The Apple Cart · Act I (2/2) (1/6)
Pamphilius What was your father?
Sempronius Startled. Eh?
Pamphilius What was your father?
Sempronius My father?
Pamphilius Yes. What was he?
Sempronius A Ritualist.
Pamphilius I don’t mean his religion. I mean his profession. And his politics.
Sempronius He was a Ritualist by profession, a Ritualist in politics, a Ritualist in religion: a raging emotional Die Hard Ritualist right down to his boots.
Pamphilius Do you mean that he was a parson?
Sempronius Not at all. He was a sort of spectacular artist. He got up pageants and Lord Mayors’ Shows and military tattoos and big public ceremonies and things like that. He arranged the last two coronations. That was how I got my job here in the palace. All our royal people knew him quite well: he was behind the scenes with them.
Pamphilius Behind the scenes and yet believed they were all real!
Sempronius Yes. Believed in them with all his soul.
Pamphilius Although he manufactured them himself?
Sempronius Certainly. Do you suppose a baker cannot believe sincerely in the sacrifice of the Mass or in holy communion because he has baked the consecrated wafer himself?
Pamphilius I never thought of that.
Sempronius My father might have made millions in the theatres and film studios. But he refused to touch them because the things they represented hadn’t really happened. He didn’t mind doing the christening of Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare’s Henry the Eighth because that had really happened. It was a celebration of royalty. But not anything romantic: not though they offered him thousands.
Pamphilius Did you ever ask him what he really thought about it all? But of course you didn’t: one can’t ask one’s father anything about himself.
Sempronius My dear Pam: my father never thought. He didn’t know what thought meant. Very few people do, you know. He had vision: actual bodily vision, I mean; and he had an oddly limited sort of imagination. What I mean is that he couldn’t imagine anything he didn’t see; but he could imagine that what he did see was divine and holy and omniscient and omnipotent and eternal and everything that is impossible if only it looked splendid enough, and the organ was solemn enough, or the military bands brassy enough.
Pamphilius You mean that he had to get everything from outside.
Sempronius Exactly. He’d never have felt anything if he hadn’t had parents to feel about in his childhood, and a wife and babies to feel about when he grew up. He’d never have known anything if he hadn’t been taught at school. He couldn’t amuse himself: he had to pay oceans of money to other people to amuse him with all sorts of ghastly sports and pleasures that would have driven me into a monastery to escape from them. You see it was all ritual: he went to the Riviera every winter just as he went to church.
Pamphilius By the way, is he alive? I should like to know him.
Sempronius No. He died in 1962, of solitude.
Pamphilius What do you mean? of solitude?
Sempronius He couldn’t bear to be alone for a moment: it was death to him. Somebody had to be with him always.
Pamphilius Oh well, come! That was friendly and kindly. It shows he had something inside him after all.
Sempronius Not a bit. He never talked to his friends. He played cards with them. They never exchanged a thought.
Pamphilius He must have been a rum old bird.
Sempronius Not rum enough to be noticed. There are millions like him.
Pamphilius But what about his dying of solitude? Was he imprisoned?
Sempronius No. His yacht struck a reef and sank somewhere off the north of Scotland; and he managed to swim to an uninhabited island. All the rest were drowned; and he was not taken off for three weeks. When they found him he was melancholy mad, poor old boy; and he never got over it. Simply from having no one to play cards with, and no church to go to.
Pamphilius My dear Sem: one isn’t alone on an uninhabited island. My mother used to stand me on the table and make me recite about it. He declaims. To sit on rocks; to muse o’er flood and fell; To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been; To climb the trackless mountain all unseen With the wild flock that never needs a fold; Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean: This is not solitude: ’tis but to hold Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.
Sempronius Now you have hit the really funny thing about my father. All that about the lonely woods and the rest of it⁠—what you call Nature⁠—didn’t exist for him. It had to be something artificial to get at him. Nature to him meant nakedness; and nakedness only disgusted him. He wouldn’t look at a horse grazing in a field; but put splendid trappings on it and stick it into a procession and he just loved it. The same with men and women: they were nothing to him until they were dressed up in fancy costumes and painted and wigged and titled. To him the sacredness of the priest was the beauty of his vestment, the loveliness of women the dazzle of their jewels and robes, the charm of the countryside not in its hills and trees, nor in the blue smoke from its cottages in the winter evenings, but of its temples, palaces, mansions, park gates, and porticoed country houses. Think of the horror of that island to him! A void! a place where he was deaf and dumb and blind and lonely! If only there had been a peacock with its tail in full bloom it might have saved his reason; but all the birds were gulls; and gulls are not decorative. Our King could have lived there for thirty years with nothing but his own thoughts. You would have been all right with a fishing rod and a golf ball with a bag of clubs. I should have been as happy as a man in a picture gallery looking at the dawns and sunsets, the changing seasons, the continual miracle of life ever renewing itself. Who could be dull with pools in the rocks to watch? Yet my father, with all that under his nose, was driven mad by its nothingness. They say that where there is nothing the king loses his rights. My father found that where there is nothing a man loses his reason and dies.
