The Norton Anthology of English literature. Volume 2

I tried to think of the particular moment in my life, the particular action, that had brought me to that room. Was it the moment with the hubshi woman, or was it when the American came to dinner and insulted my employer? Was it the moment of my escape, my sight of Priya in the gallery, or was it when I looked in the mirror and bought the green suit? Or was it much earlier, in that other life, in Bombay, in the hills? I could find no one moment; every moment seemed important. An endless chain of action had brought me to that room. It was frightening; it was burdensome. It was not a time for new decisions. It was time to call a halt.

I lay on the bed watching the ceiling, watching the sky. The door was pushed open. It was Priya. "My goodness, Santosh! How long have you been here? You have been so quiet I forgot about you."

He looked about the room. He went into the bathroom and came out again.

"Are you all right, Santosh?"

He sat on the edge of the bed and the longer he stayed the more I realized how glad I was to see him. There was this: when I tried to think of him rushing into the room I couldn't place it in time; it seemed to have occurred only in my mind. He sat with me. Time became real again. I felt a great love for him. Soon I could have laughed at his agitation. And later, indeed, we laughed together.

I said, "Sahib, you must excuse me this morning. I want to go for a walk. I will come back about tea time." He looked hard at me, and we both knew I had spoken truly.

.

ONE OUT OF MANY / 273 1

"Yes, yes, Santosh. You go for a good long walk. Make yourself hungry with walking. You will feel much better."

Walking, through streets that were now so simple to me, I thought how nice it would be if the people in Hindu costumes in the circle were real. Then I might have joined them. We would have taken to the road; at midday we would have halted in the shade of big trees; in the late afternoon the sinking sun would have turned the dust clouds to gold; and every evening at some village there would have been welcome, water, food, a fire in the night. But that was a dream of another life. I had watched the people in the circle long enough to know that they were of their city; that their television life awaited them; that their renunciation was not like mine. No television life awaited me. It didn't matter. In this city I was alone and it didn't matter what I did.

As magical as the circle with the fountain the apartment block had once been to me. Now I saw that it was plain, not very tall, and faced with small white tiles. A glass door; four tiled steps down; the desk to the right, letters and keys in the pigeonholes; a carpet to the left, upholstered chairs, a low table with paper flowers in the vase; the blue door of the swift, silent elevator. I saw the simplicity of all these things. I knew the floor I wanted. In the corridor, with its illuminated star-decorated ceiling, an imitation sky, the col- ours were blue, grey and gold. I knew the door I wanted. I knocked.

The hubshi woman opened. I saw the apartment where she worked. I had never seen it before and was expecting something like my old employer's apartment, which was on the same floor. Instead, for the first time, I saw something arranged for a television life.

I thought she might have been angry. She looked only puzzled. I was grateful for that.

I said to her in English, "Will you marry me?"

And there, it was done.

"It is for the best, Santosh," Priya said, giving me tea when I got back to the restaurant. "You will be a free man. A citizen. You will have the whole world before you." I was pleased that he was pleased.

So I am now a citizen, my presence is legal, and I live in Washington. I am still with Priya. We do not talk together as much as we did. The restaurant is one world, the parks and green streets of Washington are another, and every evening some of these streets take me to a third. Burnt-out brick houses, broken fences, overgrown gardens; in a levelled lot between the high brick walls of two houses, a sort of artistic children's playground which the hubshi children never use; and then the dark house in which I now live.

Its smells are strange, everything in it is strange. But my strength in this house is that I am a stranger. I have closed my mind and heart to the English language, to newspapers and radio and television, to the pictures of hubshi runners and boxers and musicians on the wall. I do not want to understand or learn any more.

I am a simple man who decided to act and see for himself, and it is as though I have had several lives. I do not wish to add to these. Some afternoons I walk to the circle with the fountain. I see the dancers but they are separated from me as by glass. Once, when there were rumours of new burnings, someone scrawled in white paint on the pavement outside my house: Soul Brother. I understand the words; but I feel, brother to what or to whom?

.

2752 / TOM STOPPARD

I was once part of the flow, never thinking of myself as a presence. Then I looked in the mirror and decided to be free. All that my freedom has brought me is the knowledge that I have a face and have a body, that I must feed this body and clothe this body for a certain number of years. Then it will be over.

1971

TOM STOPPARD

b. 1937 Tom Stoppard was born Tomas Straussler in the former Czechoslovakia. His family emigrated to Singapore in 1939 to escape the Nazis and moved to India in 1941 to escape the Japanese. His father stayed behind and was killed in the invasion of Singapore. Tom and his mother went to England in 1946; on her remarriage he took his stepfather's name of Stoppard. After leaving Pocklington School in Yorkshire at seventeen, he became a journalist, wrote a novel, and in 1962 had two short plays broadcast on the radio. The British theater had been dominated for a decade by realistic "kitchen sink" dramas when Stoppard's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead (1966) appeared and was hailed as a major theatrical event. Critics recognized a debt to Waiting for Godot, but where Samuel Beckett had focused on the hopelessness of his two abandoned characters, Stoppard celebrates the gaiety and perverse vitality that can be generated from despair.

He frequently uses plays by other playwrights as launching pads for his own: Rosencrantz and Guildenstern step out of the shadows of Shakespeare's Hamlet; The Real Inspector Hound (1968) parodies Agatha Christie's classic country-house murder- mystery play, The Mousetrap; and the plot of Travesties (1974) is entwined with that of Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Ernest. Past and present are again entwined, though not intertextually, in his masterpiece, Arcadia (1993), which explores the nature of Nature, classical and Romantic theories of landscape gardening, literary history and historians, truth and time. As is appropriate for a play with a double time frame (early nineteenth century spliced with late twentieth century), Arcadia has the intricate movement of a grandfather clock, its characters and their concerns interacting with finely geared precision. Appropriately again, the classical mechanism is driven by a Romantic power source: sex�"the attraction which Newton left out."

Newton's classical mechanics posited an order underlying a seemingly disordered world. He saw its "laws" operating via cause-and-effect mechanisms, leading to determinism: given adequate information, one could predict future events. His near- contemporary, however, the wittily named heroine of Stoppard's play, Thomasina [Tom 'as seen a\ Coverly, has seen another future, one ordered by disorder, what is now known as "chaos theory." (Stoppard found the seed of his play in James Gleick's Chaos: The Making of a New Science.) The opposition of order and disorder, past and future (our present), provides the structuring principle of Arcadia.

Its action takes place in a large room in a large English country house. Here in 1809 Thomasina, a mathematically and scientifically precocious thirteen-year-old, is being tutored by Septimus, whose friend the poet Lord Byron visits long enough to shoot a hare and, perhaps, another visiting poet, Ezra Chater, in a duel. The opposition of science and poetry is repeated, more than a century and a half later, in the second scene and the same room, when a twentieth-century member of the Coverly family, Valentine, a graduate student "chaotician," tells a visiting literary biographer and theoretician, Hannah Jarvis, about his researches in the new science. The ana

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2753

lytically inclined Hannah and a rival, romantically inclined literary critic, Bernard Nightingale, are each embarked on a quest for the truth of Byron's role (if any) in the death of Ezra Chater.

The five principal characters of Arcadia are, thus, each engaged in the quest for knowledge. While truth, the whole truth scientific and humanistic, eludes the questers, the interwoven themes of the play reach their resolution in a final scene of astonishing technical virtuosity. After three scenes set in the past and three in the present, the seventh and longest brings past and present�the Romantic age and the postmodern�together. Characters from both periods are on stage simultaneously, all wearing Regency costume (the modern ones for a fancy-dress ball). The scene is at once "chaotic" and supremely ordered, ending�like so many Renaissance and later comedies�with a dance. Here, on the verge of tragedy, humanist and mathematician/ scientist from each period join hands and start to waltz. As the Russian Yevgeny Yevtushenko put it in a war poem called "Weddings," even on the verge of tragedy, "you can't not dance."

Stoppard's most recent plays are Indian Ink (1993); The Invention of Love (1997), which brings together in one galaxy A. E. Housman, Oscar Wilde, and a sparkling constellation of Victorian worthies; and The Coast of Utopia (2002), an epic trilogy that follows the trajectory of romantics and revolutionaries in the twilight of Czarist Russia. He shared an Oscar for the screenplay of Shakespeare in Love (1998) and has also written for radio and television, alternating�sometimes in the same work� between a serious handling of political themes and arabesques of exuberant fantasy. As he says: "I never quite know whether I want to be a serious artist or a siren." He has succeeded in being both, often�as in Arcadia�at the same time.

Stoppard was knighted in 1997 and three years later was appointed a member of the Order of Merit.

Arcadia1

CHARACTERS (IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)

THOMASINA COVERLY, aged thirteen, HANNAH JARVIS, an author, late later sixteen thirties SEPTIMUS HODGE, her tutor, aged CHLOE COVERLY, aged eighteen

twenty-two, later twenty-five BERNABD NIGHTINGALE, a don,1 late JELLABY, a hutler, middle-aged thirties EZRA CHATER, a poet, aged thirty-one VALENTINE COVERLY, aged twenty-five RICHARD NOAKES, a landscape to thirty

architect, middle-aged GUS COVERLY, aged fifteen LADY CROOM, middle thirties AUGUSTUS COVERLY, aged fifteen CAPT. BRICE, RN,2 middle thirties

Act One

SCENE ONE

A room on the garden front of a very large country house in Derbyshire in April 1809. Nowadays, the house would be called a stately home. The upstage wall is mainly tall, shapely, uncurtained windows, one or more of which work as doors. Nothing much need he said or seen of the exterior beyond. We come to learn that

1. A mountainous region of central Peloponnese, its shepherds are called "Arcades." Greece; scene of idealized and idyllic country life 2. Royal Navy. in the pastoral poetry of ancient Greece, notably 3. University teacher of English literature, that of Theocritus, and Italy, notably that of Virgil;

.

2754 / TOM STOPPARD

the house stands in the typical English park of the time. Perhaps we see an indication of this, perhaps only light and air and sky.

The room looks bare despite the large table which occupies the centre of it. The table, the straight-backed chairs and, the only other item of furniture, the architect's stand or reading stand, would all be collectable pieces now but here, on an uncarpeted wood floor, they have no more pretension than a schoolroom, which is indeed the main use of this room at this time. What elegance there is, is architectural, and nothing is impressive but the scale. There is a door in each of the side walls. These are closed, but one of the french windows4 is open to a bright but sunless morning.

