
screamed: it was my duty. My father drew on my assailant: his
honor demanded it. He fell: that was the reward of honor. I am
here: in hell, you tell me: that is the reward of duty. Is there
justice in heaven?
DON JUAN. No; but there is justice in hell: heaven is far above such
idle human personalities. You will be welcome in hell, Senora.
Hell is the home of honor, duty, justice, and the rest of the
seven deadly virtues. All the wickedness on earth is done in
their name: where else but in hell should they have their
reward? Have I not told you that the truly damned are those who
are happy in hell?
THE OLD WOMAN. And are you happy here?
DON JUAN [springing to his feet] No; and that is the enigma on which
I ponder in darkness. Why am I here? I, who repudiated all duty,
trampled honor underfoot, and laughed at justice!
THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, what do I care why you are here? Why am *I* here?
I, who sacrificed all my inclinations to womanly virtue and
propriety!
DON JUAN. Patience, lady: you will be perfectly happy and at home
here. As saith the poet, "Hell is a city much like Seville."
THE OLD WOMAN. Happy! here! where I am nothing! where I am nobody!
DON JUAN. Not at all: you are a lady; and wherever ladies are is
hell. Do not be surprised or terrified: you will find everything
here that a lady can desire, including devils who will serve you
from sheer love of servitude, and magnify your importance for
the sake of dignifying their service- the best of servants.
THE OLD WOMAN. My servants will be devils!
DON JUAN. Have you ever had servants who were not devils?
THE OLD WOMAN. Never: they were devils, perfect devils, all of them.
But that is only a manner of speaking. I thought you meant that
my servants here would be real devils.
DON JUAN. No more real devils than you will be a real lady. Nothing
is real here. That is the horror of damnation.
THE OLD WOMAN. Oh, this is all madness. This is worse than fire and
the worm.
DON JUAN. For you, perhaps, there are consolations. For instance:
how old were you when you changed from time to eternity?
THE OLD WOMAN. Do not ask me how old I was- as if I were a thing of
the past. I am 77.
DON JUAN. A ripe age, Senora. But in hell old age is not tolerated.
It is too real. Here we worship Love and Beauty. Our souls being
entirely damned, we cultivate our hearts. As a lady of 77, you
would not have a single acquaintance in hell.
THE OLD WOMAN. How can I help my age, man?
DON JUAN. You forget that you have left your age behind you in the
realm of time. You are no more 77 than you are 7 or 17 or 27.
THE OLD WOMAN. Nonsense!
DON JUAN. Consider, Senora: was not this true even when you lived on
earth? When you were 70, were you really older underneath your
wrinkles and your grey hairs than when you were 30?
THE OLD WOMAN. No, younger: at 30 I was a fool. But of what use is
it to feel younger and look older?
DON JUAN. You see, Senora, the look was only an illusion. Your
wrinkles lied, just as the plump smooth skin of many a stupid
girl of 17, with heavy spirits and decrepit ideas, lies about
her age. Well, here we have no bodies: we see each other as
bodies only because we learnt to think about one another under
that aspect when we were alive; and we still think in that way;
knowing no other. But we can appear to one another at what age
we choose. You have but to will any of your old looks back, and
back they will come.
THE OLD WOMAN. It cannot be true.
DON JUAN. Try.
THE OLD WOMAN. Seventeen!
DON JUAN. Stop. Before you decide, I had better tell you that these
things are a matter of fashion. Occasionally we have a rage for
17; but it does not last long. Just at present the fashionable
age is 40- or say 37; but there are signs of a change. If you
were at all good-looking at 27, I should suggest your trying
that, and setting a new fashion.
THE OLD WOMAN. I do not believe a word you are saying. However, 27
be it. [Whisk! the old woman becomes a young one, magnificently
attired, and so handsome that in the radiance into which her
dull yellow halo has suddenly lightened one might almost mistake
her for Ann Whitefield].
DON JUAN. Dona Ana de Ulloa!
ANA. What? You know me!
DON JUAN. And you forget me!
ANA. I cannot see your face. [He raises his hat]. Don Juan Tenorio!
Monster! You who slew my father! even here you pursue me.
DON JUAN. I protest I do not pursue you. Allow me to withdraw
[going].
ANA [seizing his arm] You shall not leave me alone in this dreadful
place.
DON JUAN. Provided my staying be not interpreted as pursuit.
ANA [releasing him] You may well wonder how I can endure your
presence. My dear, dear father!
DON JUAN. Would you like to see him?
ANA. My father here!!!
DON JUAN. No: he is in heaven.
ANA. I knew it. My noble father! He is looking down on us now. What
must he feel to see his daughter in this place, and in
conversation with his murderer!
DON JUAN. By the way, if we should meet him-
ANA. How can we meet him? He is in heaven.
DON JUAN. He condescends to look in upon us here from time to time.
Heaven bores him. So let me warn you that if you meet him he
will be mortally offended if you speak of me as his murderer!
He maintains that he was a much better swordsman than I, and
that if his foot had not slipped he would have killed me. No
doubt he is right: I was not a good fencer. I never dispute the
point; so we are excellent friends.
ANA. It is no dishonor to a soldier to be proud of his skill in
arms.
DON JUAN. You would rather not meet him, probably.
ANA. How dare you say that?
DON JUAN. Oh, that is the usual feeling here. You may remember that
on earth- though of course we never confessed it- the death of
anyone we knew, even those we liked best, was always mingled
with a certain satisfaction at being finally done with them.
ANA. Monster! Never, never.
DON JUAN [placidly] I see you recognize the feeling. Yes: a funeral
was always a festivity in black, especially the funeral of a
relative. At all events, family ties are rarely kept up here.
Your father is quite accustomed to this: he will not expect any
devotion from you.
ANA. Wretch: I wore mourning for him all my life.
DON JUAN. Yes: it became you. But a life of mourning is one thing:
an eternity of it quite another. Besides, here you are as dead
as he. Can anything be more ridiculous than one dead person
mourning for another? Do not look shocked, my dear Ana; and do
not be alarmed: there is plenty of humbug in hell (indeed there
is hardly anything else); but the humbug of death and age and
change is dropped because here we are all dead and all eternal.
You will pick up our ways soon.
ANA. And will all the men call me their dear Ana?
DON JUAN. No. That was a slip of the tongue. I beg your pardon.
ANA [almost tenderly] Juan: did you really love me when you behaved
so disgracefully to me?
DON JUAN [impatiently] Oh, I beg you not to begin talking about
love. Here they talk of nothing else but love: its beauty, its
holiness, its spirituality, its devil knows what!- excuse me;
but it does so bore me. They dont know what theyre talking
about: I do. They think they have achieved the perfection of
love because they have no bodies. Sheer imaginative debauchery!
Faugh!
ANA. Has even death failed to refine your soul, Juan? Has the
terrible judgment of which my father's statue was the minister
taught you no reverence?
DON JUAN. How is that very flattering statue, by the way? Does it
still come to supper with naughty people and cast them into this
bottomless pit?
ANA. It has been a great expense to me. The boys in the monastery
school would not let it alone: the mischievous ones broke it;
and the studious ones wrote their names on it. Three new noses
in two years, and fingers without end. I had to leave it to its
fate at last; and now I fear it is shockingly mutilated. My poor
father!
DON JUAN. Hush! Listen! [Two great chords rolling on syncopated
waves of sound break forth: D minor and its dominant: a sound of
dreadful joy to all musicians]. Ha! Mozart's statue music. It is
your father. You had better disappear until I prepare him. [She
vanishes].
From the void comes a living statue of white marble, designed to
represent a majestic old man. But he waives his majesty with
infinite grace; walks with a feather-like step; and makes every
wrinkle in his war worn visage brim over with holiday joyousness. To
his sculptor he owes a perfectly trained figure, which he carries
erect and trim; and the ends of his moustache curl up, elastic as
watchsprings, giving him an air which, but for its Spanish dignity,
would be called jaunty. He is on the pleasantest terms with Don
Juan. His voice, save for a much more distinguished intonation, is
so like the voice of Roebuck Ramsden that it calls attention to the
fact that they are not unlike one another in spite of their very
different fashions of shaving.
DON JUAN. Ah, here you are, my friend. Why dont you learn to sing
the splendid music Mozart has written for you?
THE STATUE. Unluckily he has written it for a bass voice. Mine is a
counter tenor. Well: have you repented yet?
DON JUAN. I have too much consideration for you to repent, Don
Gonzalo. If I did, you would have no excuse for coming from
Heaven to argue with me.
THE STATUE. True. Remain obdurate, my boy. I wish I had killed you,
as I should have done but for an accident. Then I should have
come here; and you would have had a statue and a reputation for
piety to live up to. Any news?
DON JUAN. Yes: your daughter is dead.
THE STATUE [puzzled] My daughter? [Recollecting] Oh! the one you
were taken with. Let me see: what was her name?
DON JUAN. Ana.
THE STATUE. To be sure: Ana. A good-looking girl, if I recollect
aright. Have you warned Whatshisname? her husband.
DON JUAN. My friend Ottavio? No: I have not seen him since Ana
arrived.
Ana comes indignantly to light.
ANA. What does this mean? Ottavio here and your friend! And you,
father, have forgotten my name. You are indeed turned to stone.
THE STATUE. My dear: I am so much more admired in marble than I ever
was in my own person that I have retained the shape the sculptor
gave me. He was one of the first men of his day: you must
acknowledge that.
ANA. Father! Vanity! personal vanity! from you!
THE STATUE. Ah, you outlived that weakness, my daughter: you must be
nearly eighty by this time. I was cut off (by an accident) in my
64th year, and am considerably your junior in consequence.
Besides, my child, in this place, what our libertine friend here
would call the farce of parental wisdom is dropped. Regard me, I
beg, as a fellow creature, not as a father.
ANA. You speak as this villain speaks.
THE STATUE. Juan is a sound thinker, Ana. A bad fencer, but a sound
thinker.
ANA [horror creeping upon her] I begin to understand. These are
devils, mocking me. I had better pray.
THE STATUE [consoling her] No, no, no, my child: do not pray. If you
do, you will throw away the main advantage of this place.
Written over the gate here are the words "Leave every hope
behind, ye who enter." Only think what a relief that is! For
what is hope? A form of moral responsibility. Here there is no
hope, and consequently no duty, no work, nothing to be gained
by praying, nothing to be lost by doing what you like. Hell, in
short, is a place where you have nothing to do but amuse
yourself. [Don Juan sighs deeply]. You sigh, friend Juan; but
if you dwelt in heaven, as I do, you would realize your
advantages.
DON JUAN. You are in good spirits today, Commander. You are
positively brilliant. What is the matter?
THE STATUE. I have come to a momentous decision, my boy. But first,
where is our friend the Devil? I must consult him in the matter.
And Ana would like to make his acquaintance, no doubt.
ANA. You are preparing some torment for me.
DON JUAN. All that is superstition, Ana. Reassure yourself.
Remember: the Devil is not so black as he is painted.
THE STATUE. Let us give him a call.
At the wave of the statue's hand the great chords roll out
again: but this time Mozart's music gets grotesquely adulterated
with Gounod's. A scarlet halo begins to glow; and into it the Devil
rises, very Mephistophelean, and not at all unlike Mendoza, though not
so interesting. He looks older; is getting prematurely bald; and, in
spite of an effusion of good nature and friendliness, is peevish and
sensitive when his advances are not reciprocated. He does not
inspire much confidence in his powers of hard work or endurance, and
is, on the whole, a disagreeably self-indulgent looking person; but he
is clever and plausible, though perceptibly less well bred than the
two other men, and enormously less vital than the woman.
THE DEVIL [heartily] Have I the pleasure of again receiving a visit
from the illustrious Commander of Calatrava? [Coldly] Don Juan,
your servant. [Politely] And a strange lady? My respects,
Senora.
ANA. Are you-
THE DEVIL [bowing] Lucifer, at your service.
ANA. I shall go mad.
THE DEVIL [gallantly] Ah, Senora, do not be anxious. You come to us
from earth, full of the prejudices and terrors of that
priest-ridden place. You have heard me ill spoken of; and yet,
believe me, I have hosts of friends there.
ANA. Yes: you reign in their hearts.
THE DEVIL [shaking his head] You flatter me, Senora; but you are
mistaken. It is true that the world cannot get on without me;
but it never gives me credit for that: in its heart it mistrusts
and hates me. Its sympathies are all with misery, with poverty,
with starvation of the body and of the heart. I call on it to
sympathize with joy, with love, with happiness, with beauty-
DON JUAN [nauseated] Excuse me: I am going. You know I cannot stand
this.
THE DEVIL [angrily] Yes: I know that you are no friend of mine.
THE STATUE. What harm is he doing you, Juan? It seems to me that he
was talking excellent sense when you interrupted him.
THE DEVIL [warmly patting the statue's hand] Thank you, my friend:
thank you. You have always understood me: he has always
disparaged and avoided me.
DON JUAN. I have treated you with perfect courtesy.
THE DEVIL. Courtesy! What is courtesy? I care nothing for mere
courtesy. Give me warmth of heart, true sincerity, the bond of
sympathy with love and joy-
DON JUAN. You are making me ill.
THE DEVIL. There! [Appealing to the statue] You hear, sir! Oh, by
what irony of fate was this cold selfish egotist sent to my
kingdom, and you taken to the icy mansions of the sky!
THE STATUE. I cant complain. I was a hypocrite; and it served me
right to be sent to heaven.
THE DEVIL. Why, sir, do you not join us, and leave a sphere for
which your temperament is too sympathetic, your heart too warm,
your capacity for enjoyment too generous?
THE STATUE. I have this day resolved to do so. In future, excellent
Son of the Morning, I am yours. I have left heaven for ever.
THE DEVIL [again touching the marble hand] Ah, what an honor! what a
triumph for our cause! Thank you, thank you. And now, my friend-
I may call you so at last- could you not persuade him to take
the place you have left vacant above?
THE STATUE [shaking his head] I cannot conscientiously recommend
anybody with whom I am on friendly terms to deliberately make
himself dull and uncomfortable.
THE DEVIL. Of course not; but are you sure he would be
uncomfortable? Of course you know best: you brought him here
originally; and we had the greatest hopes of him. His sentiments
were in the best taste of our best people. You remember how he
sang? [He begins to sing in a nasal operatic baritone, tremulous
from an eternity of misuse in the French manner]
Vivan le femmine!
Viva il buon vino!
THE STATUE [taking up the tune an octave higher in his counter
tenor]
Sostegno e gloria
D'umanita.
THE DEVIL. Precisely. Well, he never sings for us now.
DON JUAN. Do you complain of that? Hell is full of musical amateurs:
music is the brandy of the damned. May not one lost soul be
permitted to abstain?
THE DEVIL. You dare blaspheme against the sublimest of the arts!
DON JUAN [with cold disgust] You talk like a hysterical woman
fawning on a fiddler.
THE DEVIL. I am not angry. I merely pity you. You have no soul; and
you are unconscious of all that you lose. Now you, Senor
Commander, are a born musician. How well you sing! Mozart would
be delighted if he were still here; but he moped and went to
heaven. Curious how these clever men, whom you would have
supposed born to be popular here, have turned out social
failures, like Don Juan!
DON JUAN. I am really very sorry to be a social failure.
THE DEVIL. Not that we dont admire your intellect, you know. We do.
But I look at the matter from your own point of view. You dont
get on with us. The place doesnt suit you. The truth is, you
have- I wont say no heart; for we know that beneath all your
affected cynicism you have a warm one-
DON JUAN [shrinking] Dont, please dont.
THE DEVIL [nettled] Well, youve no capacity for enjoyment. Will that
satisfy you?
DON JUAN. It is a somewhat less insufferable form of cant than the
other. But if youll allow me, I'll take refuge, as usual, in
solitude.
THE DEVIL. Why not take refuge in Heaven? Thats the proper place for
you. [To Ana] Come, Senora! could you not persuade him for his
own good to try change of air?
ANA. But can he go to heaven if he wants to?
THE DEVIL. Whats to prevent him?
ANA. Can anybody- can *I* go to heaven if I want to?
THE DEVIL [rather contemptuously] Certainly, if your taste lies that
way.
ANA. But why doesnt everybody go to heaven, then?
THE STATUE [chuckling] I can tell you that, my dear. It's because
heaven is the most angelically dull place in all creation: thats
why.
THE DEVIL. His excellency the Commander puts it with military
bluntness; but the strain of living in heaven is intolerable.
There is a notion that I was turned out of it; but as a matter
of fact nothing could have induced me to stay there. I simply
left it and organized this place.
THE STATUE. I dont wonder at it. Nobody could stand an eternity of
heaven.
THE DEVIL. Oh, it suits some people. Let us be just, Commander: it
is a question of temperament. I dont admire the heavenly
temperament: I dont understand it: I dont know that I
particularly want to understand it; but it takes all sorts to
make a universe. There is no accounting for tastes: there are
people who like it. I think Don Juan would like it.
DON JUAN. But- pardon my frankness- could you really go back there
if you desired to; or are the grapes sour?
THE DEVIL. Back there! I often go back there. Have you never read
the book of Job? Have you any canonical authority for assuming
that there is any barrier between our circle and the other one?
ANA. But surely there is a great gulf fixed.
THE DEVIL. Dear lady: a parable must not be taken literally. The
gulf is the difference between the angelic and the diabolic
temperament. What more impassable gulf could you have? Think of
what you have seen on earth. There is no physical gulf between
the philosopher's class room and the bull ring; but the bull
fighters do not come to the class room for all that. Have you
ever been in the country where I have the largest following?
England. There they have great racecourses, and also concert
rooms where they play the classical compositions of his
Excellency's friend Mozart. Those who go to the racecourses can
stay away from them and go to the classical concerts instead if
they like: there is no law against it; for Englishmen never will
be slaves: they are free to do whatever the Government and
public opinion allow them to do. And the classical concert is
admitted to be a higher, more cultivated, poetic, intellectual,
ennobling place than the racecourse. But do the lovers of racing
desert their sport and flock to the concert room? Not they. They
would suffer there all the weariness the Commander has suffered
in heaven. There is the great gulf of the parable between the
two places. A mere physical gulf they could bridge; or at least
I could bridge it for them (the earth is full of Devil's
Bridges); but the gulf of dislike is impassable and eternal.
And that is the only gulf that separates my friends here from
those who are invidiously called the blest.
ANA. I shall go to heaven at once.
THE STATUE. My child: one word of warning first. Let me complete my
friend Lucifer's similitude of the classical concert. At every
one of these concerts in England you will find rows of weary
people who are there, not because they really like classical
music, but because they think they ought to like it. Well, there
is the same thing in heaven. A number of people sit there in
glory, not because they are happy, but because they think they
owe it to their position to be in heaven. They are almost all
English.
THE DEVIL. Yes: the Southerners give it up and join me just as you
have done. But the English really do not seem to know when they
are thoroughly miserable. An Englishman thinks he is moral when
he is only uncomfortable.
THE STATUE. In short, my daughter, if you go to heaven without being
naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy yourself there.
ANA. And who dares say that I am not naturally qualified for it? The
most distinguished princes of the Church have never questioned
it. I owe it to myself to leave this place at once.
THE DEVIL [offended] As you please, Senora. I should have expected
better taste from you.
ANA. Father: I shall expect you to come with me. You cannot stay
here. What will people say?
THE STATUE. People! Why, the best people are here- princes of the
church and all. So few go to heaven, and so many come here, that
the blest, once called a heavenly host, are a continually
dwindling minority. The saints, the fathers, the elect of long
ago are the cranks, the faddists, the outsiders of today.
THE DEVIL. It is true. From the beginning of my career I knew that
I should win in the long run by sheer weight of public opinion,
in spite of the long campaign of misrepresentation and calumny
against me. At bottom the universe is a constitutional one; and
with such a majority as mine I cannot be kept permanently out of
office.
DON JUAN. I think, Ana, you had better stay here.
ANA [jealously] You do not want me to go with you.
DON JUAN. Surely you do not want to enter heaven in the company of a
reprobate like me.
ANA. All souls are equally precious. You repent, do you not?
DON JUAN. My dear Ana, you are silly. Do you suppose heaven is like
earth, where people persuade themselves that what is done can be
undone by repentance; that what is spoken can be unspoken by
withdrawing it; that what is true can be annihilated by a
general agreement to give it the lie? No: heaven is the home of
the masters of reality: that is why I am going thither.
ANA. Thank you: I am going to heaven for happiness. I have had quite
enough of reality on earth.
DON JUAN. Then you must stay here; for hell is the home of the
unreal and of the seekers for happiness. It is the only refuge
from heaven, which is, as I tell you, the home of the masters of
reality, and from earth, which is the home of the slaves of
reality. The earth is a nursery in which men and women play at
being heroes and heroines, saints and sinners; but they are
dragged down from their fool's paradise by their bodies: hunger
and cold and thirst, age and decay and disease, death above all,
make them slaves of reality: thrice a day meals must be eaten
and digested: thrice a century a new generation must be
engendered: ages of faith, of romance, and of science are all
driven at last to have but one prayer, "Make me a healthy
animal." But here you escape this tyranny of the flesh; for here
you are not an animal at all: you are a ghost, an appearance,
an illusion, a convention, deathless, ageless: in a word,
bodiless. There are no social questions here, no political
questions, no religious questions, best of all, perhaps, no
sanitary questions. Here you call your appearance beauty, your
emotions love, your sentiments heroism, your aspirations virtue,
just as you did on earth; but here there are no hard facts to
contradict you, no ironic contrast of your needs with your
pretensions, no human comedy, nothing but a perpetual romance,
a universal melodrama. As our German friend put it in his poem,
"the poetically nonsensical here is good sense; and the Eternal
Feminine draws us ever upward and on"- without getting us a step
farther. And yet you want to leave this paradise!
ANA. But if hell be so beautiful as this, how glorious must heaven
be!
The Devil, the Statue, and Don Juan all begin to speak at once
in violent protest; then stop, abashed.
DON JUAN. I beg your pardon.
THE DEVIL. Not at all. I interrupted you.
THE STATUE. You were going to say something.
DON JUAN. After you, gentlemen.
THE DEVIL [to Don Juan] You have been so eloquent on the advantages
of my dominions that I leave you to do equal justice to the
drawbacks of the alternative establishment.
DON JUAN. In heaven, as I picture it, dear lady, you live and work
instead of playing and pretending. You face things as they are;
you escape nothing but glamor; and your steadfastness and your
peril are your glory. If the play still goes on here and on
earth, and all the world is a stage, Heaven is at least behind
the scenes. But Heaven cannot be described by metaphor. Thither
I shall go presently, because there I hope to escape at last
from lies and from the tedious, vulgar pursuit of happiness, to
spend my eons in contemplation-
THE STATUE. Ugh!
DON JUAN. Senor Commander: I do not blame your disgust: a picture
gallery is a dull place for a blind man. But even as you enjoy
the contemplation of such romantic mirages as beauty and
pleasure; so would I enjoy the contemplation of that which
interests me above all things: namely, Life: the force that ever
strives to attain greater power of contemplating itself. What
made this brain of mine, do you think? Not the need to move my
limbs; for a rat with half my brains moves as well as I. Not
merely the need to do, but the need to know what I do, lest in
my blind efforts to live I should be slaying myself.
THE STATUE. You would have slain yourself in your blind efforts to
fence but for my foot slipping, my friend.
DON JUAN. Audacious ribald: your laughter will finish in hideous
boredom before morning.
THE STATUE. Ha ha! Do you remember how I frightened you when I said
something like that to you from my pedestal in Seville? It
sounds rather flat without my trombones.
DON JUAN. They tell me it generally sounds flat with them,
Commander.
ANA. Oh, do not interrupt with these frivolities, father. Is there
nothing in Heaven but contemplation, Juan?
DON JUAN. In the Heaven I seek, no other joy. But there is the work
of helping Life in its struggle upward. Think of how it wastes
and scatters itself, how it raises up obstacles to itself and
destroys itself in its ignorance and blindness. It needs a
brain, this irresistible force, lest in its ignorance it should
resist itself. What a piece of work is man! says the poet. Yes;
but what a blunderer! Here is the highest miracle of
organization yet attained by life, the most intensely alive
thing that exists, the most conscious of all the organisms; and
yet, how wretched are his brains! Stupidity made sordid and
cruel by the realities learnt from toll and poverty: Imagination
resolved to starve sooner than face these realities, piling up
illusions to hide them, and calling itself cleverness, genius!
And each accusing the other of its own defect: Stupidity
accusing Imagination of folly, and Imagination accusing
Stupidity of ignorance: whereas, alas! Stupidity has all the
knowledge, and Imagination all the intelligence.
THE DEVIL. And a pretty kettle of fish they make of it between them.
Did I not say, when I was arranging that affair of Faust's, that
all Man's reason has done for him is to make him beastlier than
any beast. One splendid body is worth the brains of a hundred
dyspeptic, flatulent philosophers.
DON JUAN. You forget that brainless magnificence of body has been
tried. Things immeasurably greater than man in every respect but
brain have existed and perished. The megatherium, the
icthyosaurus have paced the earth with seven-league steps and
hidden the day with cloud vast wings. Where are they now?
Fossils in museums, and so few and imperfect at that, that a
knuckle bone or a tooth of one of them is prized beyond the
lives of a thousand soldiers. These things lived and wanted to
live; but for lack of brains they did not know how to carry out
their purpose, and so destroyed themselves.
THE DEVIL. And is Man any the less destroying himself for all this
boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth
lately? I have; and I have examined Man's wonderful inventions.
And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but
in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by
chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence,
and famine. The peasant I tempt today eats and drinks what was
eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and
the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand
centuries as the fashion of a lady's bonnet in a score of weeks.
But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism
that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden
molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the
blowpipe of his fathers far behind. In the arts of peace Man is
a bungler. I have seen his cotton factories and the like, with
machinery that a greedy dog could have invented if it had wanted
money instead of food. I know his clumsy typewriters and
bungling locomotives and tedious bicycles: they are toys
compared to the Maxim gun, the submarine torpedo boat. There is
nothing in Man's industrial machinery but his greed and sloth:
his heart is in his weapons. This marvellous force of Life of
which you boast is a force of Death: Man measures his strength
by his destructiveness. What is his religion? An excuse for
hating me. What is his law? An excuse for hanging you. What is
his morality? Gentility! An excuse for consuming without
producing. What is his art? An excuse for gloating over pictures
of slaughter. What are his politics? Either the worship of a
despot because a despot can kill, or parliamentary cockfighting.