Pamphilius Let me add that in this palace, when the king’s letters are not ready for him at 12 o’clock, a secretary loses his job.
Sempronius Hastily resuming his work. Yes, devil take you: why did you start me talking before I had finished my work? You have nothing to do but pretend to read the newspapers for him; and when you say “Nothing particular this morning, Sir,” all he says is “Thank Heaven!” But if I missed a note from one of his aunts inviting herself to tea, or a little line from Orinthia the Beloved marked “Strictly private and confidential: to be opened by His Majesty alone,” I should never hear the end of it. He had six love letters yesterday; and all he said when I told him was “Take them to the Queen.” He thinks they amuse her. I believe they make her as sick as they make me.
Pamphilius Do Orinthia’s letters go to the Queen?
Sempronius No, by George! Even I don’t read Orinthia’s letters. My instructions are to read everything; but I take care to forget to open hers. And I notice that I am not rebuked for my negligence.
Pamphilius Thoughtfully. I suppose⁠—
Sempronius Oh shut up, Pam. I shall never get through if you go on talking.
Pamphilius I was only going to say that I suppose⁠—
Sempronius Something about Orinthia. Don’t. If you indulge in supposition on that subject, you will lose your job, old chap. So stow it.
Pamphilius Don’t cry out before Orinthia is hurt, young chap. I was going to say that I suppose you know that that bull-roarer Boanerges has just been taken into the Cabinet as President of the Board of Trade, and that he is coming here today to give the King a piece of his mind, or what he calls his mind, about the crisis.
Sempronius What does the King care about the crisis? There has been a crisis every two months since he came to the throne; but he has always been too clever for them. He’ll turn Boanerges inside out after letting him roar the palace down.
Boanerges enters, dressed in a Russian blouse and peaked cap, which he keeps on. He is fifty, heavily built and aggressively self-assertive.
Boanerges Look here. The King has an appointment with me at a quarter to twelve. How long more am I to be kept waiting?
Sempronius With cheerful politeness. Good morning. Mr. Boanerges, I think.
Boanerges Shortly, but a little taken aback. Oh, good morning to you. They say that politeness is the punctuality of kings⁠—
Sempronius The other way about, Mr. Boanerges. Punctuality is the politeness of kings; and King Magnus is a model in that respect. Your arrival cannot have been announced to His Majesty. I will see about it. He hurries out.
Pamphilius Be seated, Mr. Boanerges.
Boanerges Seating himself by Pamphilius’s writing-table. A nice lot of young upstarts you have in this palace, Mr.⁠—?
Pamphilius Pamphilius is my name.
Boanerges Oh yes: I’ve heard of you. You’re one of the king’s private secretaries.
Pamphilius I am. And what have our young upstarts been doing to you, Mr. Boanerges?
Boanerges Well, I told one of them to tell the king I was here, and to look sharp about it. He looked at me as if I was a performing elephant, and took himself off after whispering to another flunkey. Then this other chap comes over to me and pretends he doesn’t know who I am! asks me can he have my name! “My lad,” I said: “not to know me argues yourself unknown. You know who I am as well as I do myself. Go and tell the king I’m waiting for him, d’ye see?” So he took himself off with a flea in his ear. I waited until I was fed up with it, and then opened the nearest door and came in here.
Pamphilius Young rascals! However, my friend Mr. Sempronius will make it all right for you.
Boanerges Oh: that was Sempronius, was it. I’ve heard of him too.
Pamphilius You seem to have heard of all of us. You will be quite at home in the palace now that you are a Cabinet Minister. By the way, may I congratulate you on your appointment⁠—or rather congratulate the Cabinet on your accession?
Sempronius Returning. The King. He goes to his table and takes the visitor’s chair in his hand, ready for the king’s instructions as to where to place it.