There are two people, each busy with books and paper and pen and ink, separately occupied. The pupil is THOMASINA COVERLY, aged 13. The tutor is SEPTIMUS HODGE, aged 22. Each has an open book. Hers is a slim mathematics primer.5 His is a handsome thick quarto,1' brand new, a vanity production,' with little tapes to tie when the book is closed. His loose papers, etc, are kept in a stiff- backed portfolio which also ties up with tapes.

Septimus has a tortoise which is sleepy enough to serve as a paperweight. Elsewhere on the table there is an old-fashioned theodolite8 and also some other books stacked up.

THOMASINA Septimus, what is carnal embrace?9 SEPTIMUS Carnal embrace is the practice of throwing one's arms around a

side of beef. THOMASINA IS that all? SEPTIMUS No ... a shoulder of mutton, a haunch of venison well hugged,1

an embrace of grouse . . . caro, carnis;2 feminine; flesh. THOMASINA Is it a sin? SEPTIMUS Not necessarily, my lady, but when carnal embrace is sinful it is a

sin of the flesh, QED.3 We had caro in our Gallic Wars4�'The Britons live on milk and meat'�'lacte et came vivunt'. I am sorry that the seed fell on stony ground.5

THOMASINA That was the sin of Onan,6 wasn't it, Septimus?

SEPTIMUS Yes. He was giving his brother's wife a Latin lesson and she was hardly the wiser after it than before. I thought you were finding a proof for Fermat's last theorem.7

THOMASINA It is very difficult, Septimus. You will have to show me how.

SEPTIMUS If I knew how, there would be no need to ask you. Fermat's last theorem has kept people busy for a hundred and fifty years, and I hoped it would keep you busy long enough for me to read Mr Chater's poem in praise of love with only the distraction of its own absurdities.

4. Glass-panelled door in the outside wail of a 4. Julius Caesar's history of his wars in Gaul house, serving as a window and a door. (France), De Bella Gallico. 5. Textbook. 5. Cf. Matthew 13.3-8: Christ's parable of the 6. Book, a quarter of the size of a traditional print-sower who "went forth to sow." ing sheet, approximately the size of a modern 6. Cf. Genesis 38.9. Thomasina mischievously novel. confuses the sower's seed with the semen Onan 7. Published at author's expense. "spilled .. . on the ground" rather than impregnate 8. Surveyor's measuring instrument, a telescope his brother's wife. mounted on a tripod. 7. Famous problem proposed by the French math9. Sexual intercourse. ematician Pierre de Fermat (1601�1665) and 1. Wordplay on well-hung. described by Septimus on p. 2755. See also 2. Latin. p. 2757. Often held to be unprovable, Fermat's last 3. Initials indicating a problem has been solved: theorem was proved by Professor Andrew Wiles a quod eral demonstrandum ("as has been demon-few months after Arcadia was first performed. strated," Latin).

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2755

THOMASINA Our Mr Chater has written a poem?

SEPTIMUS He believes he has written a poem, yes. I can see that there might be more carnality in your algebra than in Mr Chater's 'Couch of Eros'.8 THOMASINA Oh, it was not my algebra. I heard Jellaby telling cook that Mrs

Chater was discovered in carnal embrace in the gazebo. SEPTIMUS [Pause] Really? With whom, did Jellaby happen to say?

[THOMASINA considers this with a puzzled frown.] THOMASINA What do you mean, with whom? SEPTIMUS With what? Exactly so. The idea is absurd. Where did this story

come from? THOMASINA Mr Noakes. SEPTIMUS Mr Noakes! THOMASINA Papa's landskip9 architect. He was taking bearings in the garden

when he saw�through his spyglass�Mrs Chater in the gazebo in carnal

embrace. SEPTIMUS And do you mean to tell me that Mr Noakes told the butler? THOMASINA No. Mr Noakes told Mr Chater. Jellaby was told by the groom,

who overheard Mr Noakes telling Mr Chater, in the stable yard. SEPTIMUS Mr Chater being engaged in closing the stable door.1 THOMASINA What do you mean, Septimus? SEPTIMUS So, thus far, the only people who know about this are Mr Noakes

the landskip architect, the groom, the butler, the cook and, of course, Mrs Chater's husband, the poet. THOMASINA And Arthur who was cleaning the silver, and the bootboy. And

now you. SEPTIMUS Of course. What else did he say? THOMASINA Mr Noakes? SEPTIMUS No, not Mr Noakes. Jellaby. You heard Jellaby telling the cook. THOMASINA Cook hushed him almost as soon as he started. Jellaby did not

see that I was being allowed to finish yesterday's upstairs'2 rabbit pie before

I came to my lesson. I think you have not been candid with me, Septimus.

A gazebo is not, after all, a meat larder. SEPTIMUS I never said my definition was complete.

THOMASINA Is carnal embrace kissing?

SEPTIMUS Yes.

THOMASINA And throwing one's arms around Mrs Chater? SEPTIMUS Yes. Now, Fermat's last theorem� THOMASINA I thought as much. I hope you are ashamed. SEPTIMUS I, my lady? THOMASINA If you do not teach me the true meaning of things, who will? SEPTIMUS Ah. Yes, I am ashamed. Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which

is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for

purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat's last theorem, by contrast,

asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n,

the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.

[Pause. ]

THOMASINA Eurghhh!

8. Greek god of love. 2. As prepared for Lord and Lady Croom and their 9. Landscape. guests ("upstairs," as distinct from the servants 1. Proverbial saying that continues "after the "below stairs"). horse has bolted."

.

2756 / TOM STOPPARD

SEPTIMUS Nevertheless, that is the theorem. THOMASINA It is disgusting and incomprehensible. Now when I am grown to practise it myself I shall never do so without thinking of you. SEPTIMUS Thank you very much, my lady. Was Mrs Chater down this

morning? THOMASINA No. Tell me more about sexual congress. SEPTIMUS There is nothing more to be said about sexual congress. THOMASINA IS it the same as love? SEPTIMUS Oh no, it is much nicer than that.

[One of the side doors leads to the music room. It is the other side door which now opens to admit JELLABY, the butler.]

I am teaching, Jellaby. JELLABY Beg your pardon, Mr Hodge, Mr Chater said it was urgent you receive his letter. SEPTIMUS Oh, very well, [SEPTIMUS takes the letter.] Thank you. [And to dis

miss JELLABY.] Thank you. JELLABY [Holding his ground. ] Mr Chater asked me to bring him your answer. SEPTIMUS My answer?

[He opens the letter. There is no envelope as such, but there is a 'cover' which, folded and sealed, does the same service. SEPTIMUS tosses the cover negligently aside and reads.]

Well, my answer is that as is my custom and my duty to his lordship I am engaged until a quarter to twelve in the education of his daughter. When I am done, and if Mr Chater is still there, I will be happy to wait upon him in�[He checks the letter.]�in the gunroom.

JELLABY I will tell him so, thank you, sir.

[SEPTIMUS/OWS the letter and places it between the pages of'The Couch

of Eros'.] THOMASINA What is for dinner, Jellaby? JELLABY Boiled ham and cabbages, my lady, and a rice pudding. THOMASINA Oh, goody.

[JELLABY leaves.]

SEPTIMUS Well, so much for Mr Noakes. He puts himself forward as a gentleman, a philosopher of the picturesque,3 a visionary who can move mountains and cause lakes, but in the scheme of the garden he is as the serpent.4

THOMASINA When you stir your rice pudding, Septimus, the spoonful of jam spreads itself round making red trails like the picture of a meteor in my astronomical atlas. But if you stir backward, the jam will not come together again. Indeed, the pudding does not notice and continues to turn pink just as before. Do you think this is odd?

SEPTIMUS No .

THOMASINA Well, I do. You cannot stir things apart.

SEPTIMUS No more you can, time must needs run backward, and since it will not, we must stir our way onward mixing as we go, disorder out of disorder into disorder until pink is complete, unchanging and unchangeable, and we are done with it for ever.5 This is known as free will or self-determination.

3. ltalianate landscape associated with the writers of Eden poisoned the bliss of Adam and Eve (Genand landscape gardeners of the early-nineteenth-esis 3). century Romantic movement. 5. Evidence offered, with no awareness of its sig4. Noakes spies on and spoils the happiness of the nificance, of the then-undiscovered second law of lovers in the gazebo, as the serpent in the Garden thermodynamics.

.

ARCADIA 1.1 / 2757

[He picks up the tortoise and moves it a few inches as though it had strayed, on top of some loose papers, and admonishes it.]

Sit! THOMASINA Septimus, do you think God is a Newtonian?6 SEPTIMUS An Etonian?7 Almost certainly, I'm afraid. We must ask your

brother to make it his first enquiry. THOMASINA No, Septimus, a Newtonian. Septimus! Am I the first person to have thought of this?

SEPTIMUS No . THOMASINA I have not said yet. SEPTIMUS 'If everything from the furthest planet to the smallest atom of our

brain acts according to Newton's law of motion, what becomes of free will?'

THOMASINA No . SEPTIMUS God's will. THOMASINA NO. SEPTIMUS Sin. THOMASINA [Derisively.] No! SEPTIMUS Very well. THOMASINA If you could stop every atom in its position and direction, and if

your mind could comprehend all the actions thus suspended, then if you were really, really good at algebra you could write the formula for all the future; and although nobody can be so clever to do it, the formula must exist just as if one could.

SEPTIMUS [Pause.] Yes. [Pause.] Yes, as far as I know, you are the first person to have thought of this. [Pause. With an effort.] In the margin of his copy of Arithmetica, Fermat wrote that he had discovered a wonderful proof of his theorem but, the margin being too narrow for his purpose, did not have room to write it down. The note was found after his death, and from that day to this�

THOMASINA Oh! I see now! The answer is perfectly obvious. SEPTIMUS This time you may have overreached yourself.

[The door is opened, somewhat violently, CHATER enters.] Mr Chater! Perhaps my message miscarried. I will be at liberty at a quarter to twelve, if that is convenient.

CHATER It is not convenient, sir. My business will not wait. SEPTIMUS Then I suppose you have Lord Croom's opinion that your business

is more important than his daughter's lesson. CHATER I do not, but, if you like, I will ask his lordship to settle the point. SEPTIMUS [Pause.] My lady, take Fermat into the music room. There will be

an extra spoonful of jam if you find his proof. THOMASINA There is no proof, Septimus. The thing that is perfectly obvious is that the note in the margin was a joke to make you all mad.

[THOMASINA leaves.]