I spent an evening lately in a certain celebrated legislature,
and heard the pot lecturing the kettle for its blackness, and
ministers answering questions. When I left I chalked up on the
door the old nursery saying "Ask no questions and you will be
told no lies." I bought a sixpenny family magazine, and found
it full of pictures of young men shooting and stabbing one
another. I saw a man die: he was a London bricklayer's laborer
with seven children. He left seventeen pounds club money; and
his wife spent it all on his funeral and went into the workhouse
with the children next day. She would not have spent sevenpence
on her children's schooling: the law had to force her to let
them be taught gratuitously; but on death she spent all she had.
Their imagination glows, their energies rise up at the idea of
death, these people: they love it; and the more horrible it is
the more they enjoy it. Hell is a place far above their
comprehension: they derive their notion of it from two of the
greatest fools that ever lived, an Italian and an Englishman.
The Italian described it as a place of mud, frost, filth, fire,
and venomous serpents: all torture. This ass, when he was not
lying about me, was maundering about some woman whom he saw once
in the street. The Englishman described me as being expelled
from Heaven by cannons and gunpowder; and to this day every
Briton believes that the whole of his silly story is in the
Bible. What else he says I do not know; for it is all in a long
poem which neither I nor anyone else ever succeeded in wading
through. It is the same in everything. The highest form of
literature is the tragedy, a play in which everybody is murdered
at the end. In the old chronicles you read of earthquakes and
pestilences, and are told that these shewed the power and
majesty of God and the littleness of Man. Nowadays the
chronicles describe battles. In a battle two bodies of men shoot
at one another with bullets and explosive shells until one body
runs away, when the others chase the fugitives on horseback and
cut them to pieces as they fly. And this, the chronicle
concludes, shews the greatness and majesty of empires, and the
littleness of the vanquished. Over such battles the people run
about the streets yelling with delight, and egg their Government
on to spend hundreds of millions of money in the slaughter,
whilst the strongest Ministers dare not spend an extra penny in
the pound against the poverty and pestilence through which they
themselves daily walk. I could give you a thousand instances;
but they all come to the same thing: the power that governs the
earth is not the power of Life but of Death; and the inner need
that has nerved Life to the effort of organising itself into the
human being is not the need for higher life but for a more
efficient engine of destruction. The plague, the famine, the
earthquake, the tempest were too spasmodic in their action; the
tiger and crocodile were too easily satiated and not cruel
enough: something more constantly, more ruthlessly, more
ingeniously destructive was needed; and that something was Man,
the inventor of the rack, the stake, the gallows, the electric
chair; of sword and gun and poison gas: above all, of justice,
duty, patriotism, and all the other isms by which even those who
are clever enough to be humanely disposed are persuaded to
become the most destructive of all the destroyers.
DON JUAN. Pshaw! all this is old. Your weak side, my diabolic
friend, is that you have always been a gull: you take Man at his
own valuation. Nothing would flatter him more than your opinion
of him. He loves to think of himself as bold and bad. He is
neither one nor the other: he is only a coward. Call him tyrant,
murderer, pirate, bully; and he will adore you, and swagger
about with the consciousness of having the blood of the old sea
kings in his veins. Call him liar and thief; and he will only
take an action against you for libel. But call him coward; and
he will go mad with rage: he will face death to outface that
stinging truth. Man gives every reason for his conduct save one,
every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety
save one; and that one is his cowardice. Yet all his
civilization is founded on his cowardice, on his abject
tameness, which he calls his respectability. There are limits
to what a mule or an ass will stand; but Man will suffer himself
to be degraded until his vileness becomes so loathsome to his
oppressors that they themselves are forced to reform it.
THE DEVIL. Precisely. And these are the creatures in whom you
discover what you call a Life Force!
DON JUAN. Yes; for now comes the most surprising part of the whole
business.
THE STATUE. Whats that?
DON JUAN. Why, that you can make any of these cowards brave by
simply putting an idea into his head.
THE STATUE. Stuff! As an old soldier I admit the cowardice: it's as
universal as sea sickness, and matters just as little. But that
about putting an idea into a man's head is stuff and nonsense.
In a battle all you need to make you fight is a little hot blood
and the knowledge that it's more dangerous to lose than to win.
DON JUAN. That is perhaps why battles are so useless. But men never
really overcome fear until they imagine they are fighting to
further a universal purpose- fighting for an idea, as they call
it. Why was the Crusader braver than the pirate? Because he
fought, not for himself, but for the Cross. What force was it
that met him with a valor as reckless as his own? The force of
men who fought, not for themselves, but for Islam. They took
Spain from us though we were fighting for our very hearths and
homes; but when we, too, fought for that mighty idea, a Catholic
Church, we swept them back to Africa.
THE DEVIL [ironically] What! you a Catholic, Senor Don Juan! A
devotee! My congratulations.
THE STATUE [seriously] Come, come! as a soldier, I can listen to
nothing against the Church.
DON JUAN. Have no fear, Commander: this idea of a Catholic Church
will survive Islam, will survive the Cross, will survive even
that vulgar pageant of incompetent schoolboyish gladiators
which you call the Army.
THE STATUE. Juan: you will force me to call you to account for this.
DON JUAN. Useless: I cannot fence. Every idea for which Man will die
will be a Catholic idea. When the Spaniard learns at last that
he is no better than the Saracen, and his prophet no better than
Mahomet, he will arise, more Catholic than ever, and die on a
barricade across the filthy slum he starves in, for universal
liberty and equality.
THE STATUE. Bosh!
DON JUAN. What you call bosh is the only thing men dare die for.
Later on, Liberty will not be Catholic enough: men will die for
human perfection, to which they will sacrifice all their liberty
gladly.
THE DEVIL. Ay: they will never be at a loss for an excuse for
killing one another.
DON JUAN. What of that? It is not death that matters, but the fear
of death. It is not killing and dying that degrades us, but base
living, and accepting the wages and profits of degradation.
Better ten dead men than one live slave or his master. Men shall
yet rise up, father against son and brother against brother, and
kill one another for the great Catholic idea of abolishing
slavery.
THE DEVIL. Yes, when the Liberty and Equality of which you prate
shall have made free white Christians cheaper in the labor
market than black heathen slaves sold by auction at the block.
DON JUAN. Never fear! the white laborer shall have his turn too. But
I am not now defending the illusory forms the great ideas take.
I am giving you examples of the fact that this creature Man, who
in his own selfish affairs is a coward to the backbone, will
fight for an idea like a hero. He may be abject as a citizen;
but he is dangerous as a fanatic. He can only be enslaved whilst
he is spiritually weak enough to listen to reason. I tell you,
gentlemen, if you can shew a man a piece of what he now calls
God's work to do, and what he will later on call by many new
names, you can make him entirely reckless of the consequences to
himself personally.
ANA. Yes: he shirks all his responsibilities, and leaves his wife to
grapple with them.
THE STATUE. Well said, Daughter. Do not let him talk you out of your
common sense.
THE DEVIL. Alas! Senor Commander, now that we have got on to the
subject of Woman, he will talk more than ever. However, I
confess it is for me the one supremely interesting subject.
DON JUAN. To a woman, Senora, man's duties and responsibilities
begin and end with the task of getting bread for her children.
To her, Man is only a means to the end of getting children and
rearing them.
ANA. Is that your idea of a woman's mind? I call it cynical and
disgusting animalism.
DON JUAN. Pardon me, Ana: I said nothing about a woman's whole mind.
I spoke of her view of Man as a separate sex. It is no more
cynical than her view of herself as above all things a Mother.
Sexually, Woman is Nature's contrivance for perpetuating its
highest achievement. Sexually, Man is Woman's contrivance for
fulfilling Nature's behest in the most economical way. She knows
by instinct that far back in the evolutional process she
invented him, differentiated him, created him in order to
produce something better than the single-sexed process can
produce. Whilst he fulfils the purpose for which she made him,
he is welcome to his dreams, his follies, his ideals, his
heroisms, provided that the keystone of them all is the worship
of woman, of motherhood, of the family, of the hearth. But how
rash and dangerous it was to invent a separate creature whose
sole function was her own impregnation! For mark what has
happened. First, Man has multiplied on her hands until there are
as many men as women; so that she has been unable to employ for
her purposes more than a fraction of the immense energy she has
left at his disposal by saving him the exhausting labor of
gestation. This superfluous energy has gone to his brain and to
his muscle. He has become too strong to be controlled by her
bodily, and too imaginative and mentally vigorous to be content
with mere self-reproduction. He has created civilization without
consulting her, taking her domestic labor for granted as the
foundation of it.
ANA. That is true, at all events.
THE DEVIL. Yes; and this civilization! what is it, after all?
DON JUAN. After all, an excellent peg to hang your cynical
commonplaces on; but before all, it is an attempt on Man's part
to make himself something more than the mere instrument of
Woman's purpose. So far, the result of Life's continual effort
not only to maintain itself, but to achieve higher and higher
organization and completer self-consciousness, is only, at best,
a doubtful campaign between its forces and those of Death and
Degeneration. The battles in this campaign are mere blunders,
mostly won, like actual military battles, in spite of the
commanders.
THE STATUE. That is a dig at me. No matter: go on, go on.
DON JUAN. It is a dig at a much higher power than you, Commander.
Still, you must have noticed in your profession that even a
stupid general can win battles when the enemy's general is a
little stupider.
THE STATUE [very seriously] Most true, Juan, most true. Some donkeys
have amazing luck.
DON JUAN. Well, the Life Force is stupid; but it is not so stupid as
the forces of Death and Degeneration. Besides, these are in its
pay all the time. And so Life wins, after a fashion. What mere
copiousness of fecundity can supply and mere greed preserve, we
possess. The survival of whatever form of civilization can
produce the best rifle and the best fed riflemen is assured.
THE DEVIL. Exactly! the survival, not of the most effective means of
Life but of the most effective means of Death. You always come
back to my point, in spite of your wrigglings and evasions and
sophistries, not to mention the intolerable length of your
speeches.
DON JUAN. Oh, come! who began making long speeches? However, if I
overtax your intellect, you can leave us and seek the society of
love and beauty and the rest of your favorite boredoms.
THE DEVIL [much offended] This is not fair, Don Juan, and not civil.
I am also on the intellectual plane. Nobody can appreciate it
more than I do. I am arguing fairly with you, and, I think,
successfully refuting you. Let us go on for another hour if you
like.
DON JUAN. Good: let us.
THE STATUE. Not that I see any prospect of your coming to any point
in particular, Juan. Still, since in this place, instead of
merely killing time we have to kill eternity, go ahead by all
means.
DON JUAN [somewhat impatiently] My point, you marble-headed old
masterpiece, is only a step ahead of you. Are we agreed that
Life is a force which has made innumerable experiments in
organizing itself; that the mammoth and the man, the mouse and
the megatherium, the flies and the fleas and the Fathers of the
Church, are all more or less successful attempts to build up
that raw force into higher and higher individuals, the ideal
individual being omnipotent, omniscient, infallible, and withal
completely, unilludedly self-conscious: in short, a god?
THE DEVIL. I agree, for the sake of argument.
THE STATUE. I agree, for the sake of avoiding argument.
ANA. I most emphatically disagree as regards the Fathers of the
Church; and I must beg you not to drag them into the argument.
DON JUAN. I did so purely for the sake of alliteration, Ana; and I
shall make no further allusion to them. And now, since we are,
with that exception, agreed so far, will you not agree with me
further that Life has not measured the success of its attempts
at godhead by the beauty or bodily perfection of the result,
since in both these respects the birds, as our friend
Aristophanes long ago pointed out, are so extraordinarily
superior, with their power of flight and their lovely plumage,
and, may I add, the touching poetry of their loves and nestings,
that it is inconceivable that Life, having once produced them,
should, if love and beauty were her object, start off on another
line and labor at the clumsy elephant and the hideous ape, whose
grandchildren we are?
ANA. Aristophanes was a heathen; and you, Juan, I am afraid, are
very little better.
THE DEVIL. You conclude, then, that Life was driving at clumsiness
and ugliness?
DON JUAN. No, perverse devil that you are, a thousand times no. Life
was driving at brains- at its darling object: an organ by which
it can attain not only self-consciousness but
self-understanding.
THE STATUE. This is metaphysics, Juan. Why the devil should- [to the
Devil] I beg your pardon.
THE DEVIL. Pray dont mention it. I have always regarded the use of
my name to secure additional emphasis as a high compliment to
me. It is quite at your service, Commander.
THE STATUE. Thank you: thats very good of you. Even in heaven, I
never quite got out of my old military habits of speech. What I
was going to ask Juan was why Life should bother itself about
getting a brain. Why should it want to understand itself? Why
not be content to enjoy itself?
DON JUAN. Without a brain, Commander, you would enjoy yourself
without knowing it, and so lose all the fun.
THE STATUE. True, most true. But I am quite content with brain
enough to know that I'm enjoying myself. I dont want to
understand why. In fact, I'd rather not. My experience is that
one's pleasures dont bear thinking about.
DON JUAN. That is why intellect is so unpopular. But to Life, the
force behind the Man, intellect is a necessity, because without
it he blunders into death. Just as Life, after ages of struggle,
evolved that wonderful bodily organ the eye, so that the living
organism could see where it was going and what was coming to
help or threaten it, and thus avoid a thousand dangers that
formerly slew it, so it is evolving today a mind's eye that
shall see, not the physical world, but the purpose of Life, and
thereby enable the individual to work for that purpose instead
of thwarting and baffling it by setting up shortsighted personal
aims as at present. Even as it is, only one sort of man has ever
been happy, has ever been universally respected among all the
conflicts of interests and illusions.
THE STATUE. You mean the military man.
DON JUAN. Commander: I do not mean the military man. When the
military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs
off its womankind. No: I sing, not arms and the hero, but the
philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the
inner will of the world, in invention to discover the means of
fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the
so-discovered means. Of all other sorts of men I declare myself
tired. They are tedious failures. When I was on earth,
professors of all sorts prowled round me feeling for an
unhealthy spot in me on which they could fasten. The doctors of
medicine bade me consider what I must do to save my body, and
offered me quack cures for imaginary diseases. I replied that I
was not a hypochondriac; so they called me Ignoramus and went
their way. The doctors of divinity bade me consider what I must
do to save my soul; but I was not a spiritual hypochondriac any
more than a bodily one, and would not trouble myself about that
either; so they called me Atheist and went their way. After them
came the politician, who said there was only one purpose in
nature, and that was to get him into parliament. I told him I
did not care whether he got into parliament or not; so he called
me Mugwump and went his way. Then came the romantic man, the
Artist, with his love songs and his paintings and his poems; and
with him I had great delight for many years, and some profit;
for I cultivated my senses for his sake; and his songs taught
me to hear better, his paintings to see better, and his poems to
feel more deeply. But he led me at last into the worship of
Woman.
ANA. Juan!
DON JUAN. Yes: I came to believe that in her voice was all the music
of the song, in her face all the beauty of the painting, and in
her soul all the emotion of the poem.
ANA. And you were disappointed, I suppose. Well, was it her fault
that you attributed all these perfections to her?
DON JUAN. Yes, partly. For with a wonderful instinctive cunning, she
kept silent and allowed me to glorify her: to mistake my own
visions, thoughts, and feelings for hers. Now my friend the
romantic man was often too poor or too timid to approach those
women who were beautiful or refined enough to seem to realize
his ideal; and so he went to his grave believing in his dream.
But I was more favored by nature and circumstance. I was of
noble birth and rich; and when my person did not please, my
conversation flattered, though I generally found myself
fortunate in both.
THE STATUE. Coxcomb!
DON JUAN. Yes; but even my coxcombry pleased. Well, I found that
when I had touched a woman's imagination, she would allow me to
persuade myself that she loved me; but when my suit was granted
she never said "I am happy: my love is satisfied": she always
said, first, "At last, the barriers are down," and second, "When
will you come again?"
ANA. That is exactly what men say.
DON JUAN. I protest I never said it. But all women say it. Well,
these two speeches always alarmed me; for the first meant that
the lady's impulse had been solely to throw down my
fortifications and gain my citadel; and the second openly
announced that henceforth she regarded me as her property, and
counted my time as already wholly at her disposal.
THE DEVIL. That is where your want of heart came in.
THE STATUE [shaking his head] You shouldnt repeat what a woman says,
Juan.
ANA [severely] It should be sacred to you.
THE STATUE. Still, they certainly do say it. I never minded the
barriers; but there was always a slight shock about the other,
unless one was very hard hit indeed.
DON JUAN. Then the lady, who had been happy and idle enough before,
became anxious, preoccupied with me, always intriguing,
conspiring, pursuing, watching, waiting, bent wholly on making
sure of her prey: I being the prey, you understand. Now this was
not what I had bargained for. It may have been very proper and
very natural; but it was not music, painting, poetry, and joy
incarnated in a beautiful woman. I ran away from it. I ran away
from it very often: in fact I became famous for running away
from it.
ANA. Infamous, you mean.
DON JUAN. I did not run away from you. Do you blame me for running
away from the others?
ANA. Nonsense, man. You are talking to a woman of 77 now. If you had
had the chance, you would have run away from me too- if I had
let you. You would not have found it so easy with me as with
some of the others. If men will not be faithful to their home
and their duties, they must be made to be. I daresay you all
want to marry lovely incarnations of music and painting and
poetry. Well, you cant have them, because they dont exist. If
flesh and blood is not good enough for you you must go without:
thats all. Women have to put up with flesh-and-blood husbands-
and little enough of that too, sometimes; and you will have to
put up with flesh-and-blood wives. [The Devil looks dubious.
The Statue makes a wry face]. I see you dont like that, any of
you; but it's true, for all that; so if you dont like it you
can lump it.
DON JUAN. My dear lady, you have put my whole case against romance
into a few sentences. That is just why I turned my back on the
romantic man with the artist nature, as he called his
infatuation. I thanked him for teaching me to use my eyes and
ears; but I told him that his beauty worshipping and happiness
hunting and woman idealizing was not worth a dump as a
philosophy of life; so he called me Philistine and went his way.
ANA. It seems that Woman taught you something, too, with all her
defects.
DON JUAN. She did more: she interpreted all the other teaching for
me. Ah, my friends, when the barriers were down for the first
time, what an astounding illumination! I had been prepared for
infatuation, for intoxication, for all the illusions of love's
young dream; and lo! never was my perception clearer, nor my
criticism more ruthless. The most jealous rival of my mistress
never saw every blemish in her more keenly than I. I was not
duped: I took her without chloroform.
ANA. But you did take her.
DON JUAN. That was the revelation. Up to that moment I had never
lost the sense of being my own master; never consciously taken
a single step until my reason had examined and approved it. I
had come to believe that I was a purely rational creature: a
thinker! I said, with the foolish philosopher, "I think;
therefore I am." It was Woman who taught me to say "I am;
therefore I think." And also "I would think more; therefore I
must be more."
THE STATUE. This is extremely abstract and metaphysical, Juan. If
you would stick to the concrete, and put your discoveries in the
form of entertaining anecdotes about your adventures with women,
your conversation would be easier to follow.
DON JUAN. Bah! what need I add? Do you not understand that when I
stood face to face with Woman, every fibre in my clear critical
brain warned me to spare her and save myself. My morals said No.
My conscience said No. My chivalry and pity for her said No. My
prudent regard for myself said No. My ear, practised on a
thousand songs and symphonies; my eye, exercised on a thousand
paintings; tore her voice, her features, her color to shreds. I
caught all those tell-tale resemblances to her father and mother
by which I knew what she would be like in thirty years' time. I
noted the gleam of gold from a dead tooth in the laughing mouth:
I made curious observations of the strange odors of the
chemistry of the nerves. The visions of my romantic reveries,
in which I had trod the plains of heaven with a deathless,
ageless creature of coral and ivory, deserted me in that supreme
hour. I remembered them and desperately strove to recover their
illusion; but they now seemed the emptiest of inventions: my
judgment was not to be corrupted: my brain still said No on
every issue. And whilst I was in the act of framing my excuse to
the lady, Life seized me and threw me into her arms as a sailor
throws a scrap of fish into the mouth of a seabird.
THE STATUE. You might as well have gone without thinking such a lot
about it, Juan. You are like all the clever men; you have more
brains than is good for you.
THE DEVIL. And were you not the happier for the experience, Senor
Don Juan?
DON JUAN. The happier, no: the wiser, yes. That moment introduced me
for the first time to myself, and, through myself, to the world.
I saw then how useless it is to attempt to impose conditions on
the irresistible force of Life; to preach prudence, careful
selection, virtue, honor, chastity-
ANA. Don Juan: a word against chastity is an insult to me.
DON JUAN. I say nothing against your chastity, Senora, since it took
the form of a husband and twelve children. What more could you
have done had you been the most abandoned of women?
ANA. I could have had twelve husbands and no children: thats what I
could have done, Juan. And let me tell you that that would have
made all the difference to the earth which I replenished.
THE STATUE. Bravo Ana! Juan: you are floored, quelled, annihilated.
DON JUAN. No: for though that difference is the true essential
difference- Dona Ana has, I admit, gone straight to the real
point- yet it is not a difference of love or chastity, or even
constancy; for twelve children by twelve different husbands
would have replenished the earth perhaps more effectively.
Suppose my friend Ottavio had died when you were thirty, you
would never have remained a widow: you were too beautiful.
Suppose the successor of Ottavio had died when you were forty,
you would still have been irresistible; and a woman who marries
twice marries three times if she becomes free to do so. Twelve
lawful children borne by one highly respectable lady to three
different fathers is not impossible nor condemned by public
opinion. That such a lady may be more law abiding than the poor
girl whom we used to spurn into the gutter for bearing one
unlawful infant is no doubt true; but dare you say she is less
self-indulgent?
ANA. She is more virtuous: that is enough for me.
DON JUAN. In that case, what is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the
married? Let us face the facts, dear Ana. The Life Force
respects marriage only because marriage is a contrivance of its
own to secure the greatest number of children and the closest
care of them. For honor, chastity, and all the rest of your
moral figments it cares not a rap. Marriage is the most
licentious of human institutions-
ANA. Juan!
THE STATUE [protesting] Really!-
DON JUAN [determinedly] I say the most licentious of human
institutions: that is the secret of its popularity. And a woman
seeking a husband is the most unscrupulous of all the beasts of
prey. The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to
destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single
error. Come, Ana! do not look shocked: you know better than any
of us that marriage is a mantrap baited with simulated
accomplishments and delusive idealizations. When your sainted
mother, by dint of scoldings and punishments, forced you to
learn how to play half a dozen pieces on the spinet- which she
hated as much as you did- had she any other purpose than to
delude your suitors into the belief that your husband would have
in his home an angel who would fill it with melody, or at least
play him to sleep after dinner? You married my friend Ottavio:
well, did you ever open the spinet from the hour when the Church
united him to you?
ANA. You are a fool, Juan. A young married woman has something else
to do than sit at the spinet without any support for her back;
so she gets out of the habit of playing.
DON JUAN. Not if she loves music. No: believe me, she only throws
away the bait when the bird is in the net.
ANA [bitterly] And men, I suppose, never throw off the mask when
their bird is in the net. The husband never becomes negligent,
selfish, brutal- oh, never!
DON JUAN. What do these recriminations prove, Ana? Only that the
hero is as gross an imposture as the heroine.
ANA. It is all nonsense: most marriages are perfectly comfortable.
DON JUAN. "Perfectly" is a strong expression, Ana. What you mean is
that sensible people make the best of one another. Send me to
the galleys and chain me to the felon whose number happens to
be next before mine; and I must accept the inevitable and make
the best of the companionship. Many such companionships, they
tell me, are touchingly affectionate; and most are at least
tolerably friendly. But that does not make a chain a desirable
ornament nor the galleys an abode of bliss. Those who talk most
about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows
are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken
and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric
would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If
the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why
pretend that he is?
ANA. At all events, let me take an old woman's privilege again, and
tell you flatly that marriage peoples the world and debauchery
does not.
DON JUAN. How if a time come when this shall cease to be true? Do
you not know that where there is a will there is a way? that
whatever Man really wishes to do he will finally discover a
means of doing? Well, you have done your best, you virtuous
ladies, and others of your way of thinking, to bend Man's mind
wholly towards honorable love as the highest good, and to
understand by honorable love, romance and beauty and happiness
in the possession of beautiful, refined, delicate, affectionate
women. You have taught women to value their own youth, health,
shapeliness, and refinement above all things. Well, what place
have squalling babies and household cares in this exquisite
paradise of the senses and emotions? Is it not the inevitable
end of it all that the human will shall say to the human brain:
Invent me a means by which I can have love, beauty, romance,
emotion, passion, without their wretched penalties, their
expenses, their worries, their trials, their illnesses and
agonies and risks of death, their retinue of servants and nurses
and doctors and schoolmasters.
THE DEVIL. All this, Senor Don Juan, is realized here in my realm.
DON JUAN. Yes, at the cost of death. Man will not take it at that
price: he demands the romantic delights of your hell whilst he
is still on earth. Well, the means will be found: the brain will
not fail when the will is in earnest. The day is coming when
great nations will find their numbers dwindling from census to
census; when the six roomed villa will rise in price above the
family mansion; when the viciously reckless poor and the
stupidly pious rich will delay the extinction of the race only
by degrading it; whilst the boldly prudent, the thriftily
selfish and ambitious, the imaginative and poetic, the lovers
of money and solid comfort, the worshippers of success, of art,
and of love, will all oppose to the Force of Life the device of
sterility.
THE STATUE. That is all very eloquent, my young friend; but if you
had lived to Ana's age, or even to mine, you would have learned
that the people who get rid of the fear of poverty and children
and all the other family troubles, and devote themselves to
having a good time of it, only leave their minds free for the
fear of old age and ugliness and impotence and death. The
childless laborer is more tormented by his wife's idleness and
her constant demands for amusement and distraction than he could
be by twenty children; and his wife is more wretched than he. I
have had my share of vanity; for as a young man I was admired
by women; and as a statue I am praised by art critics. But I
confess that had I found nothing to do in the world but wallow
in these delights I should have cut my throat. When I married
Ana's mother- or perhaps, to be strictly correct, I should
rather say when I at last gave in and allowed Ana's mother to
marry me- I knew that I was planting thorns in my pillow, and
that marriage for me, a swaggering young officer thitherto
unvanquished, meant defeat and capture.