Pamphilius* rises. Boanerges turns to the door in his chair without rising. King Magnus, a tallish studious looking gentleman of 45 or thereabouts, enters, and comes quickly down the middle of the room to Boanerges*, proffering his hand cordially.
Magnus You are very welcome to my little palace, Mr. Boanerges. Won’t you sit down?
Boanerges I am sitting down.
Magnus True, Mr. Boanerges. I had not noticed it. Forgive me: force of habit.
He indicates to Sempronius that he wishes to sit near Boanerges, on his right. Sempronius places the chair accordingly.
Magnus You will allow me to be seated?
Boanerges Oh, sit down, man, sit down. You’re in your own house: ceremony cuts no ice with me.
Magnus Gratefully. Thank you.
The King* sits. Pamphilius sits. Sempronius* returns to his table and sits.
Magnus It is a great pleasure to meet you at last, Mr. Boanerges. I have followed your career with interest ever since you contested Northampton twenty-five years ago.
Boanerges Pleased and credulous. I should just think you have, King Magnus. I have made you sit up once or twice, eh?
Magnus Smiling. Your voice has shaken the throne oftener than that.
Boanerges Indicating the secretaries with a jerk of his head. What about these two? Are they to overhear everything that passes?
Magnus My private secretaries. Do they incommode you?
Boanerges Oh, they don’t incommode me. I am ready to have our talk out in Trafalgar Square if you like, or have it broadcast on the wireless.
Magnus That would be a treat for my people, Mr. Boanerges. I am sorry we have not arranged for it.
Boanerges Gathering himself together formidably. Yes; but do you realize that I am going to say things to you that have never been said to a king before?
Magnus I am very glad indeed to hear it, Mr. Boanerges. I thought I had already heard everything that could be said to a king. I shall be grateful for the smallest novelty.
Boanerges I warn you it won’t be agreeable. I am a plain man, Magnus: a very plain man.
Magnus Not at all, I assure you⁠—
Boanerges Indignantly. I was not alluding to my personal appearance.
Magnus Gravely. Nor was I. Do not deceive yourself, Mr. Boanerges. You are very far from being a plain man. To me you have always been an Enigma.
Boanerges Surprised and enormously flattered; he cannot help smiling with pleasure. Well, perhaps I am a bit of an enigma. Perhaps I am.
Magnus Humbly. I wish I could see through you, Mr. Boanerges. But I have not your sort of cleverness. I can only ask you to be frank with me.
Boanerges Now convinced that he has the upper hand. You mean about the crisis. Well, frank is just what I have come here to be. And the first thing I am going to tell you frankly about it is that this country has got to be governed, not by you, but by your ministers.
Magnus I shall be only too grateful to them for taking a very difficult and thankless job off my hands.
Boanerges But it’s not on your hands. It’s on your ministers’ hands. You are only a constitutional monarch. Do you know what they call that in Belgium?
Magnus An india rubber stamp, I think. Am I right?
Boanerges You are, King Magnus. An india rubber stamp. That’s what you have got to be; and don’t you forget it.
Magnus Yes: that’s what we are most of the time: both of us.
Boanerges Outraged. What do you mean? both of us?
Magnus They bring us papers. We sign. You have no time to read them, luckily for you. But I am expected to read everything. I do not always agree; but I must sign: there is nothing else to be done. For instance, death warrants. Not only have I to sign the death warrants of persons who in my opinion ought not to be killed; but I may not even issue death warrants for a great many people who in my opinion ought to be killed.
Boanerges Sarcastic. You’d like to be able to say “Off with his head!” wouldn’t you?
Magnus Many men would hardly miss their heads, there is so little in them. Still, killing is a serious business: at least the person who is to be killed is usually conceited enough to think so. I think that if there were a question of killing me⁠—
Boanerges Grimly. There may be, someday. I have heard it discussed.
Magnus Oh, quite. I have not forgotten King Charles’s head. Well, I hope it will be settled by a living person and not by an india rubber stamp.
Boanerges It will be settled by the Home Secretary, your duly constituted democratic minister.
Magnus Another india rubber stamp, eh?
Boanerges At present, perhaps. But not when I am Home Secretary, by Jingo! Nobody will make an india rubber stamp of Bill Boanerges: take that from me.
Magnus Of course not. Is it not curious how people idealize their rulers? In the old days the king⁠—poor man!⁠—was a god, and was actually called God and worshipped as infallible and omniscient. That was monstrous⁠—
Boanerges It was silly: just silly.