SEPTIMUS Now, sir, what is this business that cannot wait? CHATER I think you know it, sir. You have insulted my wife. SEPTIMUS Insulted her? That would deny my nature, my conduct, and the

admiration in which I hold Mrs Chater.

6. Believer in the scientific theories of Isaac New-the U.S., private) school, Eton, which Thomasina's ton (1642-1727). brother Augustus will later attend. 7. Alumnus of the famous English public (i.e., in

.

275 8 / TOM STOPPARD

CHATER I have heard of your admiration, sir! You insulted my wife in the gazebo yesterday evening!

SEPTIMUS You are mistaken. I made love to your wife in the gazebo. She asked me to meet her there, I have her note somewhere, I dare say I could find it for you, and if someone is putting it about that I did not turn up, by God, sir, it is a slander.

CHATER You damned lecher! You would drag down a lady's reputation to

make a refuge for your cowardice. It will not do! I am calling you out!8 SEPTIMUS Chater! Chater, Chater, Chater! My dear friend! CHATER YOU dare to call me that. I demand satisfaction! SEPTIMUS Mrs Chater demanded satisfaction and now you are demanding

satisfaction. I cannot spend my time day and night satisfying the demands of the Chater family. As for your wife's reputation, it stands where it ever stood.

CHATER You blackguard!

SEPTIMUS I assure you. Mrs Chater is charming and spirited, with a pleasing voice and a dainty step, she is the epitome of all the qualities society applauds in her sex�and yet her chief renown is for a readiness that keeps her in a state of tropical humidity as would grow orchids in her drawers in January.

CHATER Damn you, Hodge, I will not listen to this! Will you fight or not?

SEPTIMUS [Definitively.] Not! There are no more than two or three poets of the first rank now living, and I will not shoot one of them dead over a perpendicular poke in a gazebo with a woman whose reputation could not be adequately defended with a platoon of musketry deployed by rota.

CHATER Ha! You say so! Who are the others? In your opinion?�no� no�!�this goes very ill, Hodge. I will not be flattered out of my course. You say so, do you?

SEPTIMUS I do. And I would say the same to Milton9 were he not already

dead. Not the part about his wife, of course� CHATER But among the living? Mr Southey?1 SEPTIMUS Southey I would have shot on sight. CHATER [Shaking his head sadly.] Yes, he has fallen off. I admired 'Thalaba'

quite, but 'Madoc', [He chuckles.] oh dear me!�but we are straying from the business here�you took advantage of Mrs Chater, and if that were not bad enough, it appears every stableboy and scullery maid on the strength�

SEPTIMUS Damn me! Have you not listened to a word I said?

CHATER I have heard you, sir, and I will not deny I welcome your regard, God knows one is little appreciated if one stands outside the coterie of hacks and placemen2 who surround Jeffrey and the Edinburgh�3

SEPTIMUS My dear Chater, they judge a poet by the seating plan of Lord Holland's table!4

CHATER By heaven, you are right! And I would very much like to know the name of the scoundrel who slandered my verse drama 'Maid of Turkey' in the Piccadilly Recreation, too!

8. Challenging you to a duel. and editor of The Edinburgh Review (1802�29), 9. John Milton (1608-1674), English poet. was a stern but generally perceptive literary critic. 1. Robert Southey (1774-1843), English poet, 4. Henry Richard Vassall Fox, Lord Holland author of the long poems Tlialaba and Madoc. (1773�1840), British politician, exerted consider2. Clique of those who write only for money or able influence on literature and politics through social advantage. the hospitality that Flolland House offered the bril3. Frances Lord Jeffrey (1773�1850), cofounder liant and distinguished people of his day.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2759

SEPTIMUS 'The Maid of Turkey'! I have it by my bedside! When I cannot sleep I take up 'The Maid of Turkey' like an old friend!

CHATER [Gratified..] There you are! And the scoundrel wrote he would not give it to his dog for dinner were it covered in bread sauce and stuffed with chestnuts. When Mrs Chater read that, she wept, sir, and would not give herself to me for a fortnight�which recalls me to my purpose�

SEPTIMUS The new poem, however, will make your name perpetual� CHATER Whether it do or not� SEPTIMUS It is not a question, sir. No coterie can oppose the acclamation of

the reading public. 'The Couch of Eros' will take the town. CHATER Is that your estimation? SEPTIMUS It is my intent. CHATER Is it, is it? Well, well! I do not understand you. SEPTIMUS You see I have an early copy�sent to me for review. I say review,

but I speak of an extensive appreciation of your gifts and your rightful place

in English literature. CHATER Well, I must say. That is certainly . . . You have written it? SEPTIMUS [Crisply.] Not yet. CHATER Ah. And how long does . . . ? SEPTIMUS To be done right, it first requires a careful re-reading of your book,

of both your books, several readings, together with outlying works5 for an exhibition of deference or disdain as the case merits. I make notes, of course, I order my thoughts, and finally, when all is ready and I am calm in my mind . . .

CHATER [Shrewdly.] Did Mrs Chater know of this before she�before you� SEPTIMUS I think she very likely did. CHATER [Triumphantly.] There is nothing that woman would not do for me!

Now you have an insight to her character. Yes, by God, she is a wife to me,

sir! SEPTIMUS For that alone, I would not make her a widow. CHATER Captain Brice once made the same observation! SEPTIMUS Captain Brice did? CHATER Mr Hodge, allow me to inscribe your copy in happy anticipation.

Lady Thomasina's pen will serve us. SEPTIMUS Your connection with Lord and Lady Croom you owe to your fighting her ladyship's brother?

CHATER No! It was all nonsense, sir�a canard!6 But a fortunate mistake, sir. It brought me the patronage of a captain of His Majesty's Navy and the brother of a countess. I do not think Mr Walter Scott7 can say as much, and here I am, a respected guest at Sidley Park.

SEPTIMUS Well, sir, you can say you have received satisfaction.

[CHATER is already inscribing the book, using the pen and ink-pot on the table, NOAKES enters through the door used by CHATER. He carries rolled-up plans, CHATER, inscribing, ignores NOAKES. NOAKES on seeing the occupants, panics.]

NOAKES Oh!

SEPTIMUS Ah, Mr Noakes�my muddy-mettled8 rascal! Where's your spyglass?

5. Other writers'books. (1771-1832). 6. Malicious gossip. 8. Dirty-minded. 7. Best-selling Scottish poet and, later, novelist

.

2760 / TOM STOPPARD

NOAKES I beg your leave�1 thought her ladyship�excuse me� [He is beating an embarrassed retreat when he becomes rooted by CHATER'S voice, CHATER reads his inscription in ringing tones.]

CHATER 'TO my friend Septimus Hodge, who stood up9 and gave his best on behalf of the Author�Ezra Chater, at Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April 10th, 1809.' [Giving the book to SEPTIMUS.] There, sir�something to show your grandchildren!

SEPTIMUS This is more than I deserve, this is handsome, what do you say, Noakes?

[They are interrupted by the appearance, outside the windows, of LADY CROOM and CAPTAIN EDWARD BRICE, RN.' Her first words arrive through the open door.]

LADY CROOM Oh, no! Not the gazebo! [She enters, followed by BRICE who carries a leatherbound sketch book. ]

Mr Noakes! What is this I hear? BRICE Not only the gazebo, but the boat-house, the Chinese bridge, the

shrubbery� CHATER By God, sir! Not possible! BRICE Mr Noakes will have it so. SEPTIMUS Mr Noakes, this is monstrous! LADY CROOM I am glad to hear it from you, Mr Hodge. THOMASINA [Opening the door from the music room.] May I return now? SEPTIMUS [Attempting to close the door.] Not just yet� LADY CROOM Yes, let her stay. A lesson in folly is worth two in wisdom.

[BRICE takes the sketch book to the reading stand, where he lays it open. The sketch book is the work of MR NOAKES, who is obviously an admirer of Humphry Repton's 'Red Books'.2 The pages, drawn in watercolours, show 'before' and 'after' views of the landscape, and the pages are cunningly cut to allow the latter to be superimposed over portions of the former, though Repton did it the other way round.]

BBICE IS Sidley Park to be an Englishman's garden or the haunt of Corsican

brigands? SEPTIMUS Let us not hyperbolize, sir. BRICE It is rape, sir! NOAKES [Defending himself.] It is the modern style. CHATER [Under the same misapprehension as SEPTIMUS.] Regrettable, of

course, but so it is.

[THOMASINA has gone to examine the sketch book.]

LADY CROOM Mr Chater, you show too much submission. Mr Hodge. I appeal to you.

SEPTIMUS Madam, I regret the gazebo, I sincerely regret the gazebo�and the boat-house up to a point�but the Chinese bridge, fantasy!�and the shrubbery I reject with contempt! Mr Chater!�would you take the word of a jumped-up jobbing gardener3 who sees carnal embrace in every nook and cranny of the landskip!

THOMASINA Septimus, they are not speaking of carnal embrace, are you, Mama?

9. Cf. Septimus's "perpendicular poke in a ing "before" and "after" views of his clients' gazebo" (p. 2758). grounds. Noakes is proposing to Gothicize the clas1. See p. 2753, n. 2. sical English landscape of Sidley Park. 2. Repton (1752-1818), a landscape architect, 3. Presumptuously conceited odd-job gardener. presented his designs in so-called Red Books show

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2761

LADY CROOM Certainly not. What do you know of carnal embrace? THOMASINA Everything, thanks to Septimus. In my opinion, Mr Noakes's

scheme for the garden is perfect. It is a Salvator!4 LADY CROOM What does she mean? NOAKES [Answering the wrong question.] Salvator Rosa, your ladyship, the

painter. He is indeed the very exemplar of the picturesque style. BRICE Hodge, what is this? SEPTIMUS She speaks from innocence not from experience. BRICE You call it innocence? Has he ruined you, child?

[Pause.] SEPTIMUS Answer your uncle! THOMASINA [To SEPTIMUS.] How is a ruined child different from a ruined

castle? SEPTIMUS On such questions I defer to Mr Noakes. NOAKES [Out of his depth.] A ruined castle is picturesque, certainly. SEPTIMUS That is the main difference. [To BRICE.] I teach the classical

authors. If I do not elucidate their meaning, who will? BRICE As her tutor you have a duty to keep her in ignorance. LADY CROOM Do not dabble in paradox, Edward, it puts you in danger of

fortuitous wit. Thomasina, wait in your bedroom.

THOMASINA [Retiring.] Yes, mama. I did not intend to get you into trouble, Septimus. I am very sorry for it. It is plain that there are some things a girl is allowed to understand, and these include the whole of algebra, but there are others, such as embracing a side of beef, that must be kept from her until she is old enough to have a carcass of her own.