ANA [scandalized] Father!
THE STATUE. I am sorry to shock you, my love; but since Juan has
stripped every rag of decency from the discussion I may as well
tell the frozen truth.
ANA. Hmf! I suppose I was one of the thorns.
THE STATUE. By no means: you were often a rose. You see, your mother
had most of the trouble you gave.
DON JUAN. Then may I ask, Commander, why you have left Heaven to
come here and wallow, as you express it, in sentimental
beatitudes which you confess would once have driven you to cut
your throat?
THE STATUE [struck by this] Egad, thats true.
THE DEVIL [alarmed] What! You are going back from your word! [To Don
Juan] And all your philosophizing has been nothing but a mask
for proselytizing! [To the Statue] Have you forgotten already
the hideous dulness from which I am offering you a refuge here?
[To Don Juan] And does your demonstration of the approaching
sterilization and extinction of mankind lead to anything better
than making the most of those pleasures of art and love which
you yourself admit refined you, elevated you, developed you?
DON JUAN. I never demonstrated the extinction of mankind. Life
cannot will its own extinction either in its blind amorphous
state or in any of the forms into which it has organized itself.
I had not finished when His Excellency interrupted me.
THE STATUE. I begin to doubt whether you ever will finish, my
friend. You are extremely fond of hearing yourself talk.
DON JUAN. True; but since you have endured so much, you may as well
endure to the end. Long before this sterilization which I
described becomes more than a clearly foreseen possibility, the
reaction will begin. The great central purpose of breeding the
race: ay, breeding it to heights now deemed superhuman: that
purpose which is now hidden in a mephitic cloud of love and
romance and prudery and fastidiousness, will break through into
clear sunlight as a purpose no longer to be confused with the
gratification of personal fancies, the impossible realization
of boys' and girls' dreams of bliss, or the need of older people
for companionship or money. The plain-spoken marriage services
of the vernacular Churches will no longer be abbreviated and
half suppressed as indelicate. The sober decency, earnestness,
and authority of their declaration of the real purpose of
marriage will be honored and accepted, whilst their romantic
vowings and pledgings and until-death-do-us-partings and the
like will be expunged as unbearable frivolities. Do my sex the
justice to admit, Senora, that we have always recognized that
the sex relation is not a personal or friendly relation at all.
ANA. Not a personal or friendly relation! What relation is more
personal? more sacred? more holy?
DON JUAN. Sacred and holy, if you like, Ana, but not personally
friendly. Your relation to God is sacred and holy: dare you call
it personally friendly? In the sex relation the universal
creative energy, of which the parties are both the helpless
agents, over-rides and sweeps away all personal considerations,
and dispenses with all personal relations. The pair may be utter
strangers to one another, speaking different languages,
differing in race and color, in age and disposition, with no
bond between them but a possibility of that fecundity for the
sake of which the Life Force throws them into one another's arms
at the exchange of a glance. Do we not recognize this by
allowing marriages to be made by parents without consulting the
woman? Have you not often expressed your disgust at the
immorality of the English nation, in which women and men of
noble birth become acquainted and court each other like
peasants? And how much does even the peasant know of his bride
or she of him before he engages himself? Why, you would not make
a man your lawyer or your family doctor on so slight an
acquaintance as you would fall in love with and marry him!
ANA. Yes, Juan: we know the libertine's philosophy. Always ignore
the consequences to the woman.
DON JUAN. The consequences, yes: they justify her fierce grip of the
man. But surely you do not call that attachment a sentimental
one. As well call the policeman's attachment to his prisoner a
love relation.
ANA. You see you have to confess that marriage is necessary, though,
according to you, love is the slightest of all human relations.
DON JUAN. How do you know that it is not the greatest of all human
relations? far too great to be a personal matter. Could your
father have served his country if he had refused to kill any
enemy of Spain unless he personally hated him? Can a woman serve
her country if she refuses to marry any man she does not
personally love? You know it is not so: the woman of noble birth
marries as the man of noble birth fights, on political and
family grounds, not on personal ones.
THE STATUE [impressed] A very clever point that, Juan: I must think
it over. You are really full of ideas. How did you come to think
of this one?
DON JUAN. I learnt it by experience. When I was on earth, and made
those proposals to ladies which, though universally condemned,
have made me so interesting a hero of legend, I was not
infrequently met in some such way as this. The lady would say
that she would countenance my advances, provided they were
honorable. On inquiring what that proviso meant, I found that
it meant that I proposed to get possession of her property if
she had any, or to undertake her support for life if she had
not; that I desired her continual companionship, counsel, and
conversation to the end of my days, and would take a most solemn
oath to be always enraptured by them above all, that I would
turn my back on all other women for ever for her sake. I did not
object to these conditions because they were exorbitant and
inhuman: it was their extraordinary irrelevance that prostrated
me. I invariably replied with perfect frankness that I had never
dreamt of any of these things; that unless the lady's character
and intellect were equal or superior to my own, her conversation
must degrade and her counsel mislead me; that her constant
companionship might, for all I knew, become intolerably tedious
to me; that I could not answer for my feelings for a week in
advance, much less to the end of my life; that to cut me off
from all natural and unconstrained intercourse with half my
fellowcreatures would narrow and warp me if I submitted to it,
and, if not, would bring me under the curse of clandestinity;
that, finally, my proposals to her were wholly unconnected with
any of these matters, and were the outcome of a perfectly simple
impulse of my manhood towards her womanhood.
ANA. You mean that it was an immoral impulse.
DON JUAN. Nature, my dear lady, is what you call immoral. I blush
for it; but I cannot help it. Nature is a pandar, Time a
wrecker, and Death a murderer. I have always preferred to stand
up to those facts and build institutions on their recognition.
You prefer to propitiate the three devils by proclaiming their
chastity, their thrift, and their loving kindness; and to base
your institutions on these flatteries. Is it any wonder that the
institutions do not work smoothly?
THE STATUE. What used the ladies to say, Juan?
DON JUAN. Oh, come! Confidence for confidence. First tell me what
you used to say to the ladies.
THE STATUE. I! Oh, I swore that I would be faithful to the death;
that I should die if they refused me; that no woman could ever
be to me what she was-
ANA. She! Who?
THE STATUE. Whoever it happened to be at the time, my dear. I had
certain things I always said. One of them was that even when I
was eighty, one white hair of the woman I loved would make me
tremble more than the thickest gold tress from the most
beautiful young head. Another was that I could not bear the
thought of anyone else being the mother of my children.
DON JUAN [revolted] You old rascal!
THE STATUE [stoutly] Not a bit; for I really believed it with all my
soul at the moment. I had a heart: not like you. And it was this
sincerity that made me successful.
DON JUAN. Sincerity! To be fool enough to believe a ramping,
stamping, thumping lie: that is what you call sincerity! To be
so greedy for a woman that you deceive yourself in your
eagerness to deceive her: sincerity, you call it!
THE STATUE. Oh damn your sophistries! I was a man in love, not a
lawyer. And the women loved me for it, bless them!
DON JUAN. They made you think so. What will you say when I tell you
that though I played the lawyer so callously, they made me think
so too? I also had my moments of infatuation in which I gushed
nonsense and believed it. Sometimes the desire to give pleasure
by saying beautiful things so rose in me on the flood of emotion
that I said them recklessly. At other times I argued against
myself with a devilish coldness that drew tears. But I found it
just as hard to escape when I was cruel as when I was kind. When
the lady's instinct was set on me, there was nothing for it but
lifelong servitude or flight.
ANA. You dare boast, before me and my father, that every woman found
you irresistible.
DON JUAN. Am I boasting? It seems to me that I cut the most pitiable
of figures. Besides, I said "when the lady's instinct was set on
me." It was not always so; and then, heavens! what transports of
virtuous indignation! what overwhelming defiance to the
dastardly seducer! what scenes of Imogen and Iachimo!
ANA. I made no scenes. I simply called my father.
DON JUAN. And he came, sword in hand, to vindicate outraged honor
and morality by murdering me.
THE STATUE. Murdering! What do you mean? Did I kill you or did you
kill me?
DON JUAN. Which of us was the better fencer?
THE STATUE. I was.
DON JUAN. Of course you were. And yet you, the hero of those
scandalous adventures you have just been relating to us, you had
the effrontery to pose as the avenger of outraged morality and
condemn me to death! You would have slain me but for an
accident.
THE STATUE. I was expected to, Juan. That is how things were
arranged on earth. I was not a social reformer; and I always did
what it was customary for a gentleman to do.
DON JUAN. That may account for your attacking me, but not for the
revolting hypocrisy of your subsequent proceedings as a statue.
THE STATUE. That all came of my going to heaven.
THE DEVIL. I still fail to see, Senor Don Juan, that these episodes
in your earthly career and in that of the Senor Commander in any
way discredit my view of life. Here, I repeat, you have all that
you sought without anything that you shrank from.
DON JUAN. On the contrary, here I have everything that disappointed
me without anything that I have not already tried and found
wanting. I tell you that as long as I can conceive something
better than myself I cannot be easy unless I am striving to
bring it into existence or clearing the way for it. That is the
law of my life. That is the working within me of Life's
incessant aspiration to higher organization, wider, deeper,
intenser self-consciousness, and clearer self-understanding. It
was the supremacy of this purpose that reduced love for me to
the mere pleasure of a moment, art for me to the mere schooling
of my faculties, religion for me to a mere excuse for laziness,
since it had set up a God who looked at the world and saw it was
good, against the instinct in me that looked through my eyes at
the world and saw that it could be improved. I tell you that in
the pursuit of my own pleasure, my own health, my own fortune,
I have never known happiness. It was not love for Woman that
delivered me into her hands: it was fatigue, exhaustion. When I
was a child, and bruised my head against a stone, I ran to the
nearest woman and cried away my pain against her apron. When I
grew up, and bruised my soul against the brutalities and
stupidities with which I had to strive, I did again just what I
had done as a child. I have enjoyed, too, my rests, my
recuperations, my breathing times, my very prostrations after
strife; but rather would I be dragged through all the circles
of the foolish Italian's Inferno than through the pleasures of
Europe. That is what has made this place of eternal pleasures
so deadly to me. It is the absence of this instinct in you that
makes you that strange monster called a Devil. It is the success
with which you have diverted the attention of men from their
real purpose, which in one degree or another is the same as
mine, to yours, that has earned you the name of The Tempter. It
is the fact that they are doing your will, or rather drifting
with your want of will, instead of doing their own, that makes
them the uncomfortable, false, restless, artificial, petulant,
wretched creatures they are.
THE DEVIL [mortified] Senor Don Juan: you are uncivil to my friends.
DON JUAN. Pooh! why should I be civil to them or to you? In this
Palace of Lies a truth or two will not hurt you. Your friends
are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they
are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and
starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably
dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen.
They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not
moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they
are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only
"frail." They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They
are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they
are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public
spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not
determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not
self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain;
not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not
considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not
progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious;
not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not
disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every
one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.
THE STATUE. Your flow of words is simply amazing, Juan. How I wish
I could have talked like that to my soldiers.
THE DEVIL. It is mere talk, though. It has all been said before; but
what change has it ever made? What notice has the world ever
taken of it?
DON JUAN. Yes, it is mere talk. But why is it mere talk? Because, my
friend, beauty, purity, respectability, religion, morality, art,
patriotism, bravery, and the rest are nothing but words which I
or anyone else can turn inside out like a glove. Were they
realities, you would have to plead guilty to my indictment; but
fortunately for your self-respect, my diabolical friend, they
are not realities. As you say, they are mere words, useful for
duping barbarians into adopting civilization, or the civilized
poor into submitting to be robbed and enslaved. That is the
family secret of the governing caste; and if we who are of that
caste aimed at more Life for the world instead of at more power
and luxury for our miserable selves, that secret would make us
great. Now, since I, being a nobleman, am in the secret too,
think how tedious to me must be your unending cant about all
these moralistic figments, and how squalidly disastrous your
sacrifice of your lives to them! If you even believed in your
moral game enough to play it fairly, it would be interesting to
watch; but you dont: you cheat at every trick; and if your
opponent outcheats you, you upset the table and try to murder
him.
THE DEVIL. On earth there may be some truth in this, because the
people are uneducated and cannot appreciate my religion of love
and beauty; but here-
DON JUAN. Oh yes: I know. Here there is nothing but love and beauty.
Ugh! it is like sitting for all eternity at the first act of a
fashionable play, before the complications begin. Never in my
worst moments of superstitious terror on earth did I dream that
hell was so horrible. I live, like a hair-dresser, in the
continual contemplation of beauty, toying with silken tresses.
I breathe an atmosphere of sweetness, like a confectioner's
shopboy. Commander: are there any beautiful women in Heaven?
THE STATUE. None. Absolutely none. All dowdies. Not two pennorth of
jewellery among a dozen of them. They might be men of fifty.
DON JUAN. I am impatient to get there. Is the word beauty ever
mentioned; and are there any artistic people?
THE STATUE. I give you my word they wont admire a fine statue even
when it walks past them.
DON JUAN. I go.
THE DEVIL. Don Juan: shall I be frank with you?
DON JUAN. Were you not so before?
THE DEVIL. As far as I went, yes. But I will now go further, and
confess to you that men get tired of everything, of heaven no
less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record
of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An
epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks
the world is progressing because it is always moving. But when
you are as old as I am; when you have a thousand times wearied
of heaven, like myself and the Commander, and a thousand times
wearied of hell, as you are wearied now, you will no longer
imagine that every swing from heaven to hell is an emancipation,
every swing from hell to heaven an evolution. Where you now see
reform, progress, fulfilment of upward tendency, continual
ascent by Man on the stepping stones of his dead selves to
higher things, you will see nothing but an infinite comedy of
illusion. You will discover the profound truth of the saying of
my friend Koheleth, that there is nothing new under the sun.
Vanitas vanitatum-
DON JUAN [out of all patience] By Heaven, this is worse than your
cant about love and beauty. Clever dolt that you are, is a man
no better than a worm, or a dog than a wolf, because he gets
tired of everything? Shall he give up eating because he destroys
his appetite in the act of gratifying it? Is a field idle when
it is fallow? Can the Commander expend his hellish energy here
without accumulating heavenly energy for his next term of
blessedness? Granted that the great Life Force has hit on the
device of the clockmaker's pendulum, and uses the earth for its
bob; that the history of each oscillation, which seems so novel
to us the actors, is but the history of the last oscillation
repeated; nay more, that in the unthinkable infinitude of time
the sun throws off the earth and catches it again a thousand
times as a circus rider throws up a ball, and that our agelong
epochs are but the moments between the toss and the catch, has
the colossal mechanism no purpose?
THE DEVIL. None, my friend. You think, because you have a purpose,
Nature must have one. You might as well expect it to have
fingers and toes because you have them.
DON JUAN. But I should not have them if they served no purpose. And
I, my friend am as much a part of Nature as my own finger is a
part of me. If my finger is the organ by which I grasp the sword
and the mandoline, my brain is the organ by which Nature strives
to understand itself. My dog's brain serves only my dog's
purposes; but my own brain labors at a knowledge which does
nothing for me personally but make my body bitter to me and my
decay and death a calamity. Were I not possessed with a purpose
beyond my own I had better be a ploughman than a philosopher;
for the ploughman lives as long as the philosopher, eats more,
sleeps better, and rejoices in the wife of his bosom with less
misgiving. This is because the philosopher is in the grip of the
Life Force. This Life Force says to him "I have done a thousand
wonderful things unconsciously by merely willing to live and
following the line of least resistance: now I want to know
myself and my destination, and choose my path; so I have made a
special brain- a philosopher's brain- to grasp this knowledge
for me as the husbandman's hand grasps the plough for me. And
this" says the Life Force to the philosopher "must thou strive
to do for me until thou diest, when I will make another brain
and another philosopher to carry on the work."
THE DEVIL. What is the use of knowing?
DON JUAN. Why, to be able to choose the line of greatest advantage
instead of yielding in the direction of the least resistance.
Does a ship sail to its destination no better than a log drifts
nowhither? The philosopher is Nature's pilot. And there you have
our difference: to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to
steer.
THE DEVIL. On the rocks, most likely.
DON JUAN. Pooh! which ship goes oftenest on the rocks or to the
bottom? the drifting ship or the ship with a pilot on board?
THE DEVIL. Well, well, go your way, Senor Don Juan. I prefer to be
my own master and not the tool of any blundering universal
force. I know that beauty is good to look at; that music is good
to hear; that love is good to feel; and that they are all good
to think about and talk about. I know that to be well exercised
in these sensations, emotions, and studies is to be a refined
and cultivated being. Whatever they may say of me in churches on
earth, I know that it is universally admitted in good society
that the Prince of Darkness is a gentleman; and that is enough
for me. As to your Life Force, which you think irresistible, it
is the most resistible thing in the world for a person of any
character. But if you are naturally vulgar and credulous, as
all reformers are, it will thrust you first into religion, where
you will sprinkle water on babies to save their souls from me;
then it will drive you from religion into science, where you
will snatch the babies from the water sprinkling and inoculate
them with disease to save them from catching it accidentally;
then you will take to politics, where you will become the
catspaw of corrupt functionaries and the henchman of ambitious
humbugs; and the end will be despair and decrepitude, broken
nerve and shattered hopes, vain regrets for that worst and
silliest of wastes and sacrifices, the waste and sacrifice of
the power of enjoyment: in a word, the punishment of the fool
who pursues the better before he has secured the good.
DON JUAN. But at least I shall not be bored. The service of the Life
Force has that advantage, at all events. So fare you well, Senor
Satan.
THE DEVIL [amiably] Fare you well, Don Juan. I shall often think of
our interesting chats about things in general. I wish you every
happiness: Heaven, as I said before, suits some people. But if
you should change your mind, do not forget that the gates are
always open here to the repentant prodigal. If you feel at any
time that warmth of heart, sincere unforced affection, innocent
enjoyment, and warm, breathing, palpitating reality-
DON JUAN. Why not say flesh and blood at once, though we have left
those two greasy commonplaces behind us?
THE DEVIL [angrily] You throw my friendly farewell back in my teeth,
then, Don Juan?
DON JUAN. By no means. But though there is much to be learnt from a
cynical devil, I really cannot stand a sentimental one. Senor
Commander: you know the way to the frontier of hell and heaven.
Be good enough to direct me.
THE STATUE. Oh, the frontier is only the difference between two ways
of looking at things. Any road will take you across it if you
really want to get there.
DON JUAN. Good. [Saluting Dona Ana] Senora: your servant.
ANA. But I am going with you.
DON JUAN. I can find my own way to heaven, Ana; not yours [he
vanishes].
ANA. How annoying!
THE STATUE [calling after him] Bon voyage, Juan! [He wafts a final
blast of his great rolling chords after him as a parting salute.
A faint echo of the first ghostly melody comes back in
acknowledgment]. Ah! there he goes. [Puffing a long breath out
through his lips] Whew! How he does talk! Theyll never stand it
in heaven.
THE DEVIL [gloomily] His going is a political defeat. I cannot keep
these Life Worshippers: they all go. This is the greatest loss
I have had since that Dutch painter went: a fellow who would
paint a hag of 70 with as much enjoyment as a Venus of 20.
THE STATUE. I remember: he came to heaven. Rembrandt.
THE DEVIL. Ay, Rembrandt. There is something unnatural about these
fellows. Do not listen to their gospel, Senor Commander: it is
dangerous. Beware of the pursuit of the Superhuman: it leads to
an indiscriminate contempt for the Human. To a man, horses and
dogs and cats are mere species, outside the moral world. Well,
to the Superman, men and women are a mere species too, also
outside the moral world. This Don Juan was kind to women and
courteous to men as your daughter here was kind to her pet cats
and dogs; but such kindness is a denial of the exclusively human
character of the soul.
THE STATUE. And who the deuce is the Superman?
THE DEVIL. Oh, the latest fashion among the Life Force fanatics. Did
you not meet in Heaven, among the new arrivals, that German
Polish madman? what was his name? Nietzsche?
THE STATUE. Never heard of him.
THE DEVIL. Well, he came here first, before he recovered his wits.
I had some hopes of him; but he was a confirmed Life Force
worshipper. It was he who raked up the Superman, who is as old
as Prometheus; and the 20th century will run after this newest
of the old crazes when it gets tired of the world, the flesh,
and your humble servant.
THE STATUE. Superman is a good cry; and a good cry is half the
battle. I should like to see this Nietzsche.
THE DEVIL. Unfortunately he met Wagner here, and had a quarrel with
him.
THE STATUE. Quite right, too. Mozart for me!
THE DEVIL. Oh, it was not about music. Wagner once drifted into Life
Force worship, and invented a Superman called Siegfried. But he
came to his senses afterwards. So when they met here, Nietzsche
denounced him as a renegade; and Wagner wrote a pamphlet to
prove that Nietzsche was a Jew; and it ended in Nietzsche's
going to heaven in a huff. And a good riddance too. And now, my
friend, let us hasten to my palace and celebrate your arrival
with a grand musical service.
THE STATUE. With pleasure: youre most kind.
THE DEVIL. This way, Commander. We go down the old trap [he places
himself on the grave trap].
THE STATUE. Good. [Reflectively] All the same, the Superman is a
fine conception. There is something statuesque about it. [He
places himself on the grave trap beside the Devil. It begins to
descend slowly. Red glow from the abysss]. Ah, this reminds me
of old times.
THE DEVIL. And me also.
ANA. Stop! [The trap stops].
THE DEVIL. You, Senora, cannot come this way. You will have an
apotheosis. But you will be at the palace before us.
ANA. That is not what I stopped you for. Tell me: where can I find
the Superman?
THE DEVIL. He is not yet created, Senora.
THE STATUE. And never will be, probably. Let us proceed: the red
fire will make me sneeze. [They descend].
ANA. Not yet created! Then my work is not yet done. [Crossing
herself devoutly] I believe in the Life to Come. [Crying to the
universe] A father! a father for the Superman!
She vanishes into the void; and again there is nothing; all
existence seems suspended infinitely. Then, vaguely, there is a live
human voice crying somewhere. One sees, with a shock, a mountain
peak shewing faintly against a lighter background. The sky has
returned from afar; and we suddenly remember where we were. The cry
becomes distinct and urgent: it says *Automobile, Automobile.* The
complete reality comes back with a rush: in a moment it is full
morning in the Sierra; and the brigands are scrambling to their feet
and making for the road as the goatherd runs down from the hill,
warning them of the approach of another motor. Tanner and Mendoza rise
amazedly and stare at one another with scattered wits. Straker sits up
to yawn for a moment before he gets on his feet, making it a point
of honor not to shew any undue interest in the excitement of the
bandits. Mendoza gives a quick look to see that his followers are
attending to the alarm; then exchanges a private word with Tanner.
MENDOZA. Did you dream?
TANNER. Damnably. Did you?
MENDOZA. Yes. I forget what. You were in it.
TANNER. So were you. Amazing!
MENDOZA. I warned you. [A shot is heard from the road]. Dolts! they
will play with that gun. [The brigands come running back
scared]. Who fired that shot? [to Duval] was it you?
DUVAL [breathless] I have not shoot. Dey shoot first.
ANARCHIST. I told you to begin by abolishing the State. Now we are
all lost.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [stampeding across the amphitheatre] Ran,
everybody.
MENDOZA [collaring him; throwing him on his back; and drawing a
knife] I stab the man who stirs. [He blocks the way. The
stampede is checked]. What has happened?
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT. A motor-
THE ANARCHIST. Three men-
DUVAL. Deux femmes-
MENDOZA. Three men and two women! Why have you not brought them
here? Are you afraid of them?
THE ROWDY ONE [getting up] Thyve a hescort. Ow, de-ooh luts ook it,
Mendowza.
THE SULKY ONE. Two armored cars full o soldiers at the ed o the
valley.
ANARCHIST. The shot was fired in the air. It was a signal.
Straker whistles his favorite air, which falls on the ears of
the brigands like a funeral march.
TANNER. It is not an escort, but an expedition to capture you. We
were advised to wait for it; but I was in a hurry.
THE ROWDY ONE [in agony of apprehension] And Ow my good Lord, ere we
are, wytin for em! Luts tike to the mahntns.
MENDOZA. Idiot, what do you know about the mountains? Are you a
Spaniard? You would be given up by the first shepherd you met.
Besides, we are already within range of their rifles.
THE ROWDY ONE. Bat-
MENDOZA. Silence. Leave this to me. [To Tanner] Comrade: you will
not betray us.
STRAKER. Oo are you callin comrade?
MENDOZA. Last night the advantage was with me. The robber of the
poor was at the mercy of the robber of the rich. You offered
your hand: I took it.
TANNER. I bring no charge against you, comrade. We have spent a
pleasant evening with you: that is all.
STRAKER. I gev my and to nobody, see?
MENDOZA [turning on him impressively] Young man: if I am tried, I
shall plead guilty, and explain what drove me from England,
home, and duty. Do you wish to have the respectable name of
Straker dragged through the mud of a Spanish criminal court? The
police will search me. They will find Louisa's portrait. It will
be published in the illustrated papers. You blench. It will be
your doing, remember.
STRAKER [with baffled rage] I dont care about the court. It's avin
our name mixed up with yours that I object to, you blackmailin
swine, you.
MENDOZA. Language unworthy of Louisa's brother! But no matter: you
are muzzled: that is enough for us. [He turns to face his own
men, who back uneasily across the amphitheatre towards the cave
to take refuge behind him, as a fresh party, muffled for
motoring, comes from the road in riotous spirits. Ann, who makes
straight for Tanner, comes first; then Violet, helped over the
rough ground by Hector holding her right hand and Ramsden her
left. Mendoza goes to his presidential block and seats himself
calmly with his rank and file grouped behind him, and his Staff,
consisting of Duval and the Anarchist on his right and the two
Social-Democrats on his left, supporting him in flank].
ANN. It's Jack!
TANNER. Caught!
HECTOR. Why, certainly it is. I said it was you, Tanner. Weve just
been stopped by a puncture: the road is full of nails.
VIOLET. What are you doing here with all these men?
ANN. Why did you leave us without a word of warning?
HECTOR. I wawnt that bunch of roses, Miss Whitefield. [To Tanner]
When we found you were gone, Miss Whitefield bet me a bunch of
roses my car would not overtake yours before you reached Monte
Carlo.
