Fanny’s First Play · Induction (2/2) (2/2)

| The Count | I am almost sorry you didn’t give the gentleman his full terms. I should not have grudged the fifty guineas for a sound opinion. He may feel shabbily treated. | | Savoyard | Well, let him. It was a bit of side, his asking fifty. After all, what is he? Only a pressman. Jolly good business for him to earn ten guineas: he’s done the same job often enough for half a quid, I expect. | | | Fanny O’Dowda comes precipitately through the curtains, excited and nervous. A girl of nineteen in a dress synchronous with her father’s. | | Fanny | Papa, papa, the critics have come. And one of them has a cocked hat and sword like a⁠—*she notices Savoyard Oh, I beg your pardon. | | The Count | This is Mr. Savoyard, your impresario, my dear. | | Fanny | Shaking hands. How do you do? | | Savoyard | Pleased to meet you, Miss O’Dowda. The cocked hat is all right. Trotter is a member of the new Academic Committee. He induced them to go in for a uniform like the French Academy; and I asked him to wear it. | | The Footman | Announcing. Mr. Trotter, Mr. Vaughan, Mr. Gunn, Mr. Flawner Bannal. The four critics enter. Trotter wears a diplomatic dress, with sword and three-cornered hat. His age is about 50. Vaughan is 40. Gunn is 30. Flawner Bannal is 20 and is quite unlike the others. They can be classed at sight as professional men: Bannal is obviously one of those unemployables of the business class who manage to pick up a living by a sort of courage which gives him cheerfulness, conviviality, and bounce, and is helped out positively by a slight turn for writing, and negatively by a comfortable ignorance and lack of intuition which hides from him all the dangers and disgraces that keep men of finer perception in check. The Count approaches them hospitably. | | Savoyard | Count O’Dowda, gentlemen. Mr. Trotter. | | Trotter | Looking at the Count’s costume. Have I the pleasure of meeting a confrere? | | The Count | No, sir: I have no right to my costume except the right of a lover of the arts to dress myself handsomely. You are most welcome, Mr. Trotter. Trotter bows in the French manner. | | Savoyard | Mr. Vaughan. | | The Count | How do you do, Mr. Vaughan? | | Vaughan | Quite well, thanks. | | Savoyard | Mr. Gunn. | | The Count | Delighted to make your acquaintance, Mr. Gunn. | | Gunn | Very pleased. | | Savoyard | Mr. Flawner Bannal. | | The Count | Very kind of you to come, Mr. Bannal. | | Bannal | Don’t mention it. | | The Count | Gentlemen, my daughter. They all bow. We are very greatly indebted to you, gentlemen, for so kindly indulging her whim. The dressing bell sounds. The Count looks at his watch. Ah! The dressing bell, gentlemen. As our play begins at nine, I have had to put forward the dinner hour a little. May I show you to your rooms? He goes out, followed by all the men, except Trotter, who, going last, is detained by Fanny. | | Fanny | Mr. Trotter: I want to say something to you about this play. | | Trotter | No: that’s forbidden. You must not attempt to souffler the critic. | | Fanny | Oh, I would not for the world try to influence your opinion. | | Trotter | But you do: you are influencing me very shockingly. You invite me to this charming house, where I’m about to enjoy a charming dinner. And just before the dinner I’m taken aside by a charming young lady to be talked to about the play. How can you expect me to be impartial? God forbid that I should set up to be a judge, or do more than record an impression; but my impressions can be influenced; and in this case you’re influencing them shamelessly all the time. | | Fanny | Don’t make me more nervous than I am already, Mr. Trotter. If you knew how I feel! | | Trotter | Naturally: your first party: your first appearance in England as hostess. But you’re doing it beautifully. Don’t be afraid. Every nuance is perfect. | | Fanny | It’s so kind of you to say so, Mr. Trotter. But that isn’t what’s the matter. The truth is, this play is going to give my father a dreadful shock. | | Trotter | Nothing unusual in that, I’m sorry to say. Half the young ladies in London spend their evenings making their fathers take them to plays that are not fit for elderly people to see. | | Fanny | Oh, I know all about that; but you can’t understand what it means to Papa. You’re not so innocent as he is. | | Trotter | Remonstrating. My dear young lady⁠— | | Fanny | I don’t mean morally innocent: everybody who reads your articles knows you’re as innocent as a lamb. | | Trotter | What! | | Fanny | Yes, Mr. Trotter: I’ve seen a good deal of life since I came to England; and I assure you that to me you’re a mere baby: a dear, good, well-meaning, delightful, witty, charming