LADY CROOM One moment. BRICE What is she talking about? LADY CROOM Meat. BRICE Meat? LADY CROOM Thomasina, you had better remain. Your knowledge of the pic

turesque obviously exceeds anything the rest of us can offer. Mr Hodge, ignorance should be like an empty vessel waiting to be filled at the well of truth�not a cabinet of vulgar curios.5 Mr Noakes�now at last it is your turn�

NOAKES Thank you, your ladyship�

LADY CROOM Your drawing is a very wonderful transformation. I would not have recognized my own garden but for your ingenious book�is it not?� look! Here is the Park as it appears to us now, and here as it might be when Mr Noakes has done with it. Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman's garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring nor a stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch.6 My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge, which I am assured is superior to the one at Kew,7 and for all I know at Peking, is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars�

NOAKES [Bleating.] Lord Little has one very similar�

4. Salvator Rosa (1615�1673), Italian painter. ers' "wickets." 5. Strange objects. 7. Site of London's Royal Botanical Gardens. 6. Area, twenty-two yards long, between cricket

.

276 2 / TOM STOPPARD

LADY CROOM I cannot relieve Lord Little's misfortunes by adding to my own. Pray, what is this rustic hovel that presumes to superpose itself on my gazebo?

NOAKES That is the hermitage,8 madam.

LADY CROOM I am bewildered.

BRICE It is all irregular, Mr Noakes.

NOAKES It is, sir. Irregularity is one of the chiefest principles of the picturesque style�

LADY CROOM But Sidley Park is already a picture, and a most amiable picture too. The slopes are green and gentle. The trees are companionably grouped at intervals that show them to advantage. The rill9 is a serpentine ribbon unwound from the lake peaceably contained by meadows on which the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged�in short, it is nature as God intended, and I can say with the painter, 'Et in Arcadia ego!'1 'Here I am in Arcadia,' Thomasina.

THOMASINA Yes, mama, if you would have it so.

LADY CROOM IS she correcting my taste or my translation?

THOMASINA Neither are beyond correction, mama, but it was your geography caused the doubt.

LADY CROOM Something has occurred with the girl since I saw her last, and surely that was yesterday. How old are you this morning? THOMASINA Thirteen years and ten months, mama. LADY CROOM Thirteen years and ten months. She is not due to be pert for six

months at the earliest, or to have notions of taste for much longer. Mr Hodge, I hold you accountable. Mr Noakes, back to you�

NOAKES Thank you, my�

LADY CROOM YOU have been reading too many novels by Mrs Radcliffe, that

is my opinion. This is a garden for The Castle ofOtranto or The Mysteries of

Udolpho�2

CHATER The Castle of Otranto, my lady, is by Horace Walpole.

NOAKES [Thrilled.] Mr Walpole the gardener?!

LADY CROOM Mr Chater, you are a welcome guest at Sidley Park but while you are one, The Castle of Otranto was written by whomsoever I say it was, otherwise what is the point of being a guest or having one?

[The distant popping of guns heard.]

Well, the guns have reached the brow3�I will speak to his lordship on the subject, and we will see by and by�[She stands looking out.] Ah!�your friend has got down a pigeon, Mr Hodge. [Calls out.] Bravo, sir!

SEPTIMUS The pigeon, I am sure, fell to your husband or to your son, your ladyship�my schoolfriend was never a sportsman.

BRICE [Looking out.] Yes, to Augustus!�bravo, lad!

LADY CROOM [Outside.] Well, come along! Where are my troops?

[BRICE, NOAKES and CHATER obediently follow her, CHATER making a detour to shake SEPTIMUS'S hand fervently.] CHATER My dear Mr Hodge! [CHATER leaves also. The guns are heard again, a little closer.]

8. Hermit's residence. 9. Stream. 1. Latin phrase, inscribed on a tomb in a painting by the French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). Lady Groom translates it literally, but the speaker is often taken�as Septimus does below�to be Death. 2. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) wrote Gothic novels, the most famous of which is The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Horace Walpole (1717-1797), author of The Castle of Otranto (1764), also pioneered the Gothic style of picturesque landscaping. 3. Top of the hill.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2763

THOMASINA Pop, pop, pop ... I have grown up in the sound of guns like the child of a siege. Pigeons and rooks in the close season,4 grouse on the heights from August, and the pheasants to follow�partridge, snipe, woodcock, and teal�pop�pop�pop, and the culling of the herd. Papa has no need of the recording angel, his life is written in the game book.5

SEPTIMUS A calendar of slaughter. 'Even in Arcadia, there am I!' THOMASINA Oh, phooey to Death!

[She dips a pen and takes it to the reading stand.]

I will put in a hermit, for what is a hermitage without a hermit? Are you in

love with my mother, Septimus? SEPTIMUS You must not be cleverer than your elders. It is not polite. THOMASINA Am I cleverer? SEPTIMUS Yes. Much. THOMASINA Well, I am sorry, Septimus. [She pauses in her drawing and pro

duces a small envelope from her pocket.] Mrs Chater came to the music room with a note for you. She said it was of scant importance, and that therefore I should carry it to you with the utmost safety, urgency and discretion. Does carnal embrace addle the brain?

SEPTIMUS [Taking the letter.] Invariably. Thank you. That is enough educa

tion for today. THOMASINA There. I have made him like the Baptist in the wilderness.6 SEPTIMUS How picturesque.

[LADY CROOM is heard calling distantly for THOMASINA who runs off into the garden, cheerfully, an uncomplicated girl.

SEPTIMUS opens Mrs Chater's note. He crumples the envelope and throws it away. He reads the note, folds it and inserts it into the pages of 'The Couch of Eros'.]

SCENE TWO

The lights come up on the same room, on the same sort of morning, in the present day, as is instantly clear from the appearance of HANNAH JARVIS; and from nothing else.

Something needs to he said about this. The action of the play shuttles back and forth between the early nineteenth century and the present day, always in this same room. Both periods must share the state of the room, without the additions and subtractions which would normally be expected. The general appearance of the room should offend neither period. In the case of props�books, paper, flowers, etc., there is no absolute need to remove the evidence of one period to make way for another. However, books, etc., used in both periods should exist in both old and new versions. The landscape outside, we are told, has undergone changes. Again, what we see should neither change nor contradict.

On the above principle, the ink and pens etc., of the first scene can remain. Books and papers associated with Hannah's research, in Scene Two, can have been on the table from the beginning of the play. And so on. During the course of the play the table collects this and that, and where an object from one scene woidd be an anachronism in another (say a coffee mug) it is simply deemed to have become invisible. By the end of the play the table has collected an inventory of objects.

HANNAH is leafing through the pages of Mr Noakes's sketch book. Also to hand,

4. Closed to hunters. 6. Thomasina's hermit looks like John the Baptist 5. For recording a sportsman's or sportswoman's (cf. Luke 1.4), who lived many years in the desert, kill.

.

2764 / TOM STOPPARD

o-pened and closed, are a number of small volumes like diaries (these turn out to he Lady Croom's 'garden books'). After a few moments, HANNAH takes the sketch hook to the windows, comparing the view with what has been drawn, and then she replaces the sketch hook on the reading stand.

She wears nothing frivolous. Her shoes are suitable for the garden, which is where she goes now after picking up the theodolite from the table. The room is empty for a few moments.

One of the other doors opens to admit CHLOE and BERNARD. She is the daughter of the house and is dressed casually. BERNARD, the visitor, wears a suit and a tie. His tendency is to dress flamboyantly, but he has damped it down for the occasion, slightly. A peacock-coloured display handkerchief boils over in his breast pocket. He carries a capacious leather bag which serves as a briefcase.

CHLOE Oh! Well, she was here . . . BERNARD Ah . . . the french window . . . CHLOE Yes. Hang on.

[CHLOE steps out through the garden door and disappears from view. BERNARD hangs on. The second door opens and VALENTINE looks in.]

VALENTINE Sod.7 [VALENTINE goes out again, closing the door, CHLOE returns, carrying a pair of rubber boots. She comes in and sits down and starts exchanging her shoes for the boots, while she talks.]

CHLOE The best thing is, you wait here, save you tramping around. She

spends a good deal of time in the garden, as you may imagine. BERNARD Yes. Why? CHLOE Well, she's writing a history of the garden, didn't you know? BERNARD No, I knew she was working on the Croom papers but . . . CHLOE Well, it's not exactly a history of the garden either. I'll let Hannah

explain it. The trench you nearly drove into is all to do with it. I was going to say make yourself comfortable but that's hardly possible, everything's been cleared out, it's en route8 to the nearest lavatory.

BERNARD Everything is? CHLOE NO, this room is. They drew the line at chemical 'Ladies' '.9 BERNARD Yes, I see. Did you say Hannah? CHLOE Hannah, yes. Will you be all right?

[She stands up wearing the boots.] I won't be . . . [But she has lost him.] Mr Nightingale? BERNARD [Waking up.] Yes. Thank you. Miss Jarvis is Hannah Jarvis the author? CHLOE Yes. Have you read her book?

BERNARD Oh, yes. Yes.

CHLOE I bet she's in the hermitage, can't see from here with the marquee ...1 BERNARD Are you having a garden party? CHLOE A dance for the district, our annual dressing up and general drunk

enness. The wrinklies won't have it in the house, there was a teapot we once had to bag back from Christie's2 in the nick of time, so anything that can be destroyed, stolen or vomited on has been tactfully removed; tactlessly, I should say�

7. Angry expletive. 1. Large tent. 8. On the way to. 2. Rescue from Christie's, famous London firm of 9. They would not allow portable toilets for auctioneers. women in the garden.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2765

[She is about to leave. ] BERNARD Um�look�would you tell her�would you mind not mentioning

my name just yet? CHLOE Oh. All right. BERNARD [Smiling.] More fun to surprise her. Would you mind? CHLOE No. But she's bound to ask . . . Should I give you another name, just

for the moment? BERNARD Yes, why not? CHLOE Perhaps another bird, you're not really a Nightingale.

[She leaves again. BERNARD glances over the books on the table. He puts

his briefcase down. There is the distant pop-pop of a shotgun. It takes

BERNARD vaguely to the window. He looks out. The door he entered by

now opens and GUS looks into the room. BERNARD turns and sees him.] BERNARD Hello. [GUS doesn't speak. He never speaks. Perhaps he cannot speak. He has no composure, and faced with a stranger, he caves in and leaves again. A moment later the other door opens again and VALENTINE crosses the room, not exactly ignoring BERNARD and yet ignoring him.] VALENTINE Sod, sod, sod, sod, sod, sod . . . [As many times as it takes him to

leave by the opposite door, which he closes behind him. Beyond it, he can be

heard shouting. Chlo! Chlo! BERNARD'S discomfort increases. The same door

opens and VALENTINE returns. He looks at BERNARD.]