TANNER. But this is not the road to Monte Carlo.
HECTOR. No matter. Miss Whitefield tracked you at every stopping
place: she is a regular Sherlock Holmes.
TANNER. The Life Force! I am lost.
OCTAVIUS [bounding gaily down from the road into the amphitheatre,
and coming between Tanner and Straker] I am so glad you are
safe, old chap. We were afraid you had been captured by
brigands.
RAMSDEN [who has been staring at Mendoza] I seem to remember the
face of your friend here. [Mendoza rises politely and advances
with a smile between Ann and Ramsden].
HECTOR. Why, so do I.
OCTAVIUS. I know you perfectly well, sir; but I cant think where I
have met you.
MENDOZA [to Violet] Do you remember me, madam?
VIOLET. Oh, quite well; but I am so stupid about names.
MENDOZA. It was at the Savoy Hotel. [To Hector] You, sir, used to
come with this lady [Violet] to lunch. [To Octavius] You, sir,
often brought this lady [Ann] and her mother to dinner on your
way to the Lyceum Theatre. [To Ramsden] You, sir, used to come
to supper, with [dropping his voice to a confidential but
perfectly audible whisper] several different ladies.
RAMSDEN [angrily] Well, what is that to you, pray?
OCTAVIUS. Why, Violet, I thought you hardly knew one another before
this trip, you and Malone!
VIOLET [vexed] I suppose this person was the manager.
MENDOZA. The waiter, madam. I have a grateful recollection of you
all. I gathered from the bountiful way in which you treated me
that you all enjoyed your visits very much.
VIOLET. What impertinence! [She turns her back on him, and goes up
the hill with Hector].
RAMSDEN. That will do, my friend. You do not expect these ladies to
treat you as an acquaintance, I suppose, because you have waited
on them at table.
MENDOZA. Pardon me: it was you who claimed my acquaintance. The
ladies followed your example. However, this display of the
unfortunate manners of your class closes the incident. For the
future, you will please address me with the respect due to a
stranger and fellow traveller. [He turns haughtily away and
resumes his presidential seat].
TANNER. There! I have found one man on my journey capable of
reasonable conversation; and you all instinctively insult him.
Even the New Man is as bad as any of you. Enry: you have behaved
just like a miserable gentleman.
STRAKER. Gentleman! Not me.
RAMSDEN. Really, Tanner, this tone-
ANN. Dont mind him, Granny: you ought to know him by this time [she
takes his arm and coaxes him away to the hill to join Violet and
Hector, Octavius follows her, dog-like].
VIOLET [calling from the hill] Here are the soldiers. They are
getting out of their motors.
DUVAL [panic-stricken] Oh, nom de Dieu!
THE ANARCHIST. Fools: the State is about to crush you because you
spared it at the prompting of the political hangers-on of the
bourgeoisie.
THE SULKY SOCIAL-DEMOCRAT [argumentative to the last] On the
contrary, only by capturing the State machine-
THE ANARCHIST. It is going to capture you.
THE ROWDY SOCIAL DEMOCRAT [his anguish culminating] Ow, chack it.
Wot are we ere for? Wot are we wytin for?
MENDOZA [between his teeth] Go on. Talk politics, you idiots:
nothing sounds more respectable. Keep it up, I tell you.
The soldiers line the road, commanding the amphitheatre with their
rifles. The brigands, struggling with an overwhelming impulse to
hide behind one another, look as unconcerned as they can. Mendoza
rises superbly, with undaunted front. The officer in command steps
down from the road into the amphitheatre; looks hard at the
brigands; and then inquiringly at Tanner.
THE OFFICER. Who are these men, Senor Ingles?
TANNER. My escort.
Mendoza, with a Mephistophelean smile, bows profoundly. An
irrepressible grin runs from face to face among the brigands. They
touch their hats, except the Anarchist, who defies the State with
folded arms.
ACT FOUR
THE garden of a villa in Granada. Whoever wishes to know what it
is like must go to Granada to see. One may prosaically specify a group
of hills dotted with villas, the Alhambra on the top of one of the
hills, and a considerable town in the valley, approached by dusty
white roads in which the children, no matter what they are doing or
thinking about, automatically whine for halfpence and reach out little
clutching brown palms for them; but there is nothing in this
description except the Alhambra, the begging, and the color of the
roads, that does not fit Surrey as well as Spain. The difference is
that the Surrey hills are comparatively small and ugly, and should
properly be called the Surrey Protuberances; but these Spanish hills
are of mountain stock: the amenity which conceals their size does
not compromise their dignity.
This particular garden is on a hill opposite the Alhambra; and the
villa is as expensive and pretentious as a villa must be if it is to
be let furnished by the week to opulent American and English visitors.
If we stand on the lawn at the foot of the garden and look uphill, our
horizon is the stone balustrade of a flagged platform on the edge of
infinite space at the top of the hill. Between us and this platform is
a flower garden with a circular basin and fountain in the centre,
surrounded by geometrical flower beds, gravel paths, and clipped yew
trees in the genteelest order. The garden is higher than our lawn;
so we reach it by a few steps in the middle of its embankment. The
platform is higher again than the garden, from which we mount a couple
more steps to look over the balustrade at a fine view of the town up
the valley and of the hills that stretch away beyond it to where, in
the remotest distance, they become mountains. On our left is the
villa, accessible by steps from the left hand corner of the garden.
Returning from the platform through the garden and down again to the
lawn (a movement which leaves the villa behind us on our right) we
find evidence of literary interests on the part of the tenants in
the fact that there is no tennis net nor set of croquet hoops, but, on
our left, a little iron garden table with books on it, mostly
yellow-backed, and a chair beside it. A chair on the right has also
a couple of open books upon it. There are no newspapers, a
circumstance which, with the absence of games, might lead an
intelligent spectator to the most far reaching conclusions as to the
sort of people who live in the villa. Such speculations are checked,
however, on this delightfully fine afternoon, by the appearance at a
little gate in a paling on our left, of Henry Straker in his
professional costume. He opens the gate for an elderly gentleman,
and follows him on to the lawn.
This elderly gentleman defies the Spanish sun in a black frock
coat, tall silk hat, trousers in which narrow stripes of dark grey and
lilac blend into a highly respectable color, and a black necktie
tied into a bow over spotless linen. Probably therefore a man whose
social position needs constant and scrupulous affirmation without
regard to climate: one who would dress thus for the middle of the
Sahara or the top of Mont Blanc. And since he has not the stamp of the
class which accepts as its life-mission the advertizing and
maintenance of first rate tailoring and millinery, he looks vulgar
in his finery, though in a working dress of any kind he would look
dignified enough. He is a bullet cheeked man with a red complexion,
stubbly hair, smallish eyes, a hard mouth that folds down at the
corners, and a dogged chin. The looseness of skin that comes with
age has attacked his throat and the laps of his cheeks; but he is
still hard as an apple above the mouth; so that the upper half of
his face looks younger than the lower. He has the self-confidence of
one who has made money, and something of the truculence of one who has
made it in a brutalizing struggle, his civility having under it a
perceptible menace that he has other methods in reserve if
necessary. Withal, a man to be rather pitied when he is not to be
feared; for there is something pathetic about him at times, as if
the huge commercial machine which has worked him into his frock coat
had allowed him very little of his own way and left his affections
hungry and baffled. At the first word that falls from him it is
clear that he is an Irishman whose native intonation has clung to
him through many changes of place and rank. One can only guess that
the original material of his speech was perhaps the surly Kerry
brogue; but the degradation of speech that occurs in London,
Glasgow, Dublin, and big cities generally has been at work on it so
long that nobody but an arrant cockney would dream of calling it a
brogue now; for its music is almost gone, though its surliness is
still perceptible. Straker, being a very obvious cockney, inspires him
with implacable contempt, as a stupid Englishman who cannot even speak
his own language properly. Straker, on the other hand, regards the old
gentleman's accent as a joke thoughtfully provided by Providence
expressly for the amusement of the British race, and treats him
normally with the indulgence due to an inferior and unlucky species,
but occasionally with indignant alarm when the old gentleman shews
signs of intending his Irish nonsense to be taken seriously.
STRAKER. I'll go tell the young lady. She said youd prefer to stay
here [he turns to go up through the garden to the villa].
THE IRISHMAN [who has been looking round him with lively curiosity]
The young lady? Thats Miss Violet, eh?
STRAKER [stopping on the steps with sudden suspicion] Well, you
know, dont you?
THE IRISHMAN. Do I?
STRAKER [his temper rising] Well, do you or dont you?
THE IRISHMAN. What business is that of yours?
Straker, now highly indignant, comes back from the steps and
confronts the visitor.
STRAKER. I'll tell you what business it is of mine. Miss Robinson-
THE IRISHMAN [interrupting] Oh, her name is Robinson, is it? Thank
you.
STRAKER. Why, you dont know even her name?
THE IRISHMAN. Yes I do, now that youve told me.
STRAKER [after a moment of stupefaction at the old man's readiness
in repartee] Look here: what do you mean by gittin into my car
and lettin me bring you here if youre not the person I took that
note to?
THE IRISHMAN. Who else did you take it to, pray?
STRAKER. I took it to Mr Ector Malone, at Miss Robinson's request,
see? Miss Robinson is not my principal: I took it to oblige her.
I know Mr Malone; and he aint you, not by a long chalk. At the
hotel they told me that your name is Ector Malone-
MALONE. Hector Malone.
STRAKER [with calm superiority] Hector in your own country: thats
what comes o livin in provincial places like Ireland and
America. Over here youre Ector: if you avnt noticed it before
you soon will.
The growing strain of the conversation is here relieved by Violet,
who has sallied from the villa and through the garden to the steps,
which she now descends, coming very opportunely between Malone and
Straker.
VIOLET [to Straker] Did you take my message?
STRAKER. Yes, miss. I took it to the hotel and sent it up, expecting
to see young Mr Malone. Then out walks this gent, and says it's
all right and he'll come with me. So as the hotel people said he
was Mr Ector Malone, I fetched him. And now he goes back on what
he said. But if he isnt the gentleman you meant, say the word:
it's easy enough to fetch him back again.
MALONE. I should esteem it a great favor if I might have a short
conversation with you, madam. I am Hector's father, as this
bright Britisher would have guessed in the course of another
hour or so.
STRAKER [coolly defiant] No, not in another year or so. When weve ad
you as long to polish up as weve ad im, perhaps youll begin to
look a little bit up to is mark. At present you fall a long way
short. Youve got too many aitches, for one thing. [To Violet,
amiably] All right, Miss: you want to talk to him: I shant
intrude. [He nods affably to Malone and goes out through the
little gate in the paling].
VIOLET [very civilly] I am so sorry, Mr Malone, if that man has been
rude to you. But what can we do? He is our chauffeur.
MALONE. Your hwat?
VIOLET. The driver of our automobile. He can drive a motor car at
seventy miles an hour, and mend it when it breaks down. We are
dependent on our motor cars; and our motor cars are dependent on
him; so of course we are dependent on him.
MALONE. Ive noticed, madam, that every thousand dollars an
Englishman gets seems to add one to the number of people he's
dependent on. However, you neednt apologize for your man: I made
him talk on purpose. By doing so I learnt that youre stayin here
in Grannida with a party of English, including my son Hector.
VIOLET [conversationally] Yes. We intended to go to Nice; but we had
to follow a rather eccentric member of our party who started
first and came here. Wont you sit down? [She clears the nearest
chair of the two books on it].
MALONE [impressed by this attention] Thank you. [He sits down,
examining her curiously as she goes to the iron table to put
down the books. When she turns to him again, he says] Miss
Robinson, I believe?
VIOLET [sitting down] Yes.
MALONE [taking a letter from his pocket] Your note to Hector runs as
follows [Violet is unable to repress a start. He pauses quietly
to take out and put on his spectacles, which have gold rims]:
"Dearest: they have all gone to the Alhambra for the afternoon.
I have shammed headache and have the garden all to myself. Jump
into Jack's motor: Straker will rattle you here in a jiffy.
Quick, quick, quick. Your loving Violet." [He looks at her; but
by this time she has recovered herself, and meets his spectacles
with perfect composure. He continues slowly] Now I dont know on
hwat terms young people associate in English society; but in
America that note would be considered to imply a very
considerable degree of affectionate intimacy between the
parties.
VIOLET. Yes: I know your son very well, Mr Malone. Have you any
objection?
MALONE [somewhat taken aback] No, no objection exactly. Provided it
is understood that my son is altogether dependent on me, and
that I have to be consulted in any important step he may propose
to take.
VIOLET. I am sure you would not be unreasonable with him, Mr Malone.
MALONE. I hope not, Miss Robinson; but at your age you might think
many things unreasonable that dont seem so to me.
VIOLET [with a little shrug] Oh, well, I suppose theres no use our
playing at cross purposes, Mr Malone. Hector wants to marry me.
MALONE. I inferred from your note that he might. Well, Miss
Robinson, he is his own master; but if he marries you he shall
not have a rap from me. [He takes off his spectacles and pockets
them with the note].
VIOLET [with some severity] That is not very complimentary to me, Mr
Malone.
MALONE. I say nothing against you, Miss Robinson: I daresay you are
an amiable and excellent young lady. But I have other views for
Hector.
VIOLET. Hector may not have other views for himself, Mr Malone.
MALONE. Possibly not. Then he does without me: thats all. I daresay
you are prepared for that. When a young lady writes to a young
man to come to her quick, quick, quick, money seems nothing and
love seems everything.
VIOLET [sharply] I beg your pardon, Mr Malone: I do not think
anything so foolish. Hector must have money.
MALONE [staggered] Oh, very well, very well. No doubt he can work
for it.
VIOLET. What is the use of having money if you have to work for it?
[She rises impatiently]. It's all nonsense, Mr Malone: you must
enable your son to keep up his position. It is his right.
MALONE [grimly] I should not advise you to marry him on the strength
of that right, Miss Robinson.
Violet, who has almost lost her temper, controls herself with an
effort; unclenches her fingers; and resumes her seat with studied
tranquillity and reasonableness.
VIOLET. What objection have you to me, pray? My social position is
as good as Hector's, to say the least. He admits it.
MALONE [shrewdly] You tell him so from time to time, eh? Hector's
social position in England, Miss Robinson, is just what I choose
to buy for him. I have made him a fair offer. Let him pick out
the most historic house, castle, or abbey that England contains.
The very day he tells me he wants it for a wife worthy of its
traditions, I buy it for him, and give him the means of keeping
it up.
VIOLET. What do you mean by a wife worthy of its traditions? Cannot
any well bred woman keep such a house for him?
MALONE. No: she must be born to it.
VIOLET. Hector was not born to it, was he?
MALONE. His granmother was a barefooted Irish girl that nursed me by
a turf fire. Let him marry another such, and I will not stint
her marriage portion. Let him raise himself socially with my
money or raise somebody else: so long as there is a social
profit somewhere, I'll regard my expenditure as justified. But
there must be a profit for someone. A marriage with you would
leave things just where they are.
VIOLET. Many of my relations would object very much to my marrying
the grandson of a common woman, Mr Malone. That may be
prejudice; but so is your desire to have him marry a title
prejudice.
MALONE [rising, and approaching her with a scrutiny in which there
is a good deal of reluctant respect] You seem a pretty
straightforward downright sort of a young woman.
VIOLET. I do not see why I should be made miserably poor because I
cannot make profits for you. Why do you want to make Hector
unhappy?
MALONE. He will get over it all right enough. Men thrive better on
disappointments in love than on disappointments in money. I
daresay you think that sordid; but I know what I'm talking
about. Me father died of starvation in Ireland in the black 47.
Maybe youve heard of it.
VIOLET. The Famine?
MALONE [with smouldering passion] No, the starvation. When a country
is full o food, and exporting it, there can be no famine. Me
father was starved dead; and I was starved out to America in me
mother's arms. English rule drove me and mine out of Ireland.
Well, you can keep Ireland. Me and me like are coming back to
buy England; and we'll buy the best of it. I want no middle
class properties and no middle class women for Hector. Thats
straightforward, isnt it, like yourself?
VIOLET [icily pitying his sentimentality] Really, Mr Malone, I am
astonished to hear a man of your age and good sense talking in
that romantic way. Do you suppose English noblemen will sell
their places to you for the asking?
MALONE. I have the refusal of two of the oldest family mansions in
England. One historic owner cant afford to keep all the rooms
dusted: the other cant afford the death duties. What do you say
now?
VIOLET. Of course it is very scandalous; but surely you know that
the Government will sooner or later put a stop to all these
Socialistic attacks on property.
MALONE [grinning] D'y'think theyll be able to get that done before
I buy the house- or rather the abbey? Theyre both abbeys.
VIOLET [putting that aside rather impatiently] Oh, well, let us talk
sense, Mr Malone. You must feel that we havnt been talking sense
so far.
MALONE. I cant say I do. I mean all I say.
VIOLET. Then you dont know Hector as I do. He is romantic and faddy-
he gets it from you, I fancy- and he wants a certain sort of
wife to take care of him. Not a faddy sort of person, you know.
MALONE. Somebody like you, perhaps?
VIOLET [quietly] Well, yes. But you cannot very well ask me to
undertake this with absolutely no means of keeping up his
position.
MALONE [alarmed] Stop a bit, stop a bit. Where are we getting to?
I'm not aware that I'm asking you to undertake anything.
VIOLET. Of course, Mr Malone, you can make it very difficult for me
to speak to you if you choose to misunderstand me.
MALONE [half bewildered] I dont wish to take any unfair advantage;
but we seem to have got off the straight track somehow.
Straker, with the air of a man who has been making haste, opens
the little gate, and admits Hector, who, snorting with indignation,
comes upon the lawn, and is making for his father when Violet, greatly
dismayed, springs up and intercepts him. Straker does not wait; at
least he does not remain visibly within earshot.
VIOLET. Oh, how unlucky! Now please, Hector, say nothing. Go away
until I have finished speaking to your father.
HECTOR [inexorably] No, Violet: I mean to have this thing out, right
away. [He puts her aside; passes her by; and faces his father,
whose cheeks darken as his Irish blood begins to simmer]. Dad:
youve not played this hand straight.
MALONE. Hwat d'y'mean?
HECTOR. Youve opened a letter addressed to me. Youve impersonated me
and stolen a march on this lady. Thats disawnerable.
MALONE [threateningly] Now you take care what youre saying, Hector.
Take care, I tell you.
HECTOR. I have taken care. I am taking care. I'm taking care of my
honor and my position in English society.
MALONE [hotly] Your position has been got by my money: do you know
that?
HECTOR. Well, youve spoiled it all by opening that letter. A letter
from an English lady, not addressed to you- a cawnfidential
letter! a dullicate letter! a private letter! opened by my
father! Thats a sort of thing a man cant struggle against in
England. The sooner we go back together the better. [He appeals
mutely to the heavens to witness the shame and anguish of two
outcasts].
VIOLET [snubbing him with an instinctive dislike for scene making]
Dont be unreasonable, Hector. It was quite natural for Mr Malone
to open my letter: his name was on the envelope.
MALONE. There! Youve no common sense, Hector. I thank you, Miss
Robinson.
HECTOR. I thank you, too. It's very kind of you. My father knows no
better.
MALONE [furiously clenching his fists] Hector-
HECTOR [with undaunted moral force] Oh, it's no use hectoring me. A
private letter's a private letter, dad: you cant get over that.
MALONE [raising his voice] I wont be talked back to by you,
d'y'hear?
VIOLET. Ssh! please, please. Here they all come.
Father and son, checked, glare mutely at one another as Tanner
comes in through the little gate with Ramsden, followed by Octavius
and Ann.
VIOLET. Back already!
TANNER. The Alhambra is not open this afternoon.
VIOLET. What a sell!
Tanner passes on, and presently finds himself between Hector and a
strange elder, both apparently on the verge of personal combat. He
looks from one to the other for an explanation. They sulkily avoid his
eye, and nurse their wrath in silence.
RAMSDEN. Is it wise for you to be out in the sunshine with such a
headache, Violet?
TANNER. Have you recovered too, Malone?
VIOLET. Oh, I forgot. We have not all met before. Mr Malone: wont
you introduce your father?
HECTOR [with Roman firmness] No, I will not. He is no father of
mine.
MALONE [very angry] You disown your dad before your English friends,
do you?
VIOLET. Oh, please dont make a scene.
Ann and Octavius, lingering near the gate, exchange an
astonished glance, and discreetly withdraw up the steps to the garden,
where they can enjoy the disturbance without intruding. On their way
to the steps Ann sends a little grimace of mute sympathy to Violet,
who is standing with her back to the little table, looking on in
helpless annoyance as her husband soars to higher and higher moral
eminences without the least regard to the old man's millions.
HECTOR. I'm very sorry, Miss Rawbnsn; but I'm contending for a
principle. I am a son, and, I hope, a dutiful one; but before
everything I'm a Mahn!!! And when dad treats my private letters
as his own, and takes it on himself to say that I shant marry
you if I am happy and fortunate enough to gain your consent,
then I just snap my fingers and go my own way.
TANNER. Marry Violet!
RAMSDEN. Are you in your senses?
TANNER. Do you forget what we told you?
HECTOR [recklessly] I dont care what you told me.
RAMSDEN [scandalized] Tut tut, sir! Monstrous! [he flings away
towards the gate, his elbows quivering with indignation].
TANNER. Another madman! These men in love should be locked up. [He
gives Hector up as hopeless, and turns away towards the garden;
but Malone, taking offence in a new direction, follows him and
compels him by the aggressiveness of his tone, to stop].
MALONE. I dont understand this. Is Hector not good enough for this
lady, pray?
TANNER. My dear sir, the lady is married already. Hector knows it;
and yet he persists in his infatuation. Take him home and lock
him up.
MALONE [bitterly] So this is the highborn social tone Ive spoilt be
me ignorant, uncultivated behavior! Makin love to a married
woman! [He comes angrily between Hector and Violet, and almost
bawls into Hector's left ear] Youve picked up that habit of the
British aristocracy, have you?
HECTOR. Thats all right. Dont you trouble yourself about that. I'll
answer for the morality of what I'm doing.
TANNER [coming forward to Hector's right hand with flashing eyes]
Well said, Malone! You also see that mere marriage laws are not
morality! I agree with you; but unfortunately Violet does not.
MALONE. I take leave to doubt that, sir. [Turning on Violet] Let me
tell you, Mrs Robinson, or whatever your right name is, you had
no right to send that letter to my son when you were the wife
of another man.
HECTOR [outraged] This is the last straw. Dad: you have insulted my
wife.
MALONE. Your wife!
TANNER. You the missing husband! Another moral impostor! [He smites
his brow, and collapses into Malone's chair].
MALONE. Youve married without my consent!
RAMSDEN. You have deliberately humbugged us, sir!
HECTOR. Here: I have had just about enough of being badgered. Violet
and I are married: thats the long and the short of it. Now what
have you got to say- any of you?
MALONE. I know what Ive got to say. She's married a beggar.
HECTOR. No: she's married a Worker [his American pronunciation
imparts an overwhelming intensity to this simple and unpopular
word]. I start to earn my own living this very afternoon.
MALONE [sneering angrily] Yes: youre very plucky now, because you
got your remittance from me yesterday or this morning, I reckon.
Waitl it's spent. You wont be so full of cheek then.
HECTOR [producing a letter from his pocketbook] Here it is
[thrusting it on his father]. Now you just take your remittance
and yourself out of my life. I'm done with remittances; and I'm
done with you. I dont sell the privilege of insulting my wife
for a thousand dollars.
MALONE [deeply wounded and full of concern] Hector: you dont know
what poverty is.
HECTOR [fervidly] Well, I wawnt to know what it is. I wawnt'be a
Mahn. Violet: you come along with me, to your own home: I'll see
you through.
OCTAVIUS [jumping down from the garden to the lawn and running to
Hector's left hand] I hope youll shake hands with me before you
go, Hector. I admire and respect you more than I can say. [He is
affected almost to tears as they shake hands].
VIOLET [also almost in tears, but of vexation] Oh, dont be an idiot,
Tavy. Hector's about as fit to become a workman as you are.
TANNER [rising from his chair on the other side of Hector] Never
fear: theres no question of his becoming a navvy, Mrs Malone.
[To Hector] Theres really no difficulty about capital to start
with. Treat me as a friend: draw on me.
OCTAVIUS [impulsively] Or on me.
MALONE [with fierce jealousy] Who wants your durty money? Who should
he draw on but his own father? [Tanner and Octavius recoil,
Octavius rather hurt, Tanner consoled by the solution of the
money difficulty. Violet looks up hopefully]. Hector: dont be
rash, my boy. I'm sorry for what I said: I never meant to insult
Violet: I take it all back. She's just the wife you want: there!
HECTOR [patting him on the shoulder] Well, thats all right, dad. Say
no more: we're friends again. Only, I take no money from
anybody.
MALONE [pleading abjectly] Dont be hard on me, Hector. I'd rather
you quarrelled and took the money than made friends and starved.
You dont know what the world is: I do.
HECTOR. No, no, NO. Thats fixed: thats not going to change. [He
passes his father inexorably by, and goes to Violet]. Come, Mrs
Malone: youve got to move to the hotel with me, and take your
proper place before the world.
VIOLET. But I must go in, dear, and tell Davis to pack. Wont you go
on and make them give you a room overlooking the garden for me?
I'll join you in half an hour.
HECTOR. Very well. Youll dine with us, Dad, wont you?
MALONE [eager to conciliate him] Yes, yes.
HECTOR. See you all later. [He waves his hand to Ann, who has now
been joined by Tanner, Octavius, and Ramsden in the garden, and
goes out through the little gate, leaving his father and Violet
together on the lawn].
MALONE. Youll try to bring him to his senses, Violet: I know you
will.
VIOLET. I had no idea he could be so headstrong. If he goes on like
that, what can I do?
MALONE. Dont be discurridged: domestic pressure may be slow; but
it's sure. Youll wear him down. Promise me you will.
VIOLET. I will do my best. Of course I think it's the greatest
nonsense deliberately making us poor like that.
MALONE. Of course it is.
VIOLET [after a moment's reflection] You had better give me the
remittance. He will want it for his hotel bill. I'll see whether
I can induce him to accept it. Not now, of course, but
presently.
MALONE [eagerly] Yes, yes, yes: thats just the thing [he hands her
the thousand dollar bill, and adds cunningly] Y'understand that
this is only a bachelor allowance.