baby; but still just a wee lamb in a world of wolves. Cambridge is not what it was in my father’s time. | | Trotter | Well, I must say! | | Fanny | Just so. That’s one of our classifications in the Cambridge Fabian Society. | | Trotter | Classifications? I don’t understand. | | Fanny | We classify our aunts into different sorts. And one of the sorts is the “I must says.” | | Trotter | I withdraw “I must say.” I substitute “Blame my cats!” No: I substitute “Blame my kittens!” Observe, Miss O’Dowda: kittens. I say again in the teeth of the whole Cambridge Fabian Society, kittens. Impertinent little kittens. Blame them. Smack them. I guess what is on your conscience. This play to which you have lured me is one of those in which members of Fabian Societies instruct their grandmothers in the art of milking ducks. And you are afraid it will shock your father. Well, I hope it will. And if he consults me about it I shall recommend him to smack you soundly and pack you off to bed. | | Fanny | That’s one of your prettiest literary attitudes, Mr. Trotter; but it doesn’t take me in. You see, I’m much more conscious of what you really are than you are yourself, because we’ve discussed you thoroughly at Cambridge; and you’ve never discussed yourself, have you? | | Trotter | I⁠— | | Fanny | Of course you haven’t; so you see it’s no good Trottering at me. | | Trotter | Trottering! | | Fanny | That’s what we call it at Cambridge. | | Trotter | If it were not so obviously a stage cliché, I should say Damn Cambridge. As it is, I blame my kittens. And now let me warn you. If you’re going to be a charming healthy young English girl, you may coax me. If you’re going to be an unsexed Cambridge Fabian virago, I’ll treat you as my intellectual equal, as I would treat a man. | | Fanny | Adoringly. But how few men are your intellectual equals, Mr. Trotter! | | Trotter | I’m getting the worst of this. | | Fanny | Oh no. Why do you say that? | | Trotter | May I remind you that the dinner-bell will ring presently? | | Fanny | What does it matter? We’re both ready. I haven’t told you yet what I want you to do for me. | | Trotter | Nor have you particularly predisposed me to do it, except out of pure magnanimity. What is it? | | Fanny | I don’t mind this play shocking my father morally. It’s good for him to be shocked morally. It’s all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date. But I know that this play will shock him artistically; and that terrifies me. No moral consideration could make a breach between us: he would forgive me for anything of that kind sooner or later; but he never gives way on a point of art. I daren’t let him know that I love Beethoven and Wagner; and as to Strauss, if he heard three bars of Elektra, it’d part us forever. Now what I want you to do is this. If he’s very angry⁠—if he hates the play, because it’s a modern play⁠—will you tell him that it’s not my fault; that its style and construction, and so forth, are considered the very highest art nowadays; that the author wrote it in the proper way for repertory theatres of the most superior kind⁠—you know the kind of plays I mean? | | Trotter | Emphatically. I think I know the sort of entertainments you mean. But please do not beg a vital question by calling them plays. I don’t pretend to be an authority; but I have at least established the fact that these productions, whatever else they may be, are certainly not plays. | | Fanny | The authors don’t say they are. | | Trotter | Warmly.* I am aware that one author, who is, I blush to say, a personal friend of mine, resorts freely to the dastardly subterfuge of calling them conversations, discussions, and so forth, with the express object of evading criticism. But I’m not to be disarmed by such tricks. I say they are not plays. Dialogues, if you will. Exhibitions of character, perhaps: especially the character of the author. Fictions, possibly, though a little decent reticence as to introducing actual persons, and thus violating the sanctity of private life, might not be amiss. But plays, no. I say no. Not plays. If you will not concede this point I can’t continue our conversation. I take this seriously. It’s a matter of principle. I must ask you, Miss O’Dowda, before we go a step further, Do you or do you not claim that these works are plays? | | Fanny | I assure you I don’t. | | Trotter | Not in any sense of the word? | | Fanny | Not in any sense of the word. I loathe plays. | | Trotter | Disappointed. That last remark destroys all the value of your admission. You admire these⁠—these theatrical nondescripts? You enjoy them? | | Fanny | Don’t you? | | Trotter | Of course I do. Do you take me for a fool? Do you suppose I prefer popular