BERNARD She's in the garden looking for Miss Jarvis. VALENTINE Where is everything? BERNARD It's been removed for the, er . . . VALENTINE The dance is all in the tent, isn't it? BERNARD Yes, but this is the way to the nearest toilet. VALENTINE I need the commode.3 BERNARD Oh. Can't you use the toilet? VALENTINE It's got all the game books in it. BERNARD Ah. The toilet has or the commode has? VALENTINE IS anyone looking after you? BERNARD Yes. Thank you. I'm Bernard Nigh�I've come to see Miss Jarvis. I

wrote to Lord Croom but unfortunately I never received a reply, so I� VALENTINE Did you type it? BERNARD Type it? VALENTINE Was your letter typewritten? BERNARD Yes.

VALENTINE My father never replies to typewritten letters. [He spots a tortoise which has been half-hidden on the table.]

Oh! Where have you been hiding, Lightning? [He picks up the tortoise.] BERNARD So I telephoned yesterday and I think I spoke to you� VALENTINE To me? Ah! Yes! Sorry! You're doing a talk about�someone�and

you wanted to ask Hannah�something� BERNARD Yes. As it turns out. I'm hoping Miss Jarvis will look kindly on me. VALENTINE I doubt it. BERNARD Ah, you know about research? VALENTINE I know Hannah. BERNARD Has she been here long?

3. Lavatory bowl enclosed in a chair or box with a cover.

.

276 6 / TOM STOPPARD

VALENTINE Well in possession,4 I'm afraid. My mother had read her book,

you see. Have you? BERNARD No. Yes. Her book. Indeed. VALENTINE She's terrifically pleased with herself. BERNARD Well, I dare say if I wrote a bestseller� VALENTINE NO, for reading it. My mother basically reads gardening books. BERNARD She must be delighted to have Hannah Jarvis writing a book about

her garden. VALENTINE Actually it's about hermits. [GUS returns through the same door, and turns to leave again.] It's all right, Gus�what do you want?� [But GUS has gone again.] Well . . . I'll take Lightning for his run. BERNARD Actually, we've met before. At Sussex,' a couple of years ago, a

seminar . . . VALENTINE Oh. Was I there? BERNARD Yes. One of my colleagues believed he had found an unattributed

short story by D. H. Lawrence,6 and he analysed it on his home computer, most interesting, perhaps you remember the paper? VALENTINE Not really. But I often sit with my eyes closed and it doesn't necessarily mean I'm awake.

BERNARD Well, by comparing sentence structures and so forth, this chap showed that there was a ninety per cent chance that the story had indeed been written by the same person as Women in Love. To my inexpressible joy, one of your maths mob was able to show that on the same statistical basis there was a ninety per cent chance that Lawrence also wrote the Just William books and much of the previous day's Brighton and Hove Argus.7

VALENTINE [Pause.] Oh, Brighton. Yes. I was there. [And looking out.] Oh� here she comes, I'll leave you to talk. By the way, is yours the red Mazda?

BERNARD Yes.

VALENTINE If you want a tip I'd put it out of sight through the stable arch before my father comes in. He won't have anyone in the house with a Japanese car. Are you queer?

BERNARD No, actually.

VALENTINE Well, even so. [VALENTINE leaves, closing the door. BERNARD kee-ps staring at the closed door. Behind him, HANNAH comes to the garden door.]

HANNAH Mr Peacock? [BERNARD looks round vaguely then checks over his shoulder for the missing Peacock, then recovers himself and turns on the Nightingale bonhomie.]

BERNARD Oh . . . hello! Hello. Miss Jarvis, of course. Such a pleasure. I was thrown for a moment�the photograph doesn't do you justice. HANNAH Photograph?

[Her shoes have got muddy and she is taking them off.]

BERNARD On the book. I'm sorry to have brought you indoors, but Lady Chloe kindly insisted she�

4. In a position of power. 7. A local newspaper. "Just William books": series 5. Sussex University at Brighton. of "schoolboy" novels by the best-selling children's 6. English novelist and short-story writer (1885� author Richmal Crompton (1890-1969). 1930), author of Women in Love (1920).

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2767

HANNAH No matter�you would have muddied your shoes. BERNARD How thoughtful. And how kind of you to spare me a little of your time.

[He is overdoing it. She shoots him a glance.]

HANNAH Are you a journalist? BERNARD [Shocked.] No! HANNAH [Resuming.] I've been in the ha-ha,8 very squelchy. BERNARD [Unexpectedly.] Ha-hah! HANNAH What? BERNARD A theory of mine. Ha-hah, not ha-ha. If you were strolling down

the garden and all of a sudden the ground gave way at your feet, you're not going to go 'ha-ha', you're going to jump back and go 'ha-hah!', or more probably, 'Bloody 'ell!' . . . though personally I think old Murray was up the pole9 on that one�-in France, you know, 'ha-ha' is used to denote a strikingly ugly woman, a much more likely bet for something that keeps the cows off the lawn.

[This is not going well for BERNARD but he seems blithely unaware. HANNAH stares at him for a moment.]

HANNAH Mr Peacock, what can I do for you? BERNARD Well, to begin with, you can call me Bernard, which is my name. HANNAH Thank you.

[She goes to the garden door to bang her shoes together and scrape off the worst of the mud.]

BERNARD The book!�the book is a revelation! To see Caroline Lamb1 through your eyes is really like seeing her for the first time. I'm ashamed to say I never read her fiction, and how right you are, it's extraordinary stuff� Early Nineteenth is my period as much as anything is.

HANNAH You teach? BERNARD Yes. And write, like you, like we all, though I've never done anything

which has sold like Caro.2 HANNAH I don't teach. BERNARD No. All the more credit to you. To rehabilitate a forgotten writer, I

suppose you could say that's the main reason for an English don.3 HANNAH Not to teach? BERNARD Good God, no, let the brats sort it out for themselves. Anyway,

many congratulations. I expect someone will be bringing out Caroline

Lamb's oeuvre4 now? HANNAH Yes, I expect so. BERNARD How wonderful! Bravo! Simply as a document shedding reflected

light on the character of Lord Byron, it's bound to be� HANNAH Bernard. You did say Bernard, didn't you?

BERNARD I did.

HANNAH I'm putting my shoes on again. BERNARD Oh. You're not going to go out? HANNAH No, I'm going to kick you in the balls.

8. Ditch with a wall on its inner side below ground OED. level, forming a boundary to a lawn without inter-1. Novelist (1785-1828), best-known as the misrupting the view from the house. tress of Lord Byron (1788-1824). 9. James Murray (1837-1915), editor of the orig-2. Title of Hannah's biography. Cf. p. 2754, n. 2. inal Oxford English Dictionary. Bernard thinks him 3. Seep. 2753, n. 3. misguided�"up the [greasy] pole" (slang)�in the 4. A writer's body of work. pronunciation of "ha-ha" recommended in his

.

276 8 / TOM STOPPARD

BERNARD Right. Point taken. Ezra Chater. HANNAH Ezra Chater. BERNARD Born Twickenham, Middlesex, 1778, author of two verse narra

tives, 'The Maid of Turkey', 1808, and 'The Couch of Eros', 1809. Nothing

known after 1809, disappears from view. HANNAH I see. And? BERNARD [Reaching for his hag.] There is a Sidley Park connection.

[He produces 'The Couch of Eros from the hag. He reads the inscription. ]

'To my friend Septimus Hodge, who stood up and gave his best on behalf of the Author�Ezra Chater, at Sidley Park, Derbyshire, April 10th 1809.'

[He gives her the hook. ]

I am in your hands. HANNAH 'The Couch of Eros'. Is it any good? BERNARD Quite surprising. HANNAH You think there's a book in him? BERNARD No, no�A monograph perhaps for the Journal of English Studies.

There's almost nothing on Chater, not a word in the DNB,5 of course�by

that time he'd been completely forgotten. HANNAH Family? BERNARD Zilch. There's only one other Chater in the British Library

database. HANNAH Same period? BERNARD Yes, but he wasn't poet like our Ezra, he was a botanist who

described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique6 and died there after being bitten

by a monkey. HANNAH And Ezra Chater? BERNARD He gets two references in the periodical index, one for each book,

in both cases a substantial review in the Piccadilly Recreation, a thrice

weekly folio sheet, but giving no personal details. HANNAH And where was this [the hook]? BERNABD Private collection. I've got a talk to give next week, in London, and

I think Chater is interesting, so anything on him, or this Septimus Hodge,

Sidley Park, any leads at all . . . I'd be most grateful.

[Pause. ]

HANNAH Well! This is a new experience for me. A grovelling academic.

BERNARD Oh, I say.

HANNAH Oh, but it is. All the academics who reviewed my book patronized

it. BERNARD Surely not. HANNAH Surely yes. The Byron gang unzipped their flies and patronized all

over it. Where is it you don't bother to teach, by the way? BERNARD Oh, well, Sussex, actually. HANNAH Sussex. [She thinks a moment.] Nightingale. Yes; a thousand words

in the Observer7 to see me off the premises with a pat on the bottom. You

must know him. BERNARD As I say, I'm in your hands. HANNAH Quite. Say please, then.

5. British Dictionary of National Biography. 7. British Sunday newspaper. 6. One of the Windward Islands of the Caribbean.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2769

BERNARD Please. HANNAH Sit down, do. BERNARD Thank you.

[He takes a chair. She remains standing. Possibly she smokes; if so, perhaps now. A short cigarette-holder sounds right, too. Or brown-paper cigarillos.]

HANNAH How did you know I was here? BERNARD Oh, I didn't. I spoke to the son on the phone but he didn't mention

you by name . . . and then he forgot to mention me. HANNAH Valentine. He's at Oxford,8 technically. BERNARD Yes, I met him. Brideshead Regurgitated.9 HANNAH My fiance.