VIOLET [coolly] Oh, quite. [She takes it]. Thank you. By the way, Mr
Malone, those two houses you mentioned- the abbeys.
MALONE. Yes?
VIOLET. Dont take one of them until Ive seen it. One never knows
what may be wrong with these places.
MALONE. I wont. I'll do nothing without consulting you, never fear.
VIOLET [politely, but without a ray of gratitude] Thanks: that will
be much the best way. [She goes calmly back to the villa,
escorted obsequiously by Malone to the upper end of the garden].
TANNER [drawing Ramsden's attention to Malone's cringing attitude as
he takes leave of Violet] And that poor devil is a billionaire!
one of the master spirits of the age! Led in a string like a pug
dog by the first girl who takes the trouble to despise him! I
wonder will it ever come to that with me. [He comes down to the
lawn].
RAMSDEN [following him] The sooner the better for you.
MALONE [slapping his hands as he returns through the garden) That'll
be a grand woman for Hector. I wouldnt exchange her for ten
duchesses. [He descends to the lawn and comes between Tanner and
Ramsden].
RAMSDEN [very civil to the billionaire] It's an unexpected pleasure
to find you in this corner of the world, Mr Malone. Have you
come to buy up the Alhambra?
MALONE. Well, I dont say I mightnt. I think I could do better with
it than the Spanish government. But thats not what I came about.
To tell you the truth, about a month ago I overheard a deal
between two men over a bundle of shares. They differed about the
price: they were young and greedy, and didnt know that if the
shares were worth what was bid for them they must be worth what
was asked, the margin being too small to be of any account, you
see. To amuse meself, I cut in and bought the shares. Well, to
this day I havnt found out what the business is. The office is
in this town; and the name is Mendoza, Limited. Now whether
Mendoza's a mine, or a steamboat line, or a bank, or a patent
article-
TANNER. He's a man. I know him: his principles are thoroughly
commercial. Let us take you round the town in our motor, Mr
Malone, and call on him on the way.
MALONE. If youll be so kind, yes. And may I ask who-
TANNER. Mr Roebuck Ramsden, a very old friend of your
daughter-in-law.
MALONE. Happy to meet you, Mr Ramsden.
RAMSDEN. Thank you. Mr Tanner is also one of our circle.
MALONE. Glad to know you also, Mr Tanner.
TANNER. Thanks. [Malone and Ramsden go out very amicably through the
little gate. Tanner calls to Octavius, who is wandering in the
garden with Ann] Tavy! [Tavy comes to the steps, Tanner whispers
loudly to him] Violet's father-in-law is a financier of
brigands. [Tanner hurries away to overtake Malone and Ramsden.
Ann strolls to the steps with an idle impulse to torment
Octavius].
ANN. Wont you go with them, Tavy?
OCTAVIUS [tears suddenly flushing his eyes] You cut me to the heart,
Ann, by wanting me to go [he comes down on the lawn to hide his
face from her. She follows him caressingly].
ANN. Poor Ricky Ticky Tavy! Poor heart!
OCTAVIUS. It belongs to you, Ann. Forgive me: I must speak of it. I
love you. You know I love you.
ANN. Whats the good, Tavy? You know that my mother is determined
that I shall marry Jack.
OCTAVIUS [amazed] Jack!
ANN. It seems absurd, doesnt it?
OCTAVIUS [with growing resentment] Do you mean to say that Jack has
been playing with me all this time? That he has been urging me
not to marry you because he intends to marry you himself?
ANN [alarmed] No, no: you mustnt lead him to believe that I said
that. I dont for a moment think that Jack knows his own mind.
But it's clear from my father's will that he wished me to marry
Jack. And my mother is set on it.
OCTAVIUS. But you are not bound to sacrifice yourself to the wishes
of your parents.
ANN. My father loved me. My mother loves me. Surely their wishes are
a better guide than my own selfishness.
OCTAVIUS. Oh, I know how unselfish you are, Ann. But believe me-
though I know I am speaking in my own interest- there is another
side to this question. Is it fair to Jack to marry him if you do
not love him? Is it fair to destroy my happiness as well as your
own if you can bring yourself to love me?
ANN [looking at him with a faint impulse of pity] Tavy, my dear, you
are a nice creature- a good boy.
OCTAVIUS [humiliated] Is that all?
ANN [mischievously in spite of her pity] Thats a great deal, I
assure you. You would always worship the ground I trod on,
wouldnt you?
OCTAVIUS. I do. It sounds ridiculous; but it's no exaggeration. I
do; and I always shall.
ANN. Always is a long word, Tavy. You see, I shall have to live up
always to your idea of my divinity; and I dont think I could do
that if we were married. But if I marry Jack, youll never be
disillusioned- at least not until I grow too old.
OCTAVIUS. I too shall grow old, Ann. And when I am eighty, one white
hair of the woman I love will make me tremble more than the
thickest gold tress from the most beautiful young head.
ANN [quite touched] Oh, thats poetry, Tavy, real poetry. It gives me
that strange sudden sense of an echo from a former existence
which always seems to me such a striking proof that we have
immortal souls.
OCTAVIUS. Do you believe that it is true?
ANN. Tavy: if it is to come true, you must lose me as well as love
me.
OCTAVIUS. Oh! [he hastily sits down at the little table and covers
his face with his hands].
ANN [with conviction] Tavy: I wouldnt for worlds destroy your
illusions. I can neither take you nor let you go. I can see
exactly what will suit you. You must be a sentimental old
bachelor for my sake.
OCTAVIUS [desperately] Ann: I'll kill myself.
ANN. Oh no, you wont: that wouldnt be kind. You wont have a bad
time. You will be very nice to women; and you will go a good
deal to the opera. A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint
for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.
OCTAVIUS [considerably cooled, but believing that he is only
recovering his self-control] I know you mean to be kind, Ann.
Jack has persuaded you that cynicism is a good tonic for me. [He
rises with quiet dignity].
ANN [studying him slyly] You see, I'm disillusionizing you already.
Thats what I dread.
OCTAVIUS. You do not dread disillusionizing Jack.
ANN [her face lighting up with mischievous ecstasy- whispering] I
cant: he has no illusions about me. I shall surprise Jack the
other way. Getting over an unfavorable impression is ever so
much easier than living up to an ideal. Oh, I shall enrapture
Jack sometimes!
OCTAVIUS [resuming the calm phase of despair, and beginning to enjoy
his broken heart and delicate attitude without knowing it] I
dont doubt that. You will enrapture him always. And he- the
fool!- thinks you would make him wretched.
ANN. Yes: thats the difficulty, so far.
OCTAVIUS [heroically] Shall *I* tell him that you love him?
ANN [quickly] Oh no: he'd run away again.
OCTAVIUS [shocked] Ann: would you marry an unwilling man?
ANN. What a queer creature you are, Tavy! Theres no such thing as a
willing man when you really go for him. [She laughs naughtily].
I'm shocking you, I suppose. But you know you are really getting
a sort of satisfaction already in being out of danger yourself.
OCTAVIUS [startled] Satisfaction! [Reproachfully] You say that to
me!
ANN. Well, if it were really agony, would you ask for more of it?
OCTAVIUS. Have I asked for more of it?
ANN. You have offered to tell Jack that I love him. Thats
self-sacrifice, I suppose; but there must be some satisfaction
in it. Perhaps it's because youre a poet. You are like the bird
that presses its breast against the sharp thorn to make itself
sing.
OCTAVIUS. It's quite simple. I love you; and I want you to be happy.
You dont love me; so I cant make you happy myself; but I can
help another man to do it.
ANN. Yes: it seems quite simple. But I doubt if we ever know why we
do things. The only really simple thing is to go straight for
what you want and grab it. I suppose I dont love you, Tavy; but
sometimes I feel as if I should like to make a man of you
somehow. You are very foolish about women.
OCTAVIUS [almost coldly] I am content to be what I am in that
respect.
ANN. Then you must keep away from them, and only dream about them.
I wouldnt marry you for worlds, Tavy.
OCTAVIUS. I have no hope, Ann: I accept my ill luck. But I dont
think you quite know how much it hurts.
ANN. You are so softhearted! It's queer that you should be so
different from Violet. Violet's as hard as nails.
OCTAVIUS. Oh no. I am sure Violet is thoroughly womanly at heart.
ANN [with some impatience] Why do you say that? Is it unwomanly to
be thoughtful and businesslike and sensible? Do you want Violet
to be an idiot- or something worse, like me?
OCTAVIUS. Something worse- like you! What do you mean, Ann?
ANN. Oh well, I dont mean that, of course. But I have a great
respect for Violet. She gets her own way always.
OCTAVIUS [sighing] So do you.
ANN. Yes; but somehow she gets it without coaxing- without having to
make people sentimental about her.
OCTAVIUS [with brotherly callousness] Nobody could get very
sentimental about Violet, I think, pretty as she is.
ANN. Oh yes they could, if she made them.
OCTAVIUS. But surely no really nice woman would deliberately
practise on men's instincts in that way.
ANN [throwing up her hands] Oh, Tavy, Tavy, Ricky Ticky Tavy, heaven
help the woman who marries you!
OCTAVIUS [his passion reviving at the name] Oh why, why, why do you
say that? Dont torment me. I dont understand.
ANN. Suppose she were to tell fibs, and lay snares for men?
OCTAVIUS. Do you think *I* could marry such a woman- I, who have
known and loved you?
ANN. Hm! Well, at all events, she wouldnt let you if she were wise.
So thats settled. And now I cant talk any more. Say you forgive
me, and that the subject is closed.
OCTAVIUS. I have nothing to forgive; and the subject is closed. And
if the wound is open, at least you shall never see it bleed.
ANN. Poetic to the last, Tavy. Goodbye, dear. [She pats his cheek;
has an impulse to kiss him and then another impulse of distaste
which prevents her; finally runs away through the garden and
into the villa].
Octavius again takes refuge at the table, bowing his head on his
arms and sobbing softly. Mrs Whitefield, who has been pottering
round the Granada shop, and has a net full of little parcels in her
hand, comes in through the gate and sees him.
MRS WHITEFIELD [running to him and lifting his head] Whats the
matter, Tavy? Are you ill?
OCTAVIUS. No, nothing, nothing.
MRS WHITEFIELD [still holding his head, anxiously] But youre crying.
Is it about Violet's marriage?
OCTAVIUS. No, no. Who told you about Violet?
MRS WHITEFIELD [restoring the head to its owner] I met Roebuck and
that awful old Irishman. Are you sure youre not ill? Whats the
matter?
OCTAVIUS [affectionately] It's nothing. Only a man's broken heart.
Doesnt that sound ridiculous?
MRS WHITEFIELD. But what is it all about? Has Ann been doing
anything to you?
OCTAVIUS. It's not Ann's fault. And dont think for a moment that I
blame you.
MRS WHITEFIELD [startled] For what?
OCTAVIUS [pressing her hand consolingly] For nothing. I said I didnt
blame you.
MRS WHITEFIELD. But I havnt done anything. Whats the matter?
OCTAVIUS [smiling sadly] Cant you guess? I daresay you are right to
prefer Jack to me as a husband for Ann; but I love Ann; and it
hurts rather. [He rises and moves away from her towards the
middle of the lawn].
MRS WHITEFIELD [following him hastily] Does Ann say that I want her
to marry Jack?
OCTAVIUS. Yes: she has told me.
MRS WHITEFIELD [thoughtfully] Then I'm very sorry for you, Tavy.
It's only her way of saying she wants to marry Jack. Little she
cares what *I* say or what *I* want!
OCTAVIUS. But she would not say it unless she believed it. Surely
you dont suspect Ann of- of deceit!
MRS WHITEFIELD. Well, never mind, Tavy. I dont know which is best
for a young man: to know too little, like you, or too much, like
Jack.
Tanner returns.
TANNER. Well, Ive disposed of old Malone. Ive introduced him to
Mendoza, Limited; and left the two brigands together to talk it
out. Hullo, Tavy! anything wrong?
OCTAVIUS. I must go wash my face, I see. [To Mrs Whitefield] Tell
him what you wish. [To Tanner] You may take it from me, Jack,
that Ann approves of it.
TANNER [puzzled by his manner] Approves of what?
OCTAVIUS. Of what Mrs Whitefield wishes. [He goes his way with sad
dignity to the villa].
TANNER [to Mrs Whitefield] This is very mysterious. What is it you
wish? It shall be done, whatever it is.
MRS WHITEFIELD [with snivelling gratitude] Thank you, Jack. [She
sits down. Tanner brings the other chair from the table and sits
close to her with his elbows on his knees, giving her his whole
attention]. I dont know why it is that other people's children
are so nice to me, and that my own have so little consideration
for me. It's no wonder I dont seem able to care for Ann and
Rhoda as I do for you and Tavy and Violet. It's a very queer
world. It used to be so straightforward and simple; and now
nobody seems to think and feel as they ought. Nothing has been
right since that speech that Professor Tyndall made at Belfast.
TANNER. Yes: life is more complicated than we used to think. But
what am I to do for you?
MRS WHITEFIELD. Thats just what I want to tell you. Of course youll
marry Ann whether I like it or not-
TANNER [starting] It seems to me that I shall presently be married
to Ann whether I like it myself or not.
MRS WHITEFIELD [peacefully] Oh, very likely you will: you know what
she is when she has set her mind on anything. But dont put it on
me: thats all I ask. Tavy has just let out that she's been
saying that I am making her marry you; and the poor boy is
breaking his heart about it; for he is in love with her himself,
though what he sees in her so wonderful, goodness knows: *I*
dont. It's no use telling Tavy that Ann puts things into
people's heads by telling them that I want them when the thought
of them never crossed my mind. It only sets Tavy against me. But
you know better than that. So if you marry her, dont put the
blame on me.
TANNER [emphatically] I havnt the slightest intention of marrying
her.
MRS WHITEFIELD [slyly] She'd suit you better than Tavy. She'd meet
her match in you, Jack. I'd like to see her meet her match.
TANNER. No man is a match for a woman, except with a poker and a
pair of hobnailed boots. Not always even then. Anyhow, *I* cant
take the poker to her. I should be a mere slave.
MRS WHITEFIELD. No: she's afraid of you. At all events, you would
tell her the truth about herself. She wouldnt be able to slip
out of it as she does with me.
TANNER. Everybody would call me a brute if I told Ann the truth
about herself in terms of her own moral code. To begin with, Ann
says things that are not strictly true.
MRS WHITEFIELD. I'm glad somebody sees she is not an angel.
TANNER. In short- to put it as a husband would put it when
exasperated to the point of speaking out- she is a liar. And
since she has plunged Tavy head over ears in love with her
without any intention of marrying him, she is a coquette,
according to the standard definition of a coquette as a woman
who rouses passions she has no intention of gratifying. And as
she has now reduced you to the point of being willing to
sacrifice me at the altar for the mere satisfaction of getting
me to call her a liar to her face, I may conclude that she is a
bully as well. She cant bully men as she bullies women; so she
habitually and unscrupulously uses her personal fascination to
make men give her whatever she wants. That makes her almost
something for which I know no polite name.
MRS WHITEFIELD [in mild expostulation] Well, you cant expect
perfection, Jack.
TANNER. I dont. But what annoys me is that Ann does. I know
perfectly well that all this about her being a liar and a bully
and a coquette and so forth is a trumped-up moral indictment
which might be brought against anybody. We all lie; we all bully
as much as we dare; we all bid for admiration without the least
intention of earning it; we all get as much rent as we can out
of our powers of fascination. If Ann would admit this I shouldnt
quarrel with her. But she wont. If she has children she'll take
advantage of their telling lies to amuse herself by whacking
them. If another woman makes eyes at me, she'll refuse to know
a coquette. She will do just what she likes herself whilst
insisting on everybody else doing what the conventional code
prescribes. In short, I can stand everything except her
confounded hypocrisy. Thats what beats me.
MRS WHITEFIELD [carried away by the relief of hearing her own
opinion so eloquently expressed] Oh, she is a hypocrite. She is:
she is. Isnt she?
TANNER. Then why do you want to marry me to her?
MRS WHITEFIELD [querulously] There now! put it on me, of course. I
never thought of it until Tavy told me she said I did. But, you
know, I'm very fond of Tavy: he's a sort of son to me; and I
dont want him to be trampled on and made wretched.
TANNER. Whereas I dont matter, I suppose.
MRS WHITEFIELD. Oh, you are different, somehow: you are able to take
care of yourself. Youd serve her out. And anyhow, she must marry
somebody.
TANNER. Aha! there speaks the life instinct. You detest her; but you
feel that you must get her married.
MRS WHITEFIELD [rising, shocked] Do you mean that I detest my own
daughter! Surely you dont believe me to be so wicked and
unnatural as that, merely because I see her faults.
TANNER [cynically] You love her, then?
MRS WHITEFIELD. Why, of course I do. What queer things you say,
Jack! We cant help loving our own blood relations.
TANNER. Well, perhaps it saves unpleasantness to say so. But for my
part, I suspect that the tables of consanguinity have a natural
basis in a natural repugnance [he rises].
MRS WHITEFIELD. You shouldnt say things like that, Jack. I hope you
wont tell Ann that I have been speaking to you. I only wanted to
set myself right with you and Tavy. I couldnt sit mumchance and
have everything put on me.
TANNER [politely] Quite so.
MRS WHITEFIELD [dissatisfied] And now Ive only made matters worse.
Tavy's angry with me because I dont worship Ann. And when it's
been put into my head that Ann ought to marry you, what can I
say except that it would serve her right?
TANNER. Thank you.
MRS WHITEFIELD. Now dont be silly and twist what I say into
something I dont mean. I ought to have fair play-
Ann comes from the villa, followed presently by Violet, who is
dressed for driving.
ANN [coming to her mother's right hand with threatening suavity]
Well, mamma darling, you seem to be having a delightful chat
with Jack. We can hear you all over the place.
MRS WHITEFIELD [appalled] Have you overheard-
TANNER. Never fear: Ann is only- well, we were discussing that habit
of hers just now. She hasnt heard a word.
MRS WHITEFIELD [stoutly] I dont care whether she has or not: I have
a right to say what I please.
VIOLET [arriving on the lawn and coming between Mrs Whitefield and
Tanner] Ive come to say goodbye. I'm off for my honeymoon.
MRS WHITEFIELD [crying] Oh, dont say that, Violet. And no wedding,
no breakfast, no clothes, nor anything.
VIOLET [petting her] It wont be for long.
MRS WHITEFIELD. Dont let him take you to America. Promise me that
you wont.
VIOLET [very decidedly] I should think not, indeed. Dont cry, dear:
I'm only going to the hotel.
MRS WHITEFIELD. But going in that dress, with your luggage, makes
one realize- [she chokes, and then breaks out again] How I wish
you were my daughter, Violet!
VIOLET [soothing her] There, there: so I am. Ann will be jealous.
MRS WHITEFIELD. Ann doesnt care a bit for me.
ANN. Fie, mother! Come, now: you mustnt cry any more: you know
Violet doesnt like it [Mrs Whitefield dries her eyes, and
subsides].
VIOLET. Goodbye, Jack.
TANNER. Goodbye, Violet.
VIOLET. The sooner you get married too, the better. You will be much
less misunderstood.
TANNER [restively] I quite expect to get married in the course of
the afternoon. You all seem to have set your minds on it.
VIOLET. You might do worse. [To Mrs Whitefield: putting her arm
round her] Let me take you to the hotel with me: the drive will
do you good. Come in and get a wrap. [She takes her towards the
villa].
MRS WHITEFIELD [as they go up through the garden] I dont know what
I shall do when you are gone, with no one but Ann in the house;
and she always occupied with the men! It's not to be expected
that your husband will care to be bothered with an old woman
like me. Oh, you neednt tell me: politeness is all very well;
but I know what people think- [She talks herself and Violet out
of sight and hearing].
Ann, alone with Tanner, watches him and waits. He makes an
irresolute movement towards the gate; but some magnetism in her
draws him to her, a broken man.
ANN. Violet is quite right. You ought to get married.
TANNER [explosively] Ann: I will not marry you. Do you hear? I wont,
wont, wont, wont, WONT marry you.
ANN [placidly] Well, nobody axd you, sir she said, sir she said, sir
she said. So thats settled.
TANNER. Yes, nobody has asked me; but everybody treats the thing as
settled. It's in the air. When we meet, the others go away on
absurd pretexts to leave us alone together. Ramsden no longer
scowls at me: his eye beams, as if he were already giving you
away to me in church. Tavy refers me to your mother and gives
me his blessing. Straker openly treats you as his future
employer: it was he who first told me of it.
ANN. Was that why you ran away?
TANNER. Yes, only to be stopped by a lovesick brigand and run down
like a truant schoolboy.
ANN. Well, if you dont want to be married, you neednt be [she turns
away from him and sits down, much at her ease].
TANNER [following her] Does any man want to be hanged? Yet men let
themselves be hanged without a struggle for life, though they
could at least give the chaplain a black eye. We do the world's
will, not our own. I have a frightful feeling that I shall let
myself be married because it is the world's will that you should
have a husband.
ANN. I daresay I shall, someday.
TANNER. Buy why me? me of all men! Marriage is to me apostasy,
profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my
manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious
capitulation, acceptance of defeat. I shall decay like a thing
that has served its purpose and is done with; I shall change
from a man with a future to a man with a past; I shall see in
the greasy eyes of all the other husbands their relief at the
arrival of a new prisoner to share their ignominy. The young men
will scorn me as one who has sold out: to the women I, who have
always been an enigma and a possibility, shall be merely
somebody else's property- and damaged goods at that: a
secondhand man at best.
ANN. Well, your wife can put on a cap and make herself ugly to keep
you in countenance, like my grandmother.
TANNER. So that she may make her triumph more insolent by publicly
throwing away the bait the moment the trap snaps on the victim!
ANN. After all, though, what difference would it make? Beauty is all
very well at first sight; but who ever looks at it when it has
been in the house three days? I thought our pictures very lovely
when Papa bought them; but I havnt looked at them for years. You
never bother about my looks: you are too well used to me. I
might be the umbrella stand.
TANNER. You lie, you vampire: you lie.
ANN. Flatterer. Why are you trying to fascinate me, Jack, if you
dont want to marry me?
TANNER. The Life Force. I am in the grip of the Life Force.
ANN. I dont understand in the least: it sounds like the Life Guards.
TANNER. Why dont you marry Tavy? He is willing. Can you not be
satisfied unless your prey struggles?
ANN [turning to him as if to let him into a secret] Tavy will never
marry. Havnt you noticed that that sort of man never marries?
TANNER. What! a man who idolizes women! who sees nothing in nature
but romantic scenery for love duets! Tavy, the chivalrous, the
faithful, the tenderhearted and true! Tavy, never marry! Why, he
was born to be swept up by the first pair of blue eyes he meets
in the street.
ANN. Yes, I know. All the same, Jack, men like that always live in
comfortable bachelor lodgings with broken hearts, and are adored
by their landladies, and never get married. Men like you always
get married.
TANNER [smiting his brow] How frightfully, horribly true! It has
been staring me in the face all my life; and I never saw it
before.
ANN. Oh, it's the same with women. The poetic temperament's a very
nice temperament, very amiable, very harmless and poetic, I
daresay; but it's an old maid's temperament.
TANNER. Barren. The Life Force passes it by.
ANN. If thats what you mean by the Life Force, yes.
TANNER. You dont care for Tavy?
ANN [looking round carefully to make sure that Tavy is not within
earshot] No.
TANNER. And you do care for me?
ANN [rising quietly and shaking her finger at him] Now, Jack! Behave
yourself.
TANNER. Infamous, abandoned woman! Devil!
ANN. Boa-constrictor! Elephant!
TANNER. Hypocrite!
ANN [softly] I must be, for my future husband's sake.
TANNER. For mine! [Correcting himself savagely] I mean for his.
ANN [ignoring the correction] Yes, for yours. You had better marry
what you call a hypocrite, Jack. Women who are not hypocrites go
about in rational dress and are insulted and get into all sorts
of hot water. And then their husbands get dragged in too, and
live in continual dread of fresh complications. Wouldnt you
prefer a wife you could depend on?
TANNER. No: a thousand times no: hot water is the revolutionist's
element. You clean men as you clean milk-pails, by scalding
them.
ANN. Cold water has its uses too. It's healthy.
TANNER [despairingly] Oh, you are witty: at the supreme moment the
Life Force endows you with every quality. Well, I too can be a
hypocrite. Your father's will appointed me your guardian, not
your suitor. I shall be faithful to my trust.
ANN [in low siren tones] He asked me who I would have as my guardian
before he made that will. I chose you!
TANNER. The will is yours then! The trap was laid from the
beginning.
ANN [concentrating all her magic] From the beginning- from our
childhood- for both of us- by the Life Force.
TANNER. I will not marry you. I will not marry you.
ANN. Oh, you will, you will.
TANNER. I tell you, no, no, no.
ANN. I tell you, yes, yes, yes.
TANNER. No.
ANN [coaxing- imploring- almost exhausted] Yes. Before it is too
late for repentance. Yes.
TANNER [struck by the echo from the past] When did all this happen
to me before? Are we two dreaming?
ANN [suddenly losing her courage, with an anguish that she does not
conceal] No. We are awake; and you have said no: that is all.
TANNER [brutally] Well?
ANN. Well, I made a mistake: you do not love me.
TANNER [seizing her in his arms] It is false: I love you. The Life
Force enchants me: I have the whole world in my arms when I
clasp you. But I am fighting for my freedom, for my honor, for
my self, one and indivisible.
ANN. Your happiness will be worth them all.
TANNER. You would sell freedom and honor and self for happiness?
ANN. It will not be all happiness for me. Perhaps death.
TANNER [groaning] Oh, that clutch holds and hurts. What have you
grasped in me? Is there a father's heart as well as a mother's?
ANN. Take care, Jack: if anyone comes while we are like this, you
will have to marry me.
TANNER. If we two stood now on the edge of a precipice, I would hold
you tight and jump.
ANN [panting, failing more and more under the strain] Jack: let me
go. I have dared so frightfully- it is lasting longer than I
thought. Let me go: I cant bear it.
TANNER. Nor I. Let it kill us.
ANN. Yes: I dont care. I am at the end of my forces. I dont care. I
think I am going to faint.