melodramas? Have I not written most appreciative notices of them? But I say they’re not plays. They’re not plays. I can’t consent to remain in this house another minute if anything remotely resembling them is to be foisted on me as a play. | | Fanny | I fully admit that they’re not plays. I only want you to tell my father that plays are not plays nowadays⁠—not in your sense of the word. | | Trotter | Ah, there you go again! In my sense of the word! You believe that my criticism is merely a personal impression; that⁠— | | Fanny | You always said it was. | | Trotter | Pardon me: not on this point. If you had been classically educated⁠— | | Fanny | But I have. | | Trotter | Pooh! Cambridge! If you had been educated at Oxford, you would know that the definition of a play has been settled exactly and scientifically for two thousand two hundred and sixty years. When I say that these entertainments are not plays, I don’t mean in my sense of the word, but in the sense given to it for all time by the immortal Stagirite. | | Fanny | Who is the Stagirite? | | Trotter | Shocked. You don’t know who the Stagirite was? | | Fanny | Sorry. Never heard of him. | | Trotter | And this is Cambridge education! Well, my dear young lady, I’m delighted to find there’s something you don’t know; and I shan’t spoil you by dispelling an ignorance which, in my opinion, is highly becoming to your age and sex. So we’ll leave it at that. | | Fanny | But you will promise to tell my father that lots of people write plays just like this one⁠—that I haven’t selected it out of mere heartlessness? | | Trotter | I can’t possibly tell you what I shall say to your father about the play until I’ve seen the play. But I’ll tell you what I shall say to him about you. I shall say that you’re a very foolish young lady; that you’ve got into a very questionable set; and that the sooner he takes you away from Cambridge and its Fabian Society, the better. | | Fanny | It’s so funny to hear you pretending to be a heavy father. In Cambridge we regard you as a bel esprit, a wit, an Irresponsible, a Parisian Immoralist, tres chic. | | Trotter | I! | | Fanny | There’s quite a Trotter set. | | Trotter | Well, upon my word! | | Fanny | They go in for adventures and call you Aramis. | | Trotter | They wouldn’t dare! | | Fanny | You always make such delicious fun of the serious people. Your insouciance⁠— | | Trotter | Frantic. Stop talking French to me: it’s not a proper language for a young girl. Great heavens! how is it possible that a few innocent pleasantries should be so frightfully misunderstood? I’ve tried all my life to be sincere and simple, to be unassuming and kindly. I’ve lived a blameless life. I’ve supported the Censorship in the face of ridicule and insult. And now I’m told that I’m a centre of Immoralism! of Modern Minxism! a trifler with the most sacred subjects! a Nietzschean!! perhaps a Shavian!!! | | Fanny | Do you mean you are really on the serious side, Mr. Trotter? | | Trotter | Of course I’m on the serious side. How dare you ask me such a question? | | Fanny | Then why don’t you play for it? | | Trotter | I do play for it⁠—short, of course, of making myself ridiculous. | | Fanny | What! not make yourself ridiculous for the sake of a good cause! Oh, Mr. Trotter. That’s vieux jeu. | | Trotter | Shouting at her. Don’t talk French. I will not allow it. | | Fanny | But this dread of ridicule is so frightfully out of date. The Cambridge Fabian Society⁠— | | Trotter | I forbid you to mention the Fabian Society to me. | | Fanny | Its motto is “You cannot learn to skate without making yourself ridiculous.” | | Trotter | Skate! What has that to do with it? | | Fanny | That’s not all. It goes on, “The ice of life is slippery.” | | Trotter | Ice of life indeed! You should be eating penny ices and enjoying yourself. I won’t hear another word. | | | *The Count* returns. | | The Count | We’re all waiting in the drawing-room, my dear. Have you been detaining Mr. Trotter all this time? | | Trotter | I’m so sorry. I must have just a little brush up: I⁠—He hurries out. | | The Count | My dear, you should be in the drawing-room. You should not have kept him here. | | Fanny | I know. Don’t scold me: I had something important to say to him. | | The Count | I shall ask him to take you in to dinner. | | Fanny | Yes, papa. Oh, I hope it will go off well. | | The Count | Yes, love, of course it will. Come along. | | Fanny | Just one thing, papa, whilst we’re alone. Who was the Stagirite? | | The Count | The Stagirite? Do you mean to say you don’t know? | | Fanny | Haven’t the least notion. | | The Count | The Stagirite was Aristotle. By the way, don’t mention him to Mr. Trotter. | | | They go to the dining-room. |