[She holds his look.] BERNARD [Pause.] I'll take a chance. You're lying. HANNAH [Pause] Well done, Bernard. BERNARD Christ. HANNAH He calls me his fiancee. BERNARD Why? HANNAH It's a joke. BERNARD You turned him down? HANNAH Don't be silly, do I look like the next Countess of� BERNARD No, no�a freebie. The joke that consoles. My tortoise Lightning,

my fiancee Hannah. HANNAH Oh. Yes. You have a way with you, Bernard. I'm not sure I like it. BERNARD What's he doing, Valentine? HANNAH He's a postgrad. Biology. BERNARD No, he's a mathematician. HANNAH Well, he's doing grouse.1 BERNARD Grouse? HANNAH Not actual grouse. Computer grouse. BERNARD Who's the one who doesn't speak?

HANNAH Gus.

BERNARD What's the matter with him?

HANNAH I didn't ask.

BERNARD And the father sounds like a lot of fun.

HANNAH Ah yes.

BERNARD And the mother is the gardener. What's going on here? HANNAH What do you mean? BERNARD I nearly took her head off�she was standing in a trench at the

time. HANNAH Archaeology. The house had a formal Italian garden until about

1740. Lady Croom is interested in garden history. I sent her my book�it

contains, as you know if you've read it�which I'm not assuming, by the

way�a rather good description of Caroline's garden at Brocket Hall. I'm

here now helping Hermione. BERNARD [Impressed] Hermione. HANNAH The records are unusually complete and they have never been worked on.

8. University, attended by Sebastian Flyte, anti-9. Vomited up. hero of Evelyn Waugh's satirical novel of British 1. Valentine is researching into changes in the upper-class life, Brideshead Revisited (1945). Sidley Park population of the grouse, a game bird.

.

2770 / TOM STOPPARD

BERNARD I'm beginning to admire you. HANNAH Before was bullshit? BERNARD Completely. Your photograph does you justice, I'm not sure the

book does.

[She considers him. He waits, confident.] HANNAH Septimus Hodge was the tutor. BERNARD [Quietly.] Attagirl. HANNAH His pupil was the Croom daughter. There was a son at Eton. Sep

timus lived in the house: the pay book specifies allowances for wine and

candles. So, not quite a guest but rather more than a steward.2 His letter of

self-recommendation is preserved among the papers. I'll dig it out for you.

As far as I remember he studied mathematics and natural philosophy at

Cambridge. A scientist, therefore, as much as anything. BERNARD I'm impressed. Thank you. And Chater? HANNAH Nothing. BERNARD Oh. Nothing at all? HANNAH I'm afraid not. BERNARD How about the library? HANNAH The catalogue was done in the 1880s. I've been through the lot. BERNARD Books or catalogue? HANNAH Catalogue. BERNARD Ah. Pity. HANNAH I'm sorry. BERNARD What about the letters? No mention? HANNAH I'm afraid not. I've been very thorough in your period because, of

course, it's my period too. BERNARD Is it? Actually, I don't quite know what it is you're . . . HANNAH The Sidley hermit. BERNARD Ah. Who's he? HANNAH He's my peg3 for the nervous breakdown of the Romantic Imagi

nation. I'm doing landscape and literature 1750 to 1834. BERNARD What happened in 1834? HANNAH My hermit died. BERNARD Of course. HANNAH What do you mean, of course? BERNARD Nothing. HANNAH Yes, you do.

BERNARD No, no . . . However, Coleridge4 also died in 1834. HANNAH So he did. What a stroke of luck. [Softening.] Thank you, Bernard. [She goes to the reading stand and opens Noakes's sketch hook.]

Look�there he is.

[BERNARD goes to look.] BERNARD Mmm.

HANNAH The only known likeness of the Sidley hermit. BERNARD Very biblical.5 HANNAH Drawn in by a later hand, of course. The hermitage didn't yet exist

when Noakes did the drawings.

2. Chief servant. 4. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1722-1834), English 3. On which to hang the argument of a book about Romantic poet. the Romantic Imagination. 5. See p. 2763, n. 6.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2771

BERNARD Noakes . . . the painter?

HANNAH Landscape gardener. He'd do these books for his clients, as a sort of prospectus. [She demonstrates.] Before and after, you see. This is how it all looked until, say, 1810�smooth, undulating, serpentine�open water, clumps of trees, classical boat-house�

BERNARD Lovely. The real England.

HANNAH You can stop being silly now, Bernard. English landscape was invented by gardeners imitating foreign painters who were evoking classical authors. The whole thing was brought home in the luggage from the grand tour. Here, look�Capability Brown doing Claude, who was doing Virgil.6 Arcadia! And here, superimposed by Richard Noakes, untamed nature in the style of Salvator Rosa. It's the Gothic novel expressed in landscape. Everything but vampires. There's an account of my hermit in a letter by your illustrious namesake.

BERNARD Florence?7 HANNAH What? BERNARD No. You go On. HANNAH Thomas Love Peacock.8 BERNARD Ah yes.

HANNAH I found it in an essay on hermits and anchorites9 published in the Cornhill Magazine in the 1860s . . . [She fishes for the magazine itself among the books on the table, and finds it.] . . . 1862 . . . Peacock calls him [She quotes from memory'.] 'Not one of your village simpletons to frighten the ladies, but a savant1 among idiots, a sage of lunacy.'

BERNARD An oxy-moron,2 so to speak. HANNAH [Busy] Yes. What? BERNARD Nothing. HANNAH [Having found the place.] Here we are. 'A letter we have seen, writ

ten by the author of Heading Hall nearly thirty years ago, tells of a visit to

the Earl of Croom's estate, Sidley Park��' BERNARD Was the letter to Thackeray?3 HANNAH [Brought up short.] I don't know. Does it matter? BERNARD No. Sorry.

[But the gaps he leaves for her are false promises�and she is not quick

enough. That's how it goes.] Only, Thackeray edited the Cornhill until '63 when, as you know, he died. His father had been with the East India Company where Peacock, of course, had held the position of Examiner, so it's quite possible that if the essay were by Thackeray, the letter . . . Sorry. Go on.

Of course, the East India Library in Blackfriars has most of Peacock's letters, so it would be quite easy to . . . Sorry. Can I look? [Silently she hands him the Cornhill.]

6. Hannah sees Lancelot "Capability" Brown (1715�1783), England's most celebrated landscape designer, imitating ("doing") Claude Lorrain (1600�1682), French landscape painter, who was imitating Virgil's Georgics, poems celebrating the country/pastoral life of an idealized Arcadia. 7. Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), English nurse considered the founder of modern nursing (Bernard has temporarily forgotten his alias). 8. English novelist and poet (1 785�1866), author of Headlong [not Heading] Hall (1816), and onetime "Examiner" (investigator) with the British East India Company in India.

9. People who have withdrawn from the world, usually for religious reasons. 1. Learned man. 2. Phrase that seems to contradict itself ("sage of lunacy"), here prompting Bernard's pun on "moron" (meaning "idiot"). 3. William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), English novelist and poet.

.

277 2 / TOM STOPPARD

Yes, it's been topped and tailed, of course. It might be worth . . . Go on. I'm listening . . . [Leafing through the essay, he suddenly chuckles.] Oh yes, it's Thackeray

all right . . . [He slaps the hook shut.] Unbearable . . . [He hands it hack to her.] What were you saying?

HANNAH Are you always like this? BERNARD Like what? HANNAH The point is, the Crooms, of course, had the hermit under their

noses for twenty years so hardly thought him worth remarking. As I'm finding out. The Peacock letter is still the main source, unfortunately. When I read this [the magazine in her hand], well, it was one of those moments that tell you what your next book is going to be. The hermit of Sidley Park was my . . .

BERNARD Peg. HANNAH Epiphany. BERNARD Epiphany, that's it. HANNAH The hermit was placed in the landscape exactly as one might place

a pottery gnome. And there he lived out his life as a garden ornament. BERNARD Did he do anything? HANNAH Oh, he was very busy. When he died, the cottage was stacked solid

with paper. Hundreds of pages. Thousands. Peacock says he was suspected of genius. It turned out, of course, he was off his head. He'd covered every sheet with cabalistic4 proofs that the world was coming to an end. It's perfect, isn't it? A perfect symbol, I mean.

RERNARD Oh, yes. Of what?

HANNAH The whole Romantic sham, Bernard! It's what happened to the Enlightenment, isn't it? A century of intellectual rigour turned in on itself. A mind in chaos suspected of genius. In a setting of cheap thrills and false emotion. The history of the garden says it all, beautifully. There's an engraving of Sidley Park in 1730 that makes you want to weep. Paradise in the age of reason. By 1760 everything had gone�the topiary, pools and terraces, fountains, an avenue of limes�the whole sublime geometry was ploughed under by Capability Brown. The grass went from the doorstep to the horizon and the best box hedge in Derbyshire was dug up for the ha-ha so that the fools could pretend they were living in God's countryside. And then Richard Noakes came in to bring God up to date. By the time he'd finished it looked like this [the sketch book]. The decline from thinking to feeling, you see.

BERNARD [A judgement.] That's awfully good. [HANNAH looks at him in case of irony hut he is professional.]

No, that'll stand up. HANNAH Thank you. BERNARD Personally I like the ha-ha. Do you like hedges? HANNAH I don't like sentimentality. BERNARD Yes, I see. Are you sure? You seem quite sentimental over geometry.

But the hermit is very very good. The genius5 of the place. HANNAH [Pleased.] That's my title! BERNARD Of course.

4. Coded. 5. With a pun on the meaning "attendant spirit of a person or a place."

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2773

HANNAH [Less pleased. ] Of course? BERNARD Of course. Who was he when he wasn't being a symbol? HANNAH I don't know. BERNARD Ah . HANNAH I mean, yet. BERNARD Absolutely. What did they do with all the paper? Does Peacock say? HANNAH Made a bonfire. BERNARD Ah, well. HANNAH I've still got Lady Croom's garden books to go through. BERNARD Account books or journals? HANNAH A bit of both. They're gappy but they span the period. BERNARD Really? Have you come across Byron at all? As a matter of interest. HANNAH A first edition of 'Childe Harold' in the library, and English Bards, I

think.6 BERNARD Inscribed? HANNAH No. BERNARD And he doesn't pop up in the letters at all? HANNAH Why should he? The Crooms don't pop up in his. BERNARD [Casually.] That's true, of course. Rut Newstead7 isn't so far away.

Would you mind terribly if I poked about a bit? Only in the papers you've

done with, of course.

[HANNAH twigs8 something.]

HANNAH Are you looking into Byron or Chater?

[CHLOE enters in stockinged feet through one of the side doors, laden with an armful of generally similar leather-covered ledgers. She detours to collect her shoes. ]

CHLOE Sorry�just cutting through�there's tea in the pantry if you don't

mind mugs� BERNARD How kind. CHLOE Hannah will show you. BERNARD Let me help you. CHLOE No, it's all right�

[BERNARD opens the opposite door for her.]