At this moment Violet and Octavius come from the villa with Mrs
Whitefield, who is wrapped up for driving. Simultaneously Malone and
Ramsden, followed by Mendoza and Straker, come in through the little
gate in the paling. Tanner shamefacedly releases Ann, who raises her
hand giddily to her forehead.
MALONE. Take care. Something's the matter with the lady.
RAMSDEN. What does this mean?
VIOLET [running between Ann and Tanner] Are you ill?
ANN [reeling, with a supreme effort] I have promised to marry Jack.
[She swoons. Violet kneels by her and chafes her hand. Tanner
runs round to her other hand, and tries to lift her head.
Octavius goes to Violet's assistance, but does not know what to
do. Mrs Whitefield hurries back into the villa. Octavius,
Malone, and Ramsden run to Ann and crowd round her, stooping to
assist. Straker coolly comes to Ann's feet, and Mendoza to her
head, both upright and self-possessed].
STRAKER. Now then, ladies and gentlemen: she dont want a crowd round
her: she wants air- all the air she can git. If you please,
gents- [Malone and Ramsden allow him to drive them gently past
Ann and up the lawn towards the garden, where Octavius, who has
already become conscious of his uselessness, joins them.
Straker, following them up, pauses for a moment to instruct
Tanner]. Dont lift er ed, Mr Tanner: let it go flat so's the
blood can run back into it.
MENDOZA. He is right, Mr. Tanner. Trust to the air of the Sierra.
[He withdraws delicately to the garden steps].
TANNER [rising] I yield to your superior knowledge of physiology,
Henry. [He withdraws to the corner of the lawn; and Octavius
immediately hurries down to him].
TAVY [aside to Tanner, grasping his hand] Jack: be very happy.
TANNER [aside to Tavy] I never asked her. It is a trap for me. [He
goes up the lawn towards the garden. Octavius remains
petrified].
MENDOZA [intercepting Mrs Whitefield, who comes from the villa with
a glass of brandy] What is this, Madam [he takes it from her]?
MRS WHITEFIELD. A little brandy.
MENDOZA. The worst thing you could give her. Allow me. [He swallows
it]. Trust to the air of the Sierra, madam.
For a moment the men all forget Ann and stare at Mendoza.
ANN [in Violet's ear, clutching her round the neck] Violet: did Jack
say anything when I fainted?
VIOLET. No.
ANN. Ah! [with a sigh of intense relief she relapses].
MRS WHITEFIELD. Oh, she's fainted again.
They are about to rush back to her; but Mendoza stops them with
a warning gesture.
ANN [supine] No, I havnt. I'm quite happy.
TANNER [suddenly walking determinedly to her, and snatching her hand
from Violet to feel her pulse] Why, her pulse is positively
bounding. Come! get up. What nonsense! Up with you. [He hauls
her up summarily].
ANN. Yes: I feel strong enough now. But you very nearly killed me,
Jack, for all that.
MALONE. A rough wooer, eh? Theyre the best sort, Miss Whitefield. I
congratulate Mr Tanner; and I hope to meet you and him as
frequent guests at the abbey.
ANN. Thank you. [She goes past Malone to Octavius] Ricky Ticky Tavy:
congratulate me. [Aside to him] I want to make you cry for the
last time.
TAVY [steadfastly] No more tears. I am happy in your happiness. And
I believe in you in spite of everything.
RAMSDEN [coming between Malone and Tanner] You are a happy man, Jack
Tanner. I envy you.
MENDOZA [advancing between Violet and Tanner] Sir: there are two
tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other
is to gain it. Mine and yours, sir.
TANNER. Mr Mendoza: I have no heart's desires. Ramsden: it is very
easy for you to call me a happy man: you are only a spectator. I
am one of the principals; and I know better. Ann: stop tempting
Tavy, and come back to me.
ANN [complying] You are absurd, Jack. [She takes his proffered arm].
TANNER [continuing] I solemnly say that I am not a happy man. Ann
looks happy; but she is only triumphant, successful, victorious.
That is not happiness, but the price for which the strong sell
their happiness. What we have both done this afternoon is to
renounce happiness, renounce freedom, renounce tranquillity,
above all, renounce the romantic possibilities of an unknown
future, for the cares of a household and a family. I beg that
no man may seize the occasion to get half drunk and utter
imbecile speeches and coarse pleasantries at my expense. We
propose to furnish our own house according to our own taste; and
I hereby give notice that the seven or eight travelling clocks,
the four or five dressing cases, the carvers and fish slices,
the copies of Patmore's Angel In The House in extra morocco, and
the other articles you are preparing to heap upon us, will be
instantly sold, and the proceeds devoted to circulating free
copies of the Revolutionist's Handbook. The wedding will take
place three days after our return to England, by special
licence, at the office of the district superintendent registrar,
in the presence of my solicitor and his clerk, who, like his
clients, will be in ordinary walking dress-
VIOLET [with intense conviction] You are a brute, Jack.
ANN [looking at him with fond pride and caressing his arm] Never
mind her, dear. Go on talking.
TANNER. Talking!
Universal laughter.
THE REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK AND POCKET COMPANION
BY
JOHN TANNER, M.I.R.C.
(Member of the Idle Rich Class)
PREFACE TO THE REVOLUTIONIST'S HANDBOOK
"No one can contemplate the present condition of the masses of the
people without desiring something like a revolution for the better."
Sir Robert Giffen. Essays in Finance, vol. ii. p. 393.
FOREWORD
A REVOLUTIONIST is one who desires to discard the existing social
order and try another.
The constitution of England is revolutionary. To a Russian or
Anglo-Indian bureaucrat, a general election is as much a revolution as
a referendum or plebiscite in which the people fight instead of
voting. The French Revolution overthrew one set of rulers and
substituted another with different interests and different views. That
is what a general election enables the people to do in England every
seven years if they choose. Revolution is therefore a national
institution in England; and its advocacy by an Englishman needs no
apology.
Every man is a revolutionist concerning the thing he understands.
For example, every person who has mastered a profession is a sceptic
concerning it, and consequently a revolutionist.
Every genuine religious person is a heretic and therefore a
revolutionist.
All who achieve real distinction in life begin as revolutionists.
The most distinguished persons become more revolutionary as they
grow older, though they are commonly supposed to become more
conservative owing to their loss of faith in conventional methods of
reform.
Any person under the age of thirty, who, having any knowledge of the
existing social order, is not a revolutionist, is an inferior.
AND YET
Revolutions have never lightened the burden of tyranny: they have
only shifted it to another shoulder.
JOHN TANNER
I
ON GOOD BREEDING
IF there were no God, said the eighteenth century Deist, it would be
necessary to invent Him. Now this XVIII century god was ®deus ex
machina,¯ the god who helped those who could not help themselves,
the god of the lazy and incapable. The nineteenth century decided that
there is indeed no such god; and now Man must take in hand all the
work that he used to shirk with an idle prayer. He must, in effect,
change himself into the political Providence which he formerly
conceived as god; and such change is not only possible, but the only
sort of change that is real. The mere transfiguration of institutions,
as from military and priestly dominance to commercial and scientific
dominance, from commercial dominance to proletarian democracy, from
slavery to serfdom, from serfdom to capitalism, from monarchy to
republicanism, from polytheism to monotheism, from monotheism to
atheism, from atheism to pantheistic humanitarianism, from general
illiteracy to general literacy, from romance to realism, from
realism to mysticism, from metaphysics to physics, are all but changes
from Tweedledum to Tweedledee: ®plus ca change, plus c'est la meme
chose.¯ But the changes from the crab apple to the pippin, from the
wolf and fox to the house dog, from the charger of Henry V to the
brewer's draught horse and the race-horse, are real; for here Man
has played the god, subduing Nature to his intention, and ennobling or
debasing Life for a set purpose. And what can be done with a wolf
can be done with a man. If such monsters as the tramp and the
gentleman can appear as mere by-products of Man's individual greed and
folly, what might we not hope for as a main product of his universal
aspiration?
This is no new conclusion. The despair of institutions, and the
inexorable "ye must be born again," with Mrs Poyser's stipulation,
"and born different," recurs in every generation. The cry for the
Superman did not begin with Nietzsche, nor will it end with his vogue.
But it has always been silenced by the same question: what kind of
person is this Superman to be? You ask, not for a super-apple, but for
an eatable apple; not for a superhorse, but for a horse of greater
draught or velocity. Neither is it of any use to ask for a Superman:
you must furnish a specification of the sort of man you want.
Unfortunately you do not know what sort of man you want. Some sort
of goodlooking philosopher-athlete, with a handsome healthy woman
for his mate, perhaps.
Vague as this is, it is a great advance on the popular demand for
a perfect gentleman and a perfect lady. And, after all, no market
demand in the world takes the form of exact technical specification of
the article required. Excellent poultry and potatoes are produced to
satisfy the demand of housewives who do not know the technical
differences between a tuber and a chicken. They will tell you that the
proof of the pudding is in the eating; and they are right. The proof
of the Superman will be in the living; and we shall find out how to
produce him by the old method of trial and error, and not by waiting
for a completely convincing prescription of his ingredients.
Certain common and obvious mistakes may be ruled out from the
beginning. For example, we agree that we want superior mind; but we
need not fall into the football club folly of counting on this as a
product of superior body. Yet if we recoil so far as to conclude
that superior mind consists in being the dupe of our ethical
classifications of virtues and vices, in short, of conventional
morality, we shall fall out of the fryingpan of the football club into
the fire of the Sunday School. If we must choose between a race of
athletes and a race of "good" men, let us have the athletes: better
Samson and Milo than Calvin and Robespierre. But neither alternative
is worth changing for: Samson is no more a Superman than Calvin.
What then are we to do?
II
PROPERTY AND MARRIAGE
LET us hurry over the obstacles set up by property and marriage.
Revolutionists make too much of them. No doubt it is easy to
demonstrate that property will destroy society unless society destroys
it. No doubt, also, property has hitherto held its own and destroyed
all the empires. But that was because the superficial objection to
it (that it distributes social wealth and the social labor burden in a
grotesquely inequitable manner) did not threaten the existence of
the race, but only the individual happiness of its units, and
finally the maintenance of some irrelevant political form or other,
such as a nation, an empire, or the like. Now as happiness never
matters to Nature, as she neither recognizes flags and frontiers nor
cares a straw whether the economic system adopted by a society is
feudal, capitalistic, or collectivist, provided it keeps the race
afoot (the hive and the anthill being as acceptable to her as Utopia),
the demonstrations of Socialists, though irrefutable, will never
make any serious impression on property. The knell of that
over-rated institution will not sound until it is felt to conflict
with some more vital matter than mere personal inequities in
industrial economy. No such conflict was perceived whilst society
had not yet grown beyond national communities too small and simple
to overtax Man's limited political capacity disastrously. But we
have now reached the stage of international organization. Man's
political capacity and magnanimity are clearly beaten by the
vastness and complexity of the problems forced on him. And it is at
this anxious moment that he finds, when he looks upward for a mightier
mind to help him, that the heavens are empty. He will presently see
that his discarded formula that Man is the Temple of the Holy Ghost
happens to be precisely true, and that it is only through his own
brain and hand that this Holy Ghost, formally the most nebulous person
in the Trinity, and now become its sole survivor as it has always been
its real Unity, can help him in any way. And so, if the Superman is to
come, he must be born of Woman by Man's intentional and
well-considered contrivance. Conviction of this will smash
everything that opposes it. Even Property and Marriage, which laugh at
the laborer's petty complaint that he is defrauded of "surplus value,"
and at the domestic miseries of the slaves of the wedding ring, will
themselves be laughed aside as the lightest of trifles if they cross
this conception when it becomes a fully realized vital purpose of
the race.
That they must cross it becomes obvious the moment we acknowledge
the futility of breeding men for special qualities as we breed cocks
for game, greyhounds for speed, or sheep for mutton. What is really
important in Man is the part of him that we do not yet understand.
Of much of it we are not even conscious, just as we are not normally
conscious of keeping up our circulation by our heart-pump, though if
we neglect it we die. We are therefore driven to the conclusion that
when we have carried selection as far as we can by rejecting from
the list of eligible parents all persons who are uninteresting,
unpromising, or blemished without any set-off, we shall still have
to trust to the guidance of fancy (®alias¯ Voice of Nature), both in
the breeders and the parents, for that superiority in the
unconscious self which will be the true characteristic of the
Superman.
At this point we perceive the importance of giving fancy the
widest possible field. To cut humanity up into small cliques, and
effectively limit the selection of the individual to his own clique,
is to postpone the Superman for eons, if not for ever. Not only should
every person be nourished and trained as a possible parent, but
there should be no possibility of such an obstacle to natural
selection as the objection of a countess to a navvy or of a duke to
a charwoman. Equality is essential to good breeding; and equality,
as all economists know, is incompatible with property.
Besides, equality is an essential condition of bad breeding also;
and bad breeding is indispensable to the weeding out of the human
race. When the conception of heredity took hold of the scientific
imagination in the middle of last century, its devotees announced that
it was a crime to marry the lunatic to the lunatic or the
consumptive to the consumptive. But pray are we to try to correct
our diseased stocks by infecting our healthy stocks with them? Clearly
the attraction which disease has for diseased people is beneficial
to the race. If two really unhealthy people get married, they will, as
likely as not, have a great number of children who will all die before
they reach maturity. This is a far more satisfactory arrangement
than the tragedy of a union between a healthy and an unhealthy person.
Though more costly than sterilization of the unhealthy, it has the
enormous advantage that in the event of our notions of health and
unhealth being erroneous (which to some extent they most certainly
are), the error will be corrected by experience instead of confirmed
by evasion.
One fact must be faced resolutely, in spite of the shrieks of the
romantic. There is no evidence that the best citizens are the
offspring of congenial marriages, or that a conflict of temperament is
not a highly important part of what breeders call crossing. On the
contrary, it is quite sufficiently probable that good results may be
obtained from parents who would be extremely unsuitable companions and
partners, to make it certain that the experiment of mating them will
sooner or later be tried purposely almost as often as it is now
tried accidentally. But mating such couples must clearly not involve
marrying them. In conjugation two complementary persons may supply one
another's deficiencies: in the domestic partnership of marriage they
only feel them and suffer from them. Thus the son of a robust,
cheerful, eupeptic British country squire, with the tastes and range
of his class, and of a clever, imaginative, intellectual, highly
civilized Jewess, might be very superior to both his parents; but it
is not likely that the Jewess would find the squire an interesting
companion, or his habits, his friends, his place and mode of life
congenial to her. Therefore marriage, whilst it is made an
indispensable condition of mating, will delay the advent of the
Superman as effectually as Property, and will be modified by the
impulse towards him just as effectually.
The practical abrogation of Property and Marriage as they exist at
present will occur without being much noticed. To the mass of men, the
intelligent abolition of property would mean nothing except an
increase in the quantity of food, clothing, housing, and comfort at
their personal disposal, as well as a greater control over their
time and circumstances. Very few persons now make any distinction
between virtually complete property and property held on such highly
developed public conditions as to place its income on the same footing
as that of a propertyless clergyman, officer, or civil servant. A
landed proprietor may still drive men and women off his land, demolish
their dwellings, and replace them with sheep or deer; and in the
unregulated trades the private trader may still spunge on the
regulated trades and sacrifice the life and health of the nation as
lawlessly as the Manchester cotton manufacturers did at the
beginning of last century. But though the Factory Code on the one
hand, and Trade Union organization on the other, have, within the
lifetime of men still living, converted the old unrestricted
property of the cotton manufacturer in his mill and the cotton spinner
in his labor into a mere permission to trade or work on stringent
public or collective conditions, imposed in the interest of the
general welfare without any regard for individual hard cases, people
in Lancashire still speak of their "property" in the old terms,
meaning nothing more by it than the things a thief can be punished for
stealing. The total abolition of property, and the conversion of every
citizen into a salaried functionary in the public service, would leave
much more than 99 per cent of the nation quite unconscious of any
greater change than now takes place when the son of a shipowner goes
into the navy. They would still call their watches and umbrellas and
back gardens their property.
Marriage also will persist as a name attached to a general custom
long after the custom itself will have altered. For example, modern
English marriage, as modified by divorce and by Married Women's
Property Acts, differs more from early XIX century marriage than
Byron's marriage did from Shakespear's. At the present moment marriage
in England differs not only from marriage in France, but from marriage
in Scotland. Marriage as modified by the divorce laws in South
Dakota would be called mere promiscuity in Clapham. Yet the Americans,
far from taking a profligate and cynical view of marriage, do homage
to its ideals with a seriousness that seems old fashioned in
Clapham. Neither in England nor America would a proposal to abolish
marriage be tolerated for a moment; and yet nothing is more certain
than that in both countries the progressive modification of the
marriage contract will be continued until it is no more onerous nor
irrevocable than any ordinary commercial deed of partnership. Were
even this dispensed with, people would still call themselves
husbands and wives; describe their companionships as marriages; and be
for the most part unconscious that they were any less married than
Henry VIII. For though a glance at the legal conditions of marriage in
different Christian countries shews that marriage varies legally
from frontier to frontier, domesticity varies so little that most
people believe their own marriage laws to be universal. Consequently
here again, as in the case of Property, the absolute confidence of the
public in the stability of the institution's name, makes it all the
easier to alter its substance.
However, it cannot be denied that one of the changes in public
opinion demanded by the need for the Superman is a very unexpected
one. It is nothing less than the dissolution of the present
necessary association of marriage with conjugation, which most
unmarried people regard as the very diagnostic of marriage. They are
wrong, of course: it would be quite as near the truth to say that
conjugation is the one purely accidental and incidental condition of
marriage. Conjugation is essential to nothing but the propagation of
the race; and the moment that paramount need is provided for otherwise
than by marriage, conjugation, from Nature's creative point of view,
ceases to be essential in marriage. But marriage does not thereupon
cease to be so economical, convenient, and comfortable, that the
Superman might safely bribe the matrimonomaniacs by offering to revive
all the old inhuman stringency and irrevocability of marriage, to
abolish divorce, to confirm the horrible bond which still chains
decent people to drunkards, criminals, and wasters, provided only
the complete extrication of conjugation from it were conceded to
him. For if people could form domestic companionships on no easier
terms than these, they would still marry. The Roman Catholic,
forbidden by his Church to avail himself of the divorce laws,
marries as freely as the South Dakotan Presbyterians who can change
partners with a facility that scandalizes the old world; and were
his Church to dare a further step towards Christianity and enjoin
celibacy on its laity as well as on its clergy, marriages would
still be contracted for the sake of domesticity by perfectly
obedient sons and daughters of the Church. One need not further pursue
these hypotheses: they are only suggested here to help the reader to
analyse marriage into its two functions of regulating conjugation
and supplying a form of domesticity. These two functions are quite
separable; and domesticity is the only one of the two which is
essential to the existence of marriage, because conjugation without
domesticity is not marriage at all, whereas domesticity without
conjugation is still marriage: in fact it is necessarily the actual
condition of all fertile marriages during a great part of their
duration, and of some marriages during the whole of it.
Taking it, then, that Property and Marriage, by destroying
Equality and thus hampering sexual selection with irrelevant
conditions, are hostile to the evolution of the Superman, it is easy
to understand why the only generally known modern experiment in
breeding the human race took place in a community which discarded both
institutions.
III
THE PERFECTIONIST EXPERIMENT AT ONEIDA CREEK
IN 1848 the Oneida Community was founded in America to carry out a
resolution arrived at by a handful of Perfectionist Communists "that
we will devote ourselves exclusively to the establishment of the
Kingdom of God." Though the American nation declared that this sort of
thing was not to be tolerated in a Christian country, the Oneida
Community held its own for over thirty years, during which period it
seems to have produced healthier children and done and suffered less
evil than any Joint Stock Company on record. It was, however, a highly
selected community; for a genuine communist (roughly definable as an
intensely proud person who proposes to enrich the common fund
instead of to spunge on it) is superior to an ordinary joint stock
capitalist precisely as an ordinary joint stock capitalist is superior
to a pirate. Further, the Perfectionists were mightily shepherded by
their chief Noyes, one of those chance attempts at the Superman
which occur from time to time in spite of the interference of Man's
blundering institutions. The existence of Noyes simplified the
breeding problem for the Communists, the question as to what sort of
man they should strive to breed being settled at once by the obvious
desirability of breeding another Noyes.
But an experiment conducted by a handful of people, who, after
thirty years of immunity from the unintentional child slaughter that
goes on by ignorant parents in private homes, numbered only 300, could
do very little except prove that Communists, under the guidance of a
Superman "devoted exclusively to the establishment of the Kingdom of
God," and caring no more for property and marriage than a Camberwell
minister cares for Hindoo Caste or Suttee, might make a much better
job of their lives than ordinary folk under the harrow of both these
institutions. Yet their Superman himself admitted that this apparent
success was only part of the abnormal phenomenon of his own
occurrence; for when he came to the end of his powers through age,
he himself guided and organized the voluntary relapse of the
communists into marriage, capitalism, and customary private life, thus
admitting that the real social solution was not what a casual Superman
could persuade a picked company to do for him, but what a whole
community of Supermen would do spontaneously. If Noyes had had to
organize, not a few dozen Perfectionists, but the whole United States,
America would have beaten him as completely as England beat Oliver
Cromwell, France Napoleon, or Rome Julius Caesar. Cromwell learnt by
bitter experience that God himself cannot raise a people above its own
level, and that even though you stir a nation to sacrifice all its
appetites to its conscience, the result will still depend wholly on
what sort of conscience the nation has got. Napoleon seems to have
ended by regarding mankind as a troublesome pack of hounds only
worth keeping for the sport of hunting with them. Caesar's capacity
for fighting without hatred or resentment was defeated by the
determination of his soldiers to kill their enemies in the field
instead of taking them prisoners to be spared by Caesar; and his civil
supremacy was purchased by colossal bribery of the citizens of Rome.
What great rulers cannot do, codes and religions cannot do. Man
reads his own nature into every ordinance: if you devise a
superhuman commandment so cunningly that it cannot be misinterpreted
in terms of his will, he will denounce it as seditious blasphemy, or
else disregard it as either crazy or totally unintelligible.
Parliaments and synods may tinker as much as they please with their
codes and creeds as circumstances alter the balance of classes and
their interests; and, as a result of the tinkering, there may be an
occasional illusion of moral evolution, as when the victory of the
commercial caste over the military caste leads to the substitution
of social boycotting and pecuniary damages for duelling. At certain
moments there may even be a considerable material advance, as when the
conquest of political power by the working class produces a better
distribution of wealth through the simple action of the selfishness of
the new masters; but all this is mere readjustment and reformation:
until the heart and mind of the people is changed the very greatest
man will no more dare to govern on the assumption that all are as
great as he than a drover dare leave his flock to find its way through
the streets as he himself would. Until there is an England in which
every man is a Cromwell, a France in which every man is a Napoleon,
a Rome in which every man is a Caesar, a Germany in which every man is
a Luther plus a Goethe, the world will be no more improved by its
heroes than a Brixton villa is improved by the pyramid of Cheops.
The production of such nations is the only real change possible to us.
IV
MAN'S OBJECTION TO HIS OWN IMPROVEMENT
BUT would such a change be tolerated if Man must rise above
himself to desire it? It would, through his misconception of its
nature. Man does desire an ideal Superman with such energy as he can
spare from his nutrition, and has in every age magnified the best
living substitute for it he can find. His least incompetent general is
set up as an Alexander; his king is the first gentleman in the
world; his Pope is a saint. He is never without an array of human
idols who are all nothing but sham Supermen. That the real Superman
will snap his superfingers at all Man's present trumpery ideals of
right, duty, honor, justice, religion, even decency, and accept
moral obligations beyond present human endurance, is a thing that
contemporary Man does not foresee: in fact he does not notice it
when our casual Supermen do it in his very face. He actually does it
himself every day without knowing it. He will therefore make no
objection to the production of a race of what he calls Great Men or
Heroes, because he will imagine them, not as true Supermen, but as
himself endowed with infinite brains, infinite courage, and infinite
money.
The most troublesome opposition will arise from the general fear
of mankind that any interference with our conjugal customs will be
an interference with our pleasures and our romance. This fear, by
putting on airs of offended morality, has always intimidated people
who have not measured its essential weakness; but it will prevail with
those degenerates only in whom the instinct of fertility has faded
into a mere itching for pleasure. The modern devices for combining
pleasure with sterility, now universally known and accessible,
enable these persons to weed themselves out of the race, a process
already vigorously at work; and the consequent survival of the
intelligently fertile means the survival of the partizans of the
Superman; for what is proposed is nothing but the replacement of the
old unintelligent, inevitable, almost unconscious fertility by an
intelligently controlled, conscious fertility, and the elimination
of the mere voluptuary from the evolutionary process. * Even if this
selective agency had not been invented, the purpose of the race
would still shatter the opposition of individual instincts. Not only
do the bees and the ants satisfy their reproductive and parental
instincts vicariously; but marriage itself successfully imposes
celibacy on millions of unmarried normal men and women. In short,
the individual instinct in this matter, overwhelming as it is
thoughtlessly supposed to be, is really a finally negligible one.
-
* The part played in evolution by the voluptuary will be the same as
that already played by the glutton. The glutton, as the man with the
strongest motive for nourishing himself, will always take more pains
than his fellows to get food. When food is so difficult to get that
only great exertions can secure a sufficient supply of it, the
glutton's appetite develops his cunning and enterprise to the
utmost; and he becomes not only the best fed but the ablest man in the
community. But in more hospitable climates, or where the social
organization of the food supply makes it easy for a man to overeat,
then the glutton eats himself out of health and finally out of
existence. All other voluptuaries prosper and perish in the same
way; way; and this is why the survival of the fittest means finally
the survival of the self-controlled, because they alone can adapt
themselves to the perpetual shifting of conditions produced by
industrial progress.
V
THE POLITICAL NEED FOR THE SUPERMAN
THE need for the Superman is, in its most imperative aspect, a
political one. We have been driven to Proletarian Democracy by the
failure of all the alternative systems; for these depended on the
existence of Supermen acting as despots or oligarchs; and not only
were these Supermen not always or even often forthcoming at the
right moment and in an eligible social position, but when they were
forthcoming they could not, except for a short time and by morally
suicidal coercive methods, impose superhumanity on those whom they
governed; so, by mere force of "human nature," government by consent
of the governed has supplanted the old plan of governing the citizen
as a public-schoolboy is governed.