Thank you�I've been saving Val's game books. Thanks.

[BERNARD closes the door.] BERNARD Sweet girl. HANNAH Mmm. BERNARD Oh, really? HANNAH Oh really what?

[CHLOE'S door opens again and she puts her head round it.]

CHLOE Meant to say, don't worry if father makes remarks about your car, Mr

Nightingale, he's got a thing about�[and the Nightingale now being out of

the bag] ooh-�ah, how was the surprise?�not yet, eh? Oh, well�sorry�

tea, anyway�so sorry if I�[Embarrassed, she leaves again, closing the door.

Pause. ] HANNAH You absolute shit.

[She heads off to leave.]

6. Two of Byron's long poems: English Bards and 7. Newstead Abbey, Byron's family home. Scotch Reviewers (1809) and Childe Harold's Pil-8. Perceives. grimage (1812).

.

2774 / TOM STOPPARD

BERNARD The thing is, there's a Byron connection too.

[HANNAH stops and faces him.] HANNAH I don't care. BERNARD You should. The Byron gang are going to get their dicks caught in

their zip. HANNAH [Pause.] Oh really? BERNARD If we collaborate. HANNAH On what? BERNARD Sit down, I'll tell you. HANNAH I'll stand for the moment. BERNARD This copy of 'The Couch of Eros' belonged to Lord Byron. HANNAH It belonged to Septimus Hodge. BERNARD Originally, yes. But it was in Byron's library which was sold to pay

his debts when he left England for good in 1816. The sales catalogue is in the British Library. 'Eros' was lot 74A and was bought by the bookseller and publisher John Nightingale of Opera Court, Pall Mall . . . whose name survives in the firm of Nightingale and Matlock, the present Nightingale being my cousin.

[He pauses, HANNAH hesitates and then sits down at the table.]

I'll just give you the headlines. 1939, stock removed to Nightingale country house in Kent. 1945, stock returned to bookshop. Meanwhile, overlooked box of early nineteenth-century books languish in country house cellar until house sold to make way for the Channel Tunnel rail-link.9 'Eros' discovered with sales slip from 1816 attached�photocopy available for inspection.

[He brings this from his bag and gives it to ELANNAH who inspects it.]

HANNAH All right. It was in Byron's library. BERNARD A number of passages have been underlined.

[HANNAH picks up the book and leafs through it.] All of them, and only them�no, no, look at me, not at the book�all the underlined passages, word for word, were used as quotations in the review of 'The Couch of Eros' in the Piccadilly Recreation of April 30th 1809. The reviewer begins by drawing attention to his previous notice in the same periodical of 'The Maid of Turkey'.

HANNAH The reviewer is obviously Hodge. 'My friend Septimus Hodge who

stood up and gave his best on behalf of the Author.' BERNARD That's the point. The Piccadilly ridiculed both books. HANNAH [Pause.] Do the reviews read like Byron? BERNARD [Producing two photocopies from his case.] They read a damn sight

more like Byron than Byron's review of Wordsworth the previous year.

[HANNAH glances over the photocopies.]

HANNAH I see. Well, congratulations. Possibly. Two previously unknown book reviews by the young Byron. Is that it? BERNARD No. Because of the tapes, three documents survived undisturbed in the book.

[He has been carefully opening a package produced from his bag. He has the originals. He holds them carefully one by one.]

'Sir�we have a matter to settle. I wait on you in the gun room. E. Chater, Esq.'

9. High-speed railway line linking London with the tunnel that crosses the English Channel.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2775

'My husband has sent to town for pistols. Deny what cannot be proven� for Charity's sake�I keep my room this day.' Unsigned.

'Sidley Park, April 11th 1809. Sir�I call you a liar, a lecher, a slanderer in the press and a thief of my honour. I wait upon your arrangements for giving me satisfaction as a man and a poet. E. Chater, Esq.'

[Pause.]

HANNAH Superb. But inconclusive. The book had seven years to find its way into Byron's possession. It doesn't connect Byron with Chater, or with Sidley Park. Or with Hodge for that matter. Furthermore, there isn't a hint in Byron's letters and this kind of scrape is the last thing he would have kept quiet about.

BERNARD Scrape?

HANNAH He would have made a comic turn out of it. BERNARD Comic turn, fiddlesticks! [He pauses for effect.] He killed Chater! HANNAH [A raspberry.} Oh, really! RERNARD Chater was thirty-one years old. The author of two books. Nothing

more is heard from him after 'Eros'. He disappears completely after April 1809. And Byron�Byron had just published his satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in March. He was just getting a name. Yet he sailed for Lisbon1 as soon as he could find a ship, and stayed abroad for two years. Hannah, this is fame. Somewhere in the Croom papers there will be something�

HANNAH There isn't, I've looked. BERNARD But you were looking for something else! It's not going to jump out at you like 'Lord Byron remarked wittily at breakfast!'

HANNAH Nevertheless his presence would be unlikely to have gone unremarked. But there is nothing to suggest that Byron was here, and I don't believe he ever was.

BERNARD All right, but let me have a look. HANNAH You'll queer my pitch.2 BERNARD Dear girl, I know how to handle myself� HANNAH And don't call me dear girl. If I find anything on Byron, or Chater,

or Hodge, I'll pass it on. Nightingale, Sussex.

[Pause. She stands up.]

BERNARD Thank you. I'm sorry about that business with my name. HANNAH Don't mention it . . . BERNARD What was Hodge's college,3 by the way? HANNAH Trinity. BERNARD Trinity? HANNAH Yes. [She hesitates.] Yes. Byron's old college. BERNARD How old was Hodge? HANNAH I'd have to look it up but a year or two older than Byron. Twenty-

two . . . BERNARD Contemporaries at Trinity? HANNAH [Wearily.] Yes, Bernard, and no doubt they were both in the cricket

eleven when Harrow played Eton at Lords!4

1. Capital of Portugal. and Hodge could have been in the same team (of 2. Spoil my chances. eleven players) that played against Eton at Lords 3. At Cambridge University. cricket ground in London. 4. Contemporaries also at Harrow School, Byron

.

2776 / TOM STOPPARD

[BERNARD a-pproaches her and stands close to her.] BERNARD [Evenly.] Do you mean that Septimus Hodge was at school with

Byron? HANNAH [Falters slightly.] Yes ... he must have been ... as a matter of fact. BERNARD Well, you silly cow.

[With a large gesture of pure happiness, BERNARD throws his arms around HANNAH and gives her a great smacking kiss on the cheek. CHLOE enters to witness the end of this.]

CHLOE Oh�erm ... I thought I'd bring it to you.

[She is carrying a small tray with two mugs on it.] BERNARD I have to go and see about my car. HANNAH Going to hide it? BERNARD Hide it? I'm going to sell it! Is there a pub I can put up at in the

village?

[He turns hack to them as he is about to leave through the garden.]

Aren't you glad I'm here?

[He leaves.] CHLOE He said he knew you. HANNAH He couldn't have. CHLOE No, perhaps not. He said he wanted to be a surprise, but I suppose

that's different. I thought there was a lot of sexual energy there, didn't you? HANNAH What? CHLOE Bouncy on his feet, you see, a sure sign. Should I invite him for you? HANNAH To what? No. CHLOE YOU can invite him�that's better. He can come as your partner. HANNAH Stop it. Thank you for the tea. CHLOE If you don't want him, I'll have him. Is he married? HANNAH I haven't the slightest idea. Aren't you supposed to have a pony? CHLOE I'm just trying to fix you up, Hannah. HANNAH Believe me, it gets less important. CHLOE I mean for the dancing. He can come as Beau Brummel5 HANNAH I don't want to dress up and I don't want a dancing partner, least of

all Mr Nightingale. I don't dance. CHLOE Don't be such a prune. You were kissing him, anyway. HANNAH He was kissing me, and only out of general enthusiasm. CHLOE Well, don't say I didn't give you first chance. My genius brother will

be much relieved. He's in love with you, I suppose you know. HANNAH [Angry.] That's a joke! CHLOE It's not a joke to him. HANNAH Of course it is�not even a joke�how can you be so ridiculous?

[GUS enters from the garden, in his customary silent aivkwardness.] CHLOE Hello, Gus, what have you got?

[GUS has an apple, just picked, with a leaf or two still attached. He offers

the apple to HANNAH.]6

HANNAH [Surprised. ] Oh! . . . Thank you! CHLOE [Leaving.] Told you.

5. George Bryan Brummel (1778�1840), known apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden; cf. also the as "Beau" because of his elegant clothes. golden apple of discord given by Paris to the god6. Cf. Genesis 3.1�6, specifically Eve's gift of an dess Aphrodite in Greek legend.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2777

[CHLOE close the door on herself.] HANNAH Thank you. Oh dear.

SCENE THREE

The schoolroom. The next morning. Present are: THOMASINA, SEPTIMUS, JELLABY. We have seen this composition before: THOMASINA at her place at the table; SEPTIMUS reading a letter which has just arrived; JELLABY waiting, having just delivered the letter.

'The Couch of Eros' is in front of SEPTIMUS, open, together with sheets of paper on which he has been writing. His portfolio is on the table. Plautus (the tortoise) is the paperweight. There is also an apple on the table now, the same apple from all appearances.

SEPTIMUS [With his eyes on the letter.] Why have you stopped? [THOMASINA is studying a sheet of paper, a 'Latin unseen' lesson,7 She is having some difficulty.]

THOMASINA Solio insessa . . . in igne . . . seated on a throne ... in the fire . . . and also on a ship . . . sedebat regina . . . sat the queen . . . SEPTIMUS There is no reply, Jellaby. Thank you.

[He folds the letter up and places it between the leaves of 'The Couch of Eros'.]

JELLABY I will say so, sir. THOMASINA . . . the wind smelling sweetly . . . purpureis velis . . . by, with or from purple sails� SEPTIMUS [To JELLABY] I will have something for the post, if you would be so

kind. JELLABY [Leaving.] Yes sir. THOMASINA . . . was like as to�something�by, with or from lovers�oh,

Septimus!�musica tibiarum imperabat . . . music of pipes commanded . . . SEPTIMUS 'Ruled' is better. THOMASINA . . . the silver oars�exciting the ocean�as if�as if�amorous� SEPTIMUS That is very good.