Now we have yet to see the man who, having any practical
experience of Proletarian Democracy, has any belief in its capacity
for solving great political problems, or even for doing ordinary
parochial work intelligently and economically. Only under despotisms
and oligarchies has the Radical faith in "universal suffrage" as a
political panacea arisen. It withers the moment it is exposed to
practical trial, because Democracy cannot rise above the level of
the human material of which its voters are made. Switzerland seems
happy in comparison with Russia; but if Russia were as small as
Switzerland, and had her social problems simplified in the same way by
impregnable natural fortifications and a population educated by the
same variety and intimacy of international intercourse, there might be
little to choose between them. At all events Australia and Canada,
which are virtually protected democratic republics, and France and the
United States, which are avowedly independent democratic republics,
are neither healthy, wealthy, nor wise; and they would be worse
instead of better if their popular ministers were not experts in the
art of dodging popular enthusiasms and duping popular ignorance. The
politician who once had to learn how to flatter Kings has now to learn
how to fascinate, amuse, coax, humbug, frighten, or otherwise strike
the fancy of the electorate; and though in advanced modern States,
where the artizan is better educated than the King, it takes a much
bigger man to be a successful demagogue than to be a successful
courtier, yet he who holds popular convictions with prodigious
energy is the man for the mob, whilst the frailer sceptic who is
cautiously feeling his way towards the next century has no chance
unless he happens by accident to have the specific artistic talent
of the mountebank as well, in which case it is as a mountebank that he
catches votes, and not as a meliorist. Consequently the demagogue,
though he professes (and fails) to readjust matters in the interests
of the majority of the electors, yet stereotypes mediocrity, organizes
intolerance, disparages exhibitions of uncommon qualities, and
glorifies conspicuous exhibitions of common ones. He manages a small
job well: he muddles rhetorically through a large one. When a great
political movement takes place, it is not consciously led nor
organized: the unconscious self in mankind breaks its way through
the problem as an elephant breaks through a jungle; and the
politicians make speeches about whatever happens in the process,
which, with the best intentions, they do all in their power to
prevent. Finally, when social aggregation arrives at a point demanding
international organization before the demagogues and electorates
have learnt how to manage even a country parish properly much less
internationalize Constantinople, the whole political business goes
to smash; and presently we have Ruins of Empires, New Zealanders
sitting on a broken arch of London Bridge, and so forth.
To that recurrent catastrophe we shall certainly come again unless
we can have a Democracy of Supermen; and the production of such a
Democracy is the only change that is now hopeful enough to nerve us to
the effort that Revolution demands.
VI
PRUDERY EXPLAINED
WHY the bees should pamper their mothers whilst we pamper only our
operatic prima donnas is a question worth reflecting on. Our notion of
treating a mother is, not to increase her supply of food, but to cut
it off by forbidding her to work in a factory for a month after her
confinement. Everything that can make birth a misfortune to the
parents as well as a danger to the mother is conscientiously done.
When a great French writer, Emil Zola, alarmed at the sterilization of
his nation, wrote an eloquent and powerful book to restore the
prestige of parentage, it was at once assumed in England that a work
of this character, with such a title as Fecundity, was too
abominable to be translated, and that any attempt to deal with the
relations of the sexes from any other than the voluptuary or
romantic point of view must be sternly put down. Now if this
assumption were really founded on public opinion, it would indicate an
attitude of disgust and resentment towards the Life Force that could
only arise in a diseased and moribund community in which Ibsen's Hedda
Gabler would be the typical woman. But it has no vital foundation at
all. The prudery of the newspapers is, like the prudery of the
dinner table, a mere difficulty of education and language. We are
not taught to think decently on these subjects, and consequently we
have no language for them except indecent language. We therefore
have to declare them unfit for public discussion, because the only
terms in which we can conduct the discussion are unfit for public use.
Physiologists, who have a technical vocabulary at their disposal, find
no difficulty; and masters of language who think decently can write
popular stories like Zola's Fecundity or Tolstoy's Resurrection
without giving the smallest offence to readers who can also think
decently. But the ordinary modern journalist, who has never
discussed such matters except in ribaldry, cannot write a simple
comment on a divorce case without a conscious shamefulness or a
furtive facetiousness that makes it impossible to read the comment
aloud in company. All this ribaldry and prudery (the two are the same)
does not mean that people do not feel decently on the subject: on
the contrary, it is just the depth and seriousness of our feeling that
makes its desecration by vile language and coarse humor intolerable;
so that at last we cannot bear to have it spoken of at all because
only one in a thousand can speak of it without wounding our
self-respect, especially the self-respect of women. Add to the horrors
of popular language the horrors of popular poverty. In crowded
populations poverty destroys the possibility of cleanliness; and in
the absence of cleanliness many of the natural conditions of life
become offensive and noxious, with the result that at last the
association of uncleanliness with these natural conditions becomes
so overpowering that among civilized people (that is, people massed in
the labyrinths of slums we call cities), half their bodily life
becomes a guilty secret, unmentionable except to the doctor in
emergencies; and Hedda Gabler shoots herself because maternity is so
unladylike. In short, popular prudery is only a mere incident of
popular squalor: the subjects which it taboos remain the most
interesting and earnest of subjects in spite of it.
VII
PROGRESS AN ILLUSION
UNFORTUNATELY the earnest people get drawn off the track of
evolution by the illusion of progress.
Any Socialist can convince us easily that the difference between Man
as he is and Man as he might become, without further evolution,
under millennial conditions of nutrition, environment, and training,
is enormous. He can shew that inequality and iniquitous distribution
of wealth and allotment of labor have arisen through an unscientific
economic system, and that Man, faulty as he is, no more intended to
establish any such ordered disorder than a moth intends to be burnt
when it flies into a candle flame. He can shew that the difference
between the grace and strength of the acrobat and the bent back of the
rheumatic field laborer is a difference produced by conditions, not by
nature. He can shew that many of the most detestable human vices are
not radical, but are mere reactions of our institutions on our very
virtues. The Anarchist, the Fabian, the Salvationist, the
Vegetarian, the doctor, the lawyer, the parson, the professor of
ethics, the gymnast, the soldier, the sportsman, the inventor, the
political program-maker, all have some prescription for bettering
us; and almost all their remedies are physically possible and aimed at
admitted evils. To them the limit of progress is, at worst, the
completion of all the suggested reforms and the levelling up of all
men to the point attained already by the most highly nourished and
cultivated in mind and body.
Here, then, as it seems to them, is an enormous field for the energy
of the reformer. Here are many noble goals attainable by many of those
paths up the Hill Difficulty along which great spirits love to aspire.
Unhappily, the hill will never be climbed by Man as we know him. It
need not be denied that if we all struggled bravely to the end of
the reformers' paths we should improve the world prodigiously. But
there is no more hope in that If than in the equally plausible
assurance that if the sky falls we shall all catch larks. We are not
going to tread those paths: we have not sufficient energy. We do not
desire the end enough: indeed in more cases we do not effectively
desire it at all. Ask any man would he like to be a better man; and he
will say yes, most piously. Ask him would he like to have a million of
money; and he will say yes, most sincerely. But the pious citizen
who would like to be a better man goes on behaving just as he did
before. And the tramp who would like the million does not take the
trouble to earn ten shillings: multitudes of men and women, all
eager to accept a legacy of a million, live and die without having
ever possessed five pounds at one time, although beggars have died
in rags on mattresses stuffed with gold which they accumulated because
they desired it enough to nerve them to get it and keep it. The
economists who discovered that demand created supply soon had to limit
the proposition to "effective demand," which turned out, in the
final analysis, to mean nothing more than supply itself; and this
holds good in politics, morals, and all other departments as well: the
actual supply is the measure of the effective demand; and the mere
aspirations and professions produce nothing. No community has ever yet
passed beyond the initial phases in which its pugnacity and fanaticism
enabled it to found a nation, and its cupidity to establish and
develop a commercial civilization. Even these stages have never been
attained by public spirit, but always by intolerant wilfulness and
brute force. Take the Reform Bill of 1832 as an example of a
conflict between two sections of educated Englishmen concerning a
political measure which was as obviously necessary and inevitable as
any political measure has ever been or is ever likely to be. It was
not passed until the gentlemen of Birmingham had made arrangements
to cut the throats of the gentlemen of St. James's parish in due
military form. It would not have been passed to this day if there
had been no force behind it except the logic and public conscience
of the Utilitarians. A despotic ruler with as much sense as Queen
Elizabeth would have done better than the mob of grown-up Eton boys
who governed us then by privilege, and who, since the introduction
of practically Manhood Suffrage in 1884, now govern us at the
request of proletarian Democracy.
At the present time we have, instead of the Utilitarians, the Fabian
Society, with its peaceful, constitutional, moral, economical policy
of Socialism, which needs nothing for its bloodless and benevolent
realization except that the English people shall understand it and
approve of it. But why are the Fabians well spoken of in circles where
thirty years ago the word Socialist was understood as equivalent to
cut-throat and incendiary? Not because the English have the smallest
intention of studying or adopting the Fabian policy, but because
they believe that the Fabians, by eliminating the element of
intimidation from the Socialist agitation, have drawn the teeth of
insurgent poverty and saved the existing order from the only method of
attack it really fears. Of course, if the nation adopted the Fabian
policy, it would be carried out by brute force exactly as our
present property system is. It would become the law; and those who
resisted it would be fined, sold up, knocked on the head by policemen,
thrown into prison, and in the last resort "executed" just as they are
when they break the present law. But as our proprietary class has no
fear of that conversion taking place, whereas it does fear sporadic
cut-throats and gunpowder plots, and strives with all its might to
hide the fact that there is no moral difference whatever between the
methods by which it enforces its proprietary rights and the method
by which the dynamitard asserts his conception of natural human
rights, the Fabian Society is patted on the back just as the Christian
Social Union is, whilst the Socialist who says bluntly that a Social
revolution can be made only as all other revolutions have been made,
by the people who want it killing, coercing, and intimidating the
people who dont want it, is denounced as a misleader of the people,
and imprisoned with hard labor to shew him how much sincerity there is
in the objection of his captors to physical force.
Are we then to repudiate Fabian methods, and return to those of
the barricader, or adopt those of the dynamitard and the assassin?
On the contrary, we are to recognize that both are fundamentally
futile. It seems easy for the dynamitard to say "Have you not just
admitted that nothing is ever conceded except to physical force? Did
not Gladstone admit that the Irish Church was disestablished, not by
the spirit of Liberalism, but by the explosion which wrecked
Clerkenwell prison?" Well, we need not foolishly and timidly deny
it. Let it be fully granted. Let us grant, further, that all this lies
in the nature of things; that the most ardent Socialist, if he owns
property, can by no means do otherwise than Conservative proprietors
until property is forcibly abolished by the whole nation; nay, that
ballots, and parliamentary divisions, in spite of their vain ceremony,
of discussion, differ from battles only as the bloodless surrender
of an outnumbered force in the field differs from Waterloo or
Trafalgar. I make a present of all these admissions to the Fenian
who collects money from thoughtless Irishmen in America to blow up
Dublin Castle; to the detective who persuades foolish young workmen to
order bombs from the nearest ironmonger and then delivers them up to
penal servitude; to our military and naval commanders who believe, not
in preaching, but in an ultimatum backed by plenty of lyddite; and,
generally, to all whom it may concern. But of what use is it to
substitute the way of the reckless and bloodyminded for the way of the
cautious and humane? Is England any the better for the wreck of
Clerkenwell prison, or Ireland for the disestablishment of the Irish
Church? Is there the smallest reason to suppose that the nation
which sheepishly let Charles and Laud and Strafford coerce it,
gained anything because it afterwards, still more sheepishly, let a
few strongminded Puritans, inflamed by the masterpieces of Jewish
revolutionary literature, cut off the heads of the three? Suppose
the Gunpowder plot had succeeded, and set a Fawkes dynasty permanently
on the throne, would it have made any difference to the present
state of the nation? The guillotine was used in France up to the limit
of human endurance, both on Girondins and Jacobins. Fouquier
Tinville followed Marie Antoinette to the scaffold; and Marie
Antoinette might have asked the crowd, just as pointedly as Fouquier
did, whether their bread would be any cheaper when her head was off.
And what came of it all? The Imperial France of the Rougon Macquart
family, and the Republican France of the Panama scandal and the
Dreyfus case. Was the difference worth the guillotining of all those
unlucky ladies and gentlemen, useless and mischievous as many of
them were? Would any sane man guillotine a mouse to bring about such a
result? Turn to Republican America. America has no Star Chamber, and
no feudal barons. But it has Trusts; and it has millionaires whose
factories, fenced in by live electric wires and defended by
Pinkerton retainers with magazine rifles, would have made a Radical of
Reginald Front de Boeuf. Would Washington or Franklin have lifted a
finger in the cause of American Independence if they had foreseen
its reality?
No: what Caesar, Cromwell, Napoleon could not do with all the
physical force and moral prestige of the State in their hands,
cannot be done by enthusiastic criminals and lunatics. Even the
Jews, who, from Moses to Marx and Lassalle, have inspired all the
revolutions, have had to confess that, after all, the dog will
return to his vomit and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in
the mire; and we may as well make up our minds that Man will return to
his idols and his cupidities, in spite of "movements" and all
revolutions, until his nature is changed. Until then, his early
successes in building commercial civilizations (and such
civilizations, Good Heavens!) are but preliminaries to the
inevitable later stage, now threatening us, in which the passions
which built the civilization become fatal instead of productive,
just as the same qualities which make the lion king in the forest
ensure his destruction when he enters a city. Nothing can save society
then except the clear head and the wide purpose: war and
competition, potent instruments of selection and evolution in one
epoch, become ruinous instruments of degeneration in the next. In
the breeding of animals and plants, varieties which have arisen by
selection through many generations relapse precipitously into the wild
type in a generation or two when selection ceases; and in the same way
a civilization in which lusty pugnacity and greed have ceased to act
as selective agents and have begun to obstruct and destroy, rushes
downwards and backwards with a suddenness that enables an observer
to see with consternation the upward steps of many centuries
retraced in a single lifetime. This has often occurred even within the
period covered by history; and in every instance the turning point has
been reached long before the attainment, or even the general
advocacy on paper, of the levelling-up of the mass to the highest
point attainable by the best nourished and cultivated normal
individuals.
We must therefore frankly give up the notion that Man as he exists
is capable of net progress. There will always be an illusion of
progress, because wherever we are conscious of an evil we remedy it,
and therefore always seem to ourselves to be progressing, forgetting
that most of the evils we see are the effects, finally become acute,
of long-unnoticed retrogressions; that our compromising remedies
seldom fully recover the lost ground; above all, that on the lines
along which we are degenerating, good has become evil in our eyes, and
is being undone in the name of progress precisely as evil is undone
and replaced by good on the lines along which we are evolving. This is
indeed the Illusion of Illusions; for it gives us infallible and
appalling assurance that if our political ruin is to come, it will
be effected by ardent reformers and supported by enthusiastic patriots
as a series of necessary steps in our progress. Let the Reformer,
the Progressive, the Meliorist then reconsider himself and his eternal
ifs and ans which never become pots and pans. Whilst Man remains
what he is, there can be no progress beyond the point already attained
and fallen headlong from at every attempt at civilization; and since
even that point is but a pinnacle to which a few people cling in giddy
terror above an abyss of squalor, mere progress should no longer charm
us.
VIII
THE CONCEIT OF CIVILIZATION
AFTER all, the progress illusion is not so very subtle. We begin
by reading the satires of our fathers' contemporaries; and we conclude
(usually quite ignorantly) that the abuses exposed by them are
things of the past. We see also that reforms of crying evils are
frequently produced by the sectional shifting of political power
from oppressors to oppressed. The poor man is given a vote by the
Liberals in the hope that he will cast it for his emancipators. The
hope is not fulfilled; but the lifelong imprisonment of penniless
men for debt ceases; Factory Acts are passed to mitigate sweating;
schooling is made free and compulsory; sanitary by-laws are
multiplied; public steps are taken to house the masses decently; the
bare-footed get boots; rags become rare; and bathrooms and pianos,
smart tweeds and starched collars, reach numbers of people who once,
as "the unsoaped," played the Jew's harp or the accordion in moleskins
and belchers. Some of these changes are gains: some of them are
losses. Some of them are not changes at all: all of them are merely
the changes that money makes. Still, they produce an illusion of
bustling progress; and the reading class infers from them that the
abuses of the early Victorian period no longer exist except as amusing
pages in the novels of Dickens. But the moment we look for a reform
due to character and not to money, to statesmanship and not to
interest or mutiny, we are disillusioned. For example, we remembered
the maladministration and incompetence revealed by the Crimean War
as part of a by-gone state of things until the South African war
shewed that the nation and the War Office, like those poor Bourbons
who have been so impudently blamed for a universal characteristic, had
learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. We had hardly recovered from the
fruitless irritation of this discovery when it transpired that the
officers' mess of our most select regiment included a flogging club
presided over by the senior subaltern. The disclosure provoked some
disgust at the details of this schoolboyish debauchery, but no
surprise at the apparent absence of any conception of manly honor
and virtue, of personal courage and self-respect, in the front rank of
our chivalry. In civil affairs we had assumed that the sycophancy
and idolatry which encouraged Charles I to undervalue the Puritan
revolt of the XVII century had been long outgrown; but it has needed
nothing but favorable circumstances to revive, with added abjectness
to compensate for its lost piety. We have relapsed into disputes about
transubstantiation at the very moment when the discovery of the wide
prevalence of theophagy as a tribal custom has deprived us of the last
excuse for believing that our official religious rites differ in
essentials from those of barbarians. The Christian doctrine of the
uselessness of punishment and the wickedness of revenge has not, in
spite of its simple common sense, found a single convert among the
nations: Christianity means nothing to the masses but a sensational
public execution which is made an excuse for other executions. In
its name we take ten years of a thief's life minute by minute in the
slow misery and degradation of modern reformed imprisonment with as
little remorse as Laud and his Star Chamber clipped the ears of
Bastwick and Burton. We dug up and mutilated the remains of the
Mahdi the other day exactly as we dug up and mutilated the remains
of Cromwell two centuries ago. We have demanded the decapitation of
the Chinese Boxer princes as any Tartar would have done; and our
military and naval expeditions to kill, burn, and destroy tribes and
villages for knocking an Englishman on the head are so common a part
of our Imperial routine that the last dozen of them has not called
forth as much pity as can be counted on by any lady criminal. The
judicial use of torture to extort confession is supposed to be a relic
of darker ages; but whilst these pages are being written an English
judge has sentenced a forger to twenty years penal servitude with an
open declaration that the sentence will be carried out in full
unless he confesses where he has hidden the notes he forged. And no
comment whatever is made, either on this or on a telegram from the
seat of war in Somaliland mentioning that certain information has been
given by a prisoner of war "under punishment." Even if these reports
are false, the fact that they are accepted without protest as
indicating a natural and proper course of public conduct shews that we
are still as ready to resort to torture as Bacon was. As to vindictive
cruelty, an incident in the South African war, when the relatives
and friends of a prisoner were forced to witness his execution,
betrayed a baseness of temper and character which hardly leaves us the
right to plume ourselves on our superiority to Edward III at the
surrender of Calais. And the democratic American officer indulges in
torture in the Philippines just as the aristocratic English officer
did in South Africa. The incidents of the white invasion of Africa
in search of ivory, gold, diamonds, and sport, have proved that the
modern European is the same beast of prey that formerly marched to the
conquest of new worlds under Alexander, Antony, and Pizarro.
Parliaments and vestries are just what they were when Cromwell
suppressed them and Dickens derided them. The democratic politician
remains exactly as Plato described him; the physician is still the
credulous impostor and petulant scientific coxcomb whom Moliere
ridiculed; the schoolmaster remains at best a pedantic child farmer
and at worst a flagellomaniac; arbitrations are more dreaded by honest
men than lawsuits; the philanthropist is still a parasite on misery as
the doctor is on disease; the miracles of priestcraft are none the
less fraudulent and mischievous because they are now called scientific
experiments and conducted by professors; witchcraft, in the modern
form of patent medicines and prophylactic inoculations, is rampant;
the landowner who is no longer powerful enough to; set the mantrap
of Rhampsinitis improves on it by barbed wire; the modern gentleman
who is too lazy to daub his face with vermilion as a symbol of bravery
employs a laundress to daub his shirt with starch as a symbol of
cleanliness; we shake our heads at the dirt of the middle ages in
cities made grimy with soot and foul and disgusting with shameless
tobacco smoking; holy water, in its latest form of disinfectant fluid,
is more widely used and believed in than ever; public health
authorities deliberately go through incantations with burning
sulphur (which they know to be useless) because the people believe
in it as devoutly as the Italian peasant believes in the
liquefaction of the blood of St Januarius; and straightforward
public lying has reached gigantic developments, there being nothing to
choose in this respect between the pickpocket at the police station
and the minister on the treasury bench, the editor in the newspaper
office, the city magnate advertizing bicycle tires that do not
side-slip, the clergyman subscribing the thirty-nine articles, and the
vivisector who pledges his knightly honor that no animal operated on
in the physiological laboratory suffers the slightest pain.
Hypocrisy is at its worst; for we not only persecute bigotedly but
sincerely in the name of the cure-mongering witchcraft we do believe
in, but callously and hypocritically in the name of the Evangelical
creed that our rulers privately smile at as the Italian patricians
of the fifth century smiled at Jupiter and Venus. Sport is, as it
has always been, murderous excitement; the impulse to slaughter is
universal; and museums are set up throughout the country to
encourage little children and elderly gentlemen to make collections of
corpses preserved in alcohol, and to steal birds' eggs and keep them
as the red Indian used to keep scalps. Coercion with the lash is as
natural to an Englishman as it was to Solomon spoiling Rehoboam:
indeed, the comparison is unfair to the Jews in view of the facts that
the Mosaic law forbade more than forty lashes in the name of humanity,
and that floggings of a thousand lashes were inflicted on English
soldiers in the XVIII and XIX centuries, and would be inflicted
still but for the change in the balance of political power between the
military caste and the commercial classes and the proletariat. In
spite of that change, flogging is still an institution in the public
school, in the military prison, on the training ship, and in that
school of littleness called the home. The lascivious clamor of the
flagellomaniac for more of it, constant as the clamor for more
insolence, more war, and lower rates, is tolerated and even
gratified because, having no moral ends in view, we have sense
enough to see that nothing but brute coercion can impose our selfish
will on others. Cowardice is universal; patriotism, public opinion,
parental duty, discipline, religion, morality, are only fine names for
intimidation; and cruelty, gluttony, and credulity keep cowardice in
countenance. We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels
to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail
geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste
of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's
hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to
follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most
abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for
our own diseases by them.
Now please observe that these are not exceptional developments of
our admitted vices, deplored and prayed against by all good men. Not a
word has been said here of the excesses of our Neros, of whom we
have the full usual percentage. With the exception of the few military
examples, which are mentioned mainly to shew that the education and
standing of a gentleman, reinforced by the strongest conventions of
honor, ®esprit de corps,¯ publicity and responsibility, afford no
better guarantees of conduct than the passions of a mob, the
illustrations given above are commonplaces taken from the daily
practices of our best citizens, vehemently defended in our
newspapers and in our pulpits. The very humanitarians who abhor them
are stirred to murder by them: the dagger of Brutus and Ravaillac is
still active in the hands of Caserio and Luccheni; and the pistol
has come to its aid in the hands of Guiteau and Czolgosz. Our remedies
are still limited to endurance or assassination; and the assassin is
still judicially assassinated on the principle that two blacks make
a white. The only novelty is in our methods: through the discovery
of dynamite the overloaded musket of Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh has
been superseded by the bomb; but Ravachol's heart burns just as
Hamilton's did. The world will not bear thinking of to those who
know what it is, even with the largest discount for the restraints
of poverty on the poor and cowardice on the rich.
All that can be said for us is that people must and do live and
let live up to a certain point. Even the horse, with his docked tail
and bitted jaw, finds his slavery mitigated by the fact that a total
disregard of his need for food and rest would put his master to the
expense of buying a new horse every second day; for you cannot work
a horse to death and then pick up another one for nothing, as you
can a laborer. But this natural check on inconsiderate selfishness
is itself checked, partly by our shortsightedness, and partly by
deliberate calculation; so that beside the man who, to his own loss,
will shorten his horse's life in mere stinginess, we have the
tramway company which discovers actuarially that though a horse may
live from 24 to 40 years, yet it pays better to work him to death in 4
and then replace him by a fresh victim. And human slavery, which has
reached its worst recorded point within our own time in the form of
free wage labor, has encountered the same personal and commercial
limits to both its aggravation and its mitigation. Now that the
freedom of wage labor has produced a scarcity of it, as in South
Africa, the leading English newspaper and the leading English weekly
review have openly and without apology demanded a return to compulsory
labor: that is, to the methods by which, as we believe, the
Egyptians built the pyramids. We know now that the crusade against
chattel slavery in the XIX century succeeded solely because chattel
slavery was neither the most effective nor the least humane method
of labor exploitation; and the world is now feeling its way towards
a still more effective system which shall abolish the freedom of the
worker without again making his exploiter responsible for him.
Still, there is always some mitigation: there is the fear of revolt;
and there are the effects of kindliness and affection. Let it be
repeated therefore that no indictment is here laid against the world
on the score of what its criminals and monsters do. The fires of
Smithfield and of the Inquisition were lighted by earnestly pious
people, who were kind and good as kindness and goodness go. And when a
negro is dipped in kerosene and set on fire in America at the
present time, he is not a good man lynched by ruffians: he is a
criminal lynched by crowds of respectable, charitable, virtuously
indignant, high-minded citizens, who, though they act outside the law,
are at least more merciful than the American legislators and judges
who not so long ago condemned men to solitary confinement for periods,
not of five months, as our own practice is, but of five years and
more. The things that our moral monsters do may be left out of account
with St Bartholomew massacres and other momentary outbursts of
social disorder. Judge us by the admitted and respected practice of
our most reputable circles; and, if you know the facts and are
strong enough to look them in the face, you must admit that unless
we are replaced by a more highly evolved animal- in short, by the
Superman- the world must remain a den of dangerous animals among
whom our few accidental supermen, our Shakespears, Goethes,
Shelleys, and their like, must live as precariously as lion tamers do,
taking the humor of their situation, and the dignity of their
superiority, as a set-off to the horror of the one and the
loneliness of the other.
IX
THE VERDICT OF HISTORY
IT may be said that though the wild beast breaks out in Man and
casts him back momentarily into barbarism under the excitement of
war and crime, yet his normal life is higher than the normal life of
his forefathers. This view is very acceptable to Englishmen, who
always lean sincerely to virtue's side as long as it costs them
nothing either in money or in thought. They feel deeply the
injustice of foreigners, who allow them no credit for this conditional
highmindedness. But there is no reason to suppose that our ancestors
were less capable of it than we are. To all such claims for the
existence of a progressive moral evolution operating visibly from
grandfather to grandson, there is the conclusive reply that a thousand
years of such evolution would have produced enormous social changes,
of which the historical evidence would be overwhelming. But not
Macaulay himself, the most confident of Whig meliorists, can produce
any such evidence that will bear cross-examination. Compare our
conduct and our codes with those mentioned contemporarily in such
ancient scriptures and classics as have come down to us, and you
will find no jot of ground for the belief that any moral progress
whatever has been made in historic time, in spite of all the
romantic attempts of historians to reconstruct the past on that
assumption. Within that time it has happened to nations as to
private families and individuals that they have flourished and
decayed, repented and hardened their hearts, submitted and
protested, acted and reacted, oscillated between natural and
artificial sanitation (the oldest house in the world, unearthed the
other day in Crete, has quite modern sanitary arrangements), and
rung a thousand changes on the different scales of income and pressure
of population, firmly believing all the time that mankind was
advancing by leaps and bounds because men were constantly busy. And
the mere chapter of accidents has left a small accumulation of
chance discoveries, such as the wheel, the arch, the safety pin,
gunpowder, the magnet, the Voltaic pile and so forth: things which,
unlike the gospels and philosophic treatises of the sages, can be
usefully understood and applied by common men; so that steam
locomotion is possible without a nation of Stephensons, although
national Christianity is impossible without a nation of Christs. But
does any man seriously believe that the ®chauffeur¯ who drives a motor
car from Paris to Berlin is a more highly evolved man than the
charioteer of Achilles, or that a modern Prime Minister is a more
enlightened ruler than Caesar because he rides a tricycle, writes
his dispatches by the electric light, and instructs his stockbroker
through the telephone?
Enough, then, of this goose-cackle about Progress: Man, as he is,
never will nor can add a cubit to his stature by any of its
quackeries, political, scientific, educational, religious, or
artistic. What is likely to happen when this conviction gets into
the minds of the men whose present faith in these illusions is the
cement of our social system, can be imagined only by those who know
how suddenly a civilization which has long ceased to think (or in
the old phrase, to watch and pray) can fall to pieces when the
vulgar belief in its hypocrisies and impostures can no longer hold out
against its failures and scandals. When religious and ethical formulae
become so obsolete that no man of strong mind can believe them, they
have also reached the point at which no man of high character will
profess them; and from, that moment until they are formally
disestablished, they stand at the door of every profession and every
public office to keep out every able man who is not a sophist or a
liar. A nation which revises its parish councils once in three
years, but will not revise its articles of religion once in three
hundred, even when those articles avowedly began as a political
compromise dictated by Mr Facing-Both-Ways, is a nation that needs
remaking.
Our only hope, then, is in evolution. We must replace the man by the
superman. It is frightful for the citizen, as the years pass him, to
see his own contemporaries so exactly reproduced by the younger
generation, that his companions of thirty years ago have their
counterparts in every city crowd, where he had to check himself
repeatedly in the act of saluting as an old friend some young man to
whom he is only an elderly stranger. All hope of advance dies in his
bosom as he watches them: he knows that they will do just what their
fathers did, and that the few voices which will still, as always
before, exhort them to do something else and be something better,
might as well spare their breath to cool their porridge (if they can
get any). Men like Ruskin and Carlyle will preach to Smith and Brown
for the sake of preaching, just as St Francis preached to the birds
and St Anthony to the fishes. But Smith and Brown, like the fishes and
birds, remain as they are; and poets who plan Utopias and prove that
nothing is necessary for their realization but that Man should will
them, perceive at last, like Richard Wagner, that the fact to be faced
is that Man does not effectively will them. And he never will until he
becomes Superman.
And so we arrive at the end of the Socialist's dream of "the
socialization of the means of production and exchange," of the
Positivist's dream of moralizing the capitalist, and of the ethical
professor's, legislator's, educator's dream of putting commandments
and codes and lessons and examination marks on a man as harness is put
on a horse, ermine on a judge, pipeclay on a soldier, or a wig on an
actor, and pretending that his nature has been changed. The only
fundamental and possible Socialism is the socialization of the
selective breeding of Man: in other terms, of human evolution. We must
eliminate the Yahoo, or his vote will wreck the commonwealth.
X
THE METHOD
AS to the method, what can be said as yet except that where there is
a will, there is a way? If there be no will, we are lost. That is a
possibility for our crazy little empire, if not for the universe;
and as such possibilities are not to be entertained without despair,
we must, whilst we survive, proceed on the assumption that we have
still energy enough to not only will to live, but to will to live
better. That may mean that we must establish a State Department of
Evolution, with a seat in the Cabinet for its chief, and a revenue
to defray the cost of direct State experiments, and provide
inducements to private persons to achieve successful results. It may
mean a private society or a chartered company for the improvement of
human live stock. But for the present it is far more likely to mean
a blatant repudiation of such proposals as indecent and immoral, with,
nevertheless, a general secret pushing of the human will in the
repudiated direction; so that all sorts of institutions and public
authorities will under some pretext or other feel their way
furtively towards the Superman. Mr Graham Wallas has already
ventured to suggest, as Chairman of the School Management Committee of
the London School Board, that the accepted policy of the Sterilization
of the Schoolmistress, however administratively convenient, is open to
criticism from the national stock-breeding point of view; and this
is as good an example as any of the way in which the drift towards the
Superman may operate in spite of all our hypocrisies. One thing at
least is clear to begin with. If a woman can, by careful selection
of a father, and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with
efficient senses, sound organs, and a good digestion, she should
clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to
make her willing to undertake and repeat it. Whether she be financed
in the undertaking by herself, or by the father, or by a speculative
capitalist, or by a new department of, say, the Royal Dublin
Society, or (as at present) by the War Office maintaining her "on
the strength" and authorizing a particular soldier to marry her, or by
a local authority under a by-law directing that women may under
certain circumstances have a year's leave of absence on full salary,
or by the central government, does not matter provided the result be
satisfactory.
It is a melancholy fact that as the vast majority of women and their
husbands have, under existing circumstances, not enough nourishment,
no capital, no credit, and no knowledge of science or business, they
would, if the State would pay for birth as it now pays for death, be
exploited by joint stock companies for dividends, just as they are
in ordinary industries. Even a joint stock human stud farm (piously
disguised as a reformed Foundling Hospital or something of that
sort) might well, under proper inspection and regulation, produce
better results than our present reliance on promiscuous marriage. It
may be objected that when an ordinary contractor produces stores for
sale to the Government, and the Government rejects them as not up to
the required standard, the condemned goods are either sold for what
they will fetch or else scrapped: that is, treated as waste
material; whereas if the goods consisted of human beings, all that
could be done would be to let them loose or send them to the nearest
workhouse. But there is nothing new in private enterprise throwing its
human refuse on the cheap labor market and the workhouse; and the
refuse of the new industry would presumably be better bred than the
staple product of ordinary poverty. In our present happy-go-lucky
industrial disorder, all the human products, successful or not,
would have to be thrown on the labor market; but the unsuccessful ones
would not entitle the company to a bounty and so would be a dead
loss to it. The practical commercial difficulty would be the
uncertainty and the cost in time and money of the first experiments.
Purely commercial capital would not touch such heroic operations
during the experimental stage; and in any case the strength of mind
needed for so momentous a new departure could not be fairly expected
from the Stock Exchange. It will have to be handled by statesmen
with character enough to tell our democracy and plutocracy that
statecraft does not consist in flattering their follies or applying
their suburban standards of propriety to the affairs of four
continents. The matter must be taken up either by the State or by some
organization strong enough to impose respect upon the State.
The novelty of any such experiment, however, is only in the scale of
it. In one conspicuous case, that of royalty, the State does already
select the parents on purely political grounds; and in the peerage,
though the heir to a dukedom is legally free to marry a dairymaid, yet
the social pressure on him to confine his choice to politically and
socially eligible mates is so overwhelming that he is really no more
free to marry the dairymaid than George IV was to marry Mrs
Fitzherbert; and such a marriage could only occur as a result of
extraordinary strength of character on the part of the dairymaid
acting upon extraordinary weakness on the part of the duke. Let
those who think the whole conception of intelligent breeding absurd
and scandalous ask themselves why George IV was not allowed to
choose his own wife whilst any tinker could marry whom he pleased?
Simply because it did not matter a rap politically whom the tinker
married, whereas it mattered very much whom the king married. The
way in which all considerations of the king's personal rights, of
the claims of the heart, of the sanctity of the marriage oath, and
of romantic morality crumpled up before this political need shews
how negligible all these apparently irresistible prejudices are when
they come into conflict with the demand for quality in our rulers.
We learn the same lesson from the case of the soldier, whose marriage,
when it is permitted at all, is despotically controlled with a view
solely to military efficiency.
Well, nowadays it is not the King that rules, but the tinker.
Dynastic wars are no longer feared, dynastic alliances no longer
valued. Marriages in royal families are becoming rapidly less
political, and more popular, domestic, and romantic. If all the
kings in Europe were made as free tomorrow as King Cophetua, nobody
but their aunts and chamberlains would feel a moment's anxiety as to
the consequences. On the other hand a sense of the social importance
of the tinker's marriage has been steadily growing. We have made a
public matter of his wife's health in the month after her confinement.
We have taken the minds of his children out of his hands and put
them into those of our State schoolmaster. We shall presently make
their bodily nourishment independent of him. But they are still
riff-raff; and to hand the country over to riff-raff is national
suicide, since riff-raff can neither govern nor will let anyone else
govern except the highest bidder of bread and circuses. There is no
public enthusiast alive of twenty years' practical democratic
experience who believes in the political adequacy of the electorate or
of the bodies it elects. The overthrow of the aristocrat has created
the necessity for the Superman.
Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them.
But every Englishman loves and desires a pedigree. And in that he is
right. King Demos must be bred like all other Kings; and with Must
there is no arguing. It is idle for an individual writer to carry so
great a matter further in a pamphlet. A conference on the subject is
the next step needed. It will be attended by men and women who, no
longer believing that they can live for ever, are seeking for some
immortal work into which they can build the best of themselves
before their refuse is thrown into that arch dust destructor, the
cremation furnace.
MAXIMS FOR REVOLUTIONISTS
THE GOLDEN RULE
DO not do unto others as you would that they should do unto you.
Their tastes may not be the same.
Never resist temptation: prove all things: hold fast that which is
good.
Do not love your neighbor as yourself. If you are on good terms with
yourself it is an impertinence: if on bad, an injury.
The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.
IDOLATRY
The art of government is the organization of idolatry.
The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of
idols; the democracy, of idolaters.
The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only
worship the national idols.
The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone: the civilized man
to idols of flesh and blood.
A limited monarchy is a device for combining the inertia of a wooden
idol with the credibility of a flesh and blood one.
When the wooden idol does not answer the peasant's prayer, he
beats it: when the flesh and blood idol does not satisfy the civilized
man, he cuts its head off.
He who slays a king and he who dies for him are alike idolaters.
ROYALTY
Kings are not born: they are made by artificial hallucination.
When the process is interrupted by adversity at a critical age, as
in the case of Charles II, the subject becomes sane and never
completely recovers his kingliness.
The Court is the servant's hall of the sovereign.
Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
The flunkeyism propagated by the throne is the price we pay for
its political convenience.
DEMOCRACY
If the lesser mind could measure the greater as a footrule can
measure a pyramid, there would be finality in universal suffrage. As
it is, the political problem remains unsolved.
Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for
appointment by the corrupt few.
Democratic republics can no more dispense with national idols than
monarchies with public functionaries.
Government presents only one problem: the discovery of a trustworthy
anthropometric method.
IMPERIALISM
Excess of insularity makes a Briton an Imperialist.
Excess of local self-assertion makes a colonist an Imperialist.
A colonial Imperialist is one who raises colonial troops, equips a
colonial squadron, claims a Federal Parliament sending its measures to
the Throne instead of to the Colonial Office, and, being finally
brought by this means into insoluble conflict with the insular British
Imperialist, "cuts the painter" and breaks up the Empire.
LIBERTY AND EQUALITY
He who confuses political liberty with freedom and political
equality with similarity has never thought for five minutes about
either.
Nothing can be unconditional: consequently nothing can be free.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.
The duke inquires contemptuously whether his gamekeeper is the equal
of the Astronomer Royal; but he insists that they shall both be hanged
equally if they murder him.
The notion that the colonel need be a better man than the private is
as confused as the notion that the keystone need be stronger than
the coping stone.
Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.
Equality is fundamental in every department of social organization.
The relation of superior to inferior excludes good manners.
EDUCATION
When a man teaches something he does not know to somebody else who
has no aptitude for it, and gives him a certificate of proficiency,
the latter has completed the education of a gentleman.
A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into
superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.
The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents
as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parent's first duty.
The vilest abortionist is he who attempts to mould a child's
character.
At the University every great treatise is postponed until its author
attains impartial judgment and perfect knowledge. If a horse could
wait as long for its shoes and would pay for them in advance, our
blacksmiths would all be college dons.
He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.
A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his
false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.
Activity is the only road to knowledge.
Every fool believes what his teachers tell him, and calls his
credulity science or morality as confidently as his father called it
divine revelation.
No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
No man can be a pure specialist without being in the strict sense an
idiot.
Do not give your children moral and religious instruction unless you
are quite sure they will not take it too seriously. Better be the
mother of Henri Quatre and Nell Gwynne than of Robespierre and Queen
Mary Tudor.
MARRIAGE
Marriage is popular because it combines the maximum of temptation
with the maximum of opportunity.
Marriage is the only legal contract which abrogates as between the
parties all the laws that safeguard the particular relation to which
it refers.
The essential function of marriage is the continuance of the race,
as stated in the Book of Common Prayer.
The accidental function of marriage is the gratification of the
amoristic sentiment of mankind.
The artificial sterilization of marriage makes it possible for
marriage to fulfil its accidental function whilst neglecting its
essential one.
The most revolutionary invention of the XIX century was the
artificial sterilization of marriage.
Any marriage system which condemns a majority of the population to
celibacy will be violently wrecked on the pretext that it outrages
morality.
Polygamy, when tried under modern democratic conditions, as by the
Mormons, is wrecked by the revolt of the mass of inferior men who
are condemned to celibacy by it; for the maternal instinct leads a
woman to prefer a tenth share in a first rate man to the exclusive
possession of a third rate one. Polyandry has not been tried under
these conditions.
The minimum of national celibacy (ascertained by dividing the number
of males in the community by the number of females, and taking the
quotient as the number of wives or husbands permitted to each
person) is secured in England (where the quotient is 1) by the
institution of monogamy.
The modern sentimental term for the national minimum of celibacy
is Purity.
Marriage, or any other form of promiscuous amoristic monogamy, is
fatal to large States because it puts its ban on the deliberate
breeding of man as a political animal.
CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
All scoundrelism is summed up in the phrase "Que Messieurs les
Assassins commencent!"
The man who has graduated from the flogging block at Eton to the
bench from which he sentences the garotter to be flogged is the same
social product as the garotter who has been kicked by his father and
cuffed by his mother until he has grown strong enough to throttle
and rob the rich citizen whose money he desires.
Imprisonment is as irrevocable as death.
Criminals do not die by the hands of the law. They die by the
hands of other men.
The assassin Czolgosz made President McKinley a hero by
assassinating him. The United States of America made Czolgosz a hero
by the same process.
Assassination on the scaffold is the worst form of assassination,
because there it is invested with the approval of society.
It is the deed that teaches, not the name we give it. Murder and
capital punishment are not opposites that cancel one another, but
similars that breed their kind.
Crime is only the retail department of what, in wholesale, we call
penal law.
When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: when the tiger
wants to murder him he calls it ferocity. The distinction between
Crime and Justice is no greater.
Whilst we have prisons it matters little which of us occupy the
cells.
The most anxious man in a prison is the governor.
It is not necessary to replace a guillotined criminal: it is
necessary to replace a guillotined social system.
TITLES
Titles distinguish the mediocre, embarrass the superior, and are
disgraced by the inferior.
Great men refuse titles because they are jealous of them.
HONOR
There are no perfectly honorable men; but every true man has one
main point of honor and a few minor ones.
You cannot believe in honor until you have achieved it. Better
keep yourself clean and bright: you are the window through which you
must see the world.
Your word can never be as good as your bond, because your memory can
never be as trustworthy as your honor.
PROPERTY
Property, said Proudhon, is theft. This is the only perfect truism
that has been uttered on the subject.
SERVANTS
When domestic servants are treated as human beings it is not worth
while to keep them.
The relation of master and servant is advantageous only to masters
who do not scruple to abuse their authority, and to servants who do
not scruple to abuse their trust.
The perfect servant, when his master makes humane advances to him,
feels that his existence is threatened, and hastens to change his
place.
Masters and servants are both tyrannical; but the masters are the
more dependent of the two.
A man enjoys what he uses, not what his servants use.
Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to
the number and voracity of its parasites.
Ladies and gentlemen are permitted to have friends in the kennel,
but not in the kitchen.
Domestic servants, by making spoiled children of their masters,
are forced to intimidate them in order to be able to live with them.
In a slave state, the slaves rule: in Mayfair, the tradesman rules.
HOW TO BEAT CHILDREN
If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even
at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can
nor should be forgiven.
If you beat children for pleasure, avow your object frankly, and
play the game according to the rules, as a foxhunter does; and you
will do comparatively little harm. No foxhunter is such a cad as to
pretend that he hunts the fox to teach it not to steal chickens, or
that he suffers more acutely than the fox at the death. Remember
that even in childbeating there is the sportsman's way and the cad's
way.
RELIGION
Beware of the man whose god is in the skies.
What a man believes may be ascertained, not from his creed, but from
the assumptions on which he habitually acts.
VIRTUES AND VICES
No specific virtue or vice in a man implies the existence of any
other specific virtue or vice in him, however closely the
imagination may associate them.
Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring
it.
Self-denial is not a virtue: it is only the effect of prudence on
rascality.
Obedience simulates subordination as fear of the police simulates
honesty.
Disobedience, the rarest and most courageous of the virtues, is
seldom distinguished from neglect, the laziest and commonest of the
vices.
Vice is waste of life. Poverty, obedience, and celibacy are the
canonical vices.
Economy is the art of making the most of life.
The love of economy is the root of all virtue.
FAIRPLAY
The love of fairplay is a spectator's virtue, not a principal's.
GREATNESS
Greatness is only one of the sensations of littleness.
In heaven an angel is nobody in particular.
Greatness is the secular name for Divinity: both mean simply what
lies beyond us.
If a great man could make us understand him, we should hang him.
We admit that when the divinity we worshipped made itself visible
and comprehensible we crucified it.
To a mathematician the eleventh means only a single unit: to the
bushman who cannot count further than his ten fingers it is an
incalculable myriad.
The difference between the shallowest routineer and the deepest
thinker appears, to the latter, trifling; to the former, infinite.
In a stupid nation the man of genius becomes a god: everybody
worships him and nobody does his will.
BEAUTY AND HAPPINESS, ART AND RICHES
Happiness and Beauty are by-products.
Folly is the direct pursuit of Happiness and Beauty.
Riches and Art are spurious receipts for the production of Happiness
and Beauty.
He who desires a lifetime of happiness with a beautiful woman
desires to enjoy the taste of wine by keeping his mouth always full of
it.
The most intolerable pain is produced by prolonging the keenest
pleasure.
The man with toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are
sound. The poverty stricken man makes the same mistake about the
rich man.
The more a man possesses over and above what he uses, the more
careworn he becomes.
The tyranny that forbids you to make the road with pick and shovel
is worse than that which prevents you from lolling along it in a
carriage and pair.
In an ugly and unhappy world the richest man can purchase nothing
but ugliness and unhappiness.
In his efforts to escape from ugliness and unhappiness the rich
man intensifies both. Every new yard of West End creates a new acre of
East End.
The XIX century was the Age of Faith in Fine Art. The results are
before us.
THE PERFECT GENTLEMAN
The fatal reservation of the gentleman is that he sacrifices
everything to his honor except his gentility.
A gentleman of our days is one who has money enough to do what every
fool would do if he could afford it: that is, consume without
producing.
The true diagnostic of modern gentility is parasitism.
No elaboration of physical or moral accomplishment can atone for the
sin of parasitism.
A modern gentleman is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even
in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of
preying on it from passing to a foreigner. Such combatants are
patriots in the same sense as two dogs fighting for a bone are
lovers of animals.
The North American Indian was a type of the sportsman warrior
gentleman. The Periclean Athenian was a type of the intellectually and
artistically cultivated gentleman. Both were political failures. The
modern gentleman, without the hardihood of the one or the culture of
the other, has the appetite of both put together. He will not
succeed where they failed.
He who believes in education, criminal law, and sport, needs only
property to make him a perfect modern gentleman.
MODERATION
Moderation is never applauded for its own sake.
A moderately honest man with a moderately faithful wife, moderate
drinkers both, in a moderately healthy house: that is the true
middle class unit.
THE UNCONSCIOUS SELF
The unconscious self is the real genius. Your breathing goes wrong
the moment your conscious self meddles with it.
Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no
man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.
REASON
The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man.
The man who listens to Reason is lost: Reason enslaves all whose
minds are not strong enough to master her.
DECENCY
Decency is Indecency's Conspiracy of Silence.
EXPERIENCE
Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their
capacity for experience.
If we could learn from mere experience, the stones of London would
be wiser than its wisest men.
TIME'S REVENGES
Those whom we called brutes had their revenge when Darwin shewed
us that they are our cousins.
The thieves had their revenge when Marx convicted the bourgeoisie of
theft.
GOOD INTENTIONS
Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones.
All men mean well.
NATURAL RIGHTS
The Master of Arts, by proving that no man has any natural rights,
compels himself to take his own for granted.
The right to live is abused whenever it is not constantly
challenged.
FAUTE DE MIEUX
In my childhood I demurred to the description of a certain young
lady as "the pretty Miss So and So." My aunt rebuked me by saying
"Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty."
No age or condition is without its heroes. The least incapable
general in a nation is its Caesar, the least imbecile statesman its
Solon, the least confused thinker its Socrates, the least
commonplace poet its Shakespear.
CHARITY
Charity is the most mischievous sort of pruriency.
Those who minister to poverty and disease are accomplices in the two
worst of all the crimes.
He who gives money he has not earned is generous with other people's
labor.
Every genuinely benevolent person loathes almsgiving and mendicity.
FAME
Life levels all men: death reveals the eminent.
DISCIPLINE
Mutiny Acts are needed only by officers who command without
authority. Divine right needs no whip.
WOMEN IN THE HOME
Home is the girl's prison and the woman's workhouse.
CIVILIZATION
Civilization is a disease produced by the practice of building
societies with rotten material.
Those who admire modern civilization usually identify it with the
steam engine and the electric telegraph.
Those who understand the steam engine and the electric telegraph
spend their lives in trying to replace them with something better.
The imagination cannot conceive a viler criminal than he who
should build another London like the present one, nor a greater
benefactor than he who should destroy it.
GAMBLING
The most popular method of distributing wealth is the method of
the roulette table.
The roulette table pays nobody except him that keeps it.
Nevertheless a passion for gaming is common, though a passion for
keeping roulette tables is unknown.
Gambling promises the poor what Property performs for the rich: that
is why the bishops dare not denounce it fundamentally.
THE SOCIAL QUESTION
Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter
with the poor is Poverty: what is the matter with the rich is
Uselessness.
STRAY SAYINGS
We are told that when Jehovah created the world he saw that it was
good. What would he say now?
The conversion of a savage to Christianity is the conversion of
Christianity to savagery.
No man dares say so much of what he thinks as to appear to himself
an extremist.
Mens sana in corpore sano is a foolish saying. The sound body is a
product of the sound mind.
Decadence can find agents only when it wears the mask of progress.
In moments of progress the noble succeed, because things are going
their way: in moments of decadence the base succeed for the same
reason: hence the world is never without the exhilaration of
contemporary success.
The reformer for whom the world is not good enough finds himself
shoulder to shoulder with him that is not good enough for the world.
Every man over forty is a scoundrel.
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age,
which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
When we learn to sing that Britons never will be masters we shall
make an end of slavery.
Do not mistake your objection to defeat for an objection to
fighting, your objection to being a slave for an objection to slavery,
your objection to not being as rich as your neighbor for an
objection to poverty. The cowardly, the insubordinate, and the envious
share your objections.
Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what
you get. Where there is no ventilation fresh air is declared
unwholesome. Where there is no religion hypocrisy becomes good
taste. Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.
If the wicked flourish and the fittest survive, Nature must be the
God of rascals.
If history repeats itself, and the unexpected always happens, how
incapable must Man be of learning from experience!
Compassion is the fellow-feeling of the unsound.
Those who understand evil pardon it: those who resent it destroy it.
Acquired notions of propriety are stronger than natural instincts.
It is easier to recruit for monasteries and convents than to induce an
Arab woman to uncover her mouth in public, or a British officer to
walk through Bond Street in a golfing cap on an afternoon in May.
It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.
The Chinese tame fowls by clipping their wings, and women by
deforming their feet. A petticoat round the ankles serves equally
well.
Political Economy and Social Economy are amusing intellectual games;
but Vital Economy is the Philosopher Stone.
When a heretic wishes to avoid martyrdom he speaks of "Orthodoxy,
True and False" and demonstrates that the True is his heresy.
Beware of the man who does not return your blow: he neither forgives
you nor allows you to forgive yourself.
If you injure your neighbor, better not do it by halves.
Sentimentality is the error of supposing that quarter can be given
or taken in moral conflicts.
Two starving men cannot be twice as hungry as one; but two rascals
can be ten times as vicious as one.
Make your cross your crutch; but when you see another man do it,
beware of him.
SELF-SACRIFICE
Self-sacrifice enables us to sacrifice other people without
blushing.
If you begin by sacrificing yourself to those you love, you will end
by hating those to whom you have sacrificed yourself.
--End--