[He picks up the apple. He picks off the twig and leaves, placing these

on the table. With a pocket knife he cuts a slice of apple, and while he

eats it, cuts another slice which he offers to Plautus.] THOMASINA Regina reclinabat . . . the queen�was reclining�praeter des

criptionem�indescribably�in a golden tent . . . like Venus and yet more� SEPTIMUS Try to put some poetry into it. THOMASINA How can I if there is none in the Latin? SEPTIMUS Oh, a critic! THOMASINA IS it Queen Dido?8

SEPTIMUS No .

THOMASINA Who is the poet?

SEPTIMUS Known to you.

THOMASINA Known to me?

SEPTIMUS Not a Roman.

7. Latin passage that a student is required to pretends Shakespeare's lines are his own translatranslate: here the Roman historian Plutarch's tion. description of Cleopatra in her barge, on which 8. Legendary queen of Carthage who, abandoned Shakespeare based a famous speech by Enobarbus by her lover Aeneas, in Virgil's Aeneid, commits (Antony and Cleopatra 2.2.196ff.) Below Septimus suicide.

.

277 8 / TOM STOPPARD

THOMASINA Mr Chater? SEPTIMUS Your translation is quite like Chater.

[SEPTIMUS picks up his pen and continues with his own writing.]

THOMASINA I know who it is, it is your friend Byron. SEPTIMUS Lord Byron, if you please. THOMASINA Mama is in love with Lord Byron. SEPTIMUS [Absorbed.] Yes. Nonsense. THOMASINA It is not nonsense. I saw them together in the gazebo.

[SEPTIMUS'S pen stops moving, he raises his eyes to her at last.]

Lord Byron was reading to her from his satire, and mama was laughing, with her head in her best position. SEPTIMUS She did not understand the satire, and was showing politeness to a guest.

THOMASINA She is vexed with papa for his determination to alter the park, but that alone cannot account for her politeness to a guest. She came downstairs hours before her custom. Lord Byron was amusing at breakfast. He paid you a tribute, Septimus.

SEPTIMUS Did he?

THOMASINA He said you were a witty fellow, and he had almost by heart an article you wrote about�well, I forget what, but it concerned a book called 'The Maid of Turkey' and how you would not give it to your dog for dinner.

SEPTIMUS Ah. Mr Chater was at breakfast, of course. THOMASINA He was, not like certain lazybones. SEPTIMUS He does not have Latin to set and mathematics to correct.

[He takes Thomasinas lesson book from underneath Plautus and tosses it down the table to her.] THOMASINA Correct? What was incorrect in it? [She looks into the book.]

Alpha minus?9 Pooh! What is the minus for? SEPTIMUS For doing more than was asked. THOMASINA YOU did not like my discovery? SEPTIMUS A fancy is not a discovery. THOMASINA A gibe is not a rebuttal.

[SEPTIMUS finishes what he is writing. He folds the pages into a letter. He has sealing wax and the means to melt it. He seals the letter and writes on the cover. Meanwhile�]

You are churlish with me because mama is paying attention to your friend. Well, let them elope, they cannot turn back the advancement of knowledge. I think it is an excellent discovery. Each week I plot your equations dot for dot, %s against ys in all manner of algebraical relation, and every week they draw themselves as commonplace geometry, as if the world of forms were nothing but arcs and angles. God's truth, Septimus, if there is an equation for a curve like a bell, there must be an equation for one like a bluebell, and if a bluebell, why not a rose? Do we believe nature is written in numbers?

SEPTIMUS We do.

THOMASINA Then why do your equations only describe the shapes of manu

facture? SEPTIMUS I do not know. THOMASINA Armed thus, God could only make a cabinet.

9. A grade of A minus.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2779

SEPTIMUS He has mastery of equations which lead into infinities where we cannot follow.

THOMASINA What a faint-heart! We must work outward from the middle of the maze. We will start with something simple. [She -picks up the apple leaf.] I will plot this leaf and deduce its equation. You will be famous for being my tutor when Lord Byron is dead and forgotten. [SEPTIMUS completes the business with his letter. He puts the letter in his pocket.] SEPTIMUS [Firmly.] Back to Cleopatra.1 THOMASINA Is it Cleopatra?�I hate Cleopatra! SEPTIMUS You hate her? Why? THOMASINA Everything is turned to love with her. New love, absent love, lost love�I never knew a heroine that makes such noodles of our sex. It only needs a Roman general to drop anchor outside the window and away goes the empire like a christening mug into a pawn shop. If Queen Elizabeth had been a Ptolemy history would have been quite different�we would be admiring the pyramids of Rome and the great Sphinx of Verona.2 SEPTIMUS God save us. THOMASINA But instead, the Egyptian noodle made carnal embrace with the enemy who burned the great library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus!�can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides� thousands of poems�Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors!3 How can we sleep for grief? SEPTIMUS By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sophocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes4 had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam- driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide, was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented in Glasgow. Now, where are we? Let me see if I can attempt a free translation for you. At Harrow I was better at this than Lord Byron. [He takes the piece of paper from her and scrutinizes it, testing one or two Latin phrases speculatively before committing himself] Yes�'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne . . . burned on the water

1. Queen of Egypt (69�30 B.C.E.), mistress of the ocles (ca. 496^406 B.C.E.), and Euripides (ca. Roman Mare Antony. 484�406 B.c.E.) and the library of the philosopher 2. In Italy. I.e., if Queen Elizabeth 1 of England Aristotle (384-322 B.C.E.) had been brought to (1533�1603) had been Cleopatra (a member of Egypt from Greece by Cleopatra's forebears. the Ptolemy family), says Thomasina, Egypt would 4. All the writings of the Greek scientist Archihave overthrown the Roman Empire. medes (ca. 287�212 B.c.E.), who invented the 3. The plays of Aeschylus (525�456 B.C.E.), Soph-Archimedean screw to raise water.

.

2780 / TOM STOPPARD

. . . the�something�the poop was beaten gold, purple the sails, and�

what's this?�oh yes,�so perfumed that� THOMASINA [Catching on and furious.] Cheat! SEPTIMUS [Imperturbably.] '�the winds were lovesick with them . . . ' THOMASINA Cheat! SEPTIMUS "... the oars were silver which to the tune of flutes kept stroke . . .' THOMASINA [Jumping to her feet.] Cheat! Cheat! Cheat! SEPTIMUS [As though it were too easy to make the effort worthwhile.] '. . . and

made the water which they beat to follow faster, as amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggared all description�she did lie in her pavilion�'

[THOMASINA, in tears of rage, is hurrying out through the garden. ]

THOMASINA I hope you die! [She nearly humps into BRICE who is entering. She runs out of sight. BRICE enters.]

BRICE Good God, man, what have you told her? SEPTIMUS Told her? Told her what? BRICE Hodge!

[SEPTIMUS looks outside the door, slightly contrite about THOMASINA, and sees that CHATER is skulking out of view.]

SEPTIMUS Chater! My dear fellow! Don't hang back�come in, sir!

[CHATER allows himself to be drawn sheepishly into the room, where BRICE stands on his dignity.]

CHATER Captain Brice does me the honour�I mean to say, sir, whatever you have to say to me, sir, address yourself to Captain Brice.5 SEPTIMUS How unusual. [To BRICE.] Your wife did not appear yesterday, sir. I trust she is not sick? BRICE My wife? I have no wife. What the devil do you mean, sir?

[SEPTIMUS makes to reply, but hesitates, puzzled. He turns back to CHATER.]

SEPTIMUS I do not understand the scheme, Chater. Whom do I address when

I want to speak to Captain Brice? BRICE Oh, slippery, Hodge�slippery! SEPTIMUS [To CHATER] By the way, Chater�[He interrupts himself and turns

back to BRICE, and continues as before.] by the way, Chater, I have amazing news to tell you. Someone has taken to writing wild and whirling letters in your name. I received one not half an hour ago.

BRICE [Angrily.] Mr Hodge! Look to your honour, sir! If you cannot attend to me without this foolery, nominate your second who might settle the business as between gentlemen. No doubt your friend Byron would do you the service.

[SEPTIMUS gives up the game.]

SEPTIMUS Oh yes, he would do me the service. [His mood changes, he turns to CHATER.] Sir�I repent your injury. You are an honest fellow with no more malice in you than poetry.

CHATER [Happily.] Ah well!�that is more like the thing! [Overtaken by

doubt.] Is he apologizing? BRICE There is still the injury to his conjugal6 property, Mrs Chater's� CHATER Tush,7 sir!

5. Brice has done Chater "the honour" of agreeing time, place, and choice of weapons. to act as his "second" (supporter) in the duel to 6. Marital. which Chater has challenged Septimus. Dueling 7. Expression of mild irritation, which Brice turns etiquette required the two seconds to arrange the into a vulgar joke.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2781

BRICE As you will�her tush. Nevertheless� [But they are interrupted by LADY CROOM, also entering from the garden.]

LADY CROOM Oh�excellently found! Mr Chater, this will please you very much. Lord Byron begs a copy of your new book. He dies to read it and intends to include your name in the second edition of his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.

CHATER English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, your ladyship, is a doggerel aimed at Lord Byron's seniors and betters. If he intends to include me, he intends to insult me.

LADY CROOM Well, of course he does, Mr Chater. Would you rather be thought not worth insulting? You should be proud to be in the company of Rogers and Moore and Wordsworth�8 ah! 'The Couch of Eros!' [For she has spotted Septimus's copy of the book on the table.]

SEPTIMUS That is my copy, madam. LADY CROOM So much the better�what are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed? [Note: 'The Couch of Eros' now contains the three letters, and it must do so without advertising the fact. This is why the volume has been described as a substantial quarto.] Mr Hodge, you must speak to your friend9 and put him out of his affectation of pretending to quit us. I will not have it. He says he is determined on the Malta packet sailing out of Falmouth! His head is full of Lisbon and Lesbos, and his portmanteau' of pistols, and I have told him it is not to be thought of. The whole of Europe is in a Napoleonic fit,2 all the best ruins will be closed, the roads entirely occupied with the movement of armies, the lodgings turned to billets3 and the fashion for godless republicanism not yet arrived at its natural reversion. He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps. I charge you to take command of his pistols, Mr Hodge! He is not safe with them. His lameness, he confessed to me, is entirely the result of his habit from boyhood of shooting himself in the foot.4 What is that noise} [The noise is a badly played piano in the next room. It has been going on for some time since THOMASINA left.] SEPTIMUS The new Broadwood pianoforte,5 madam. Our music lessons are at an early stage. LADY CROOM Well, restrict your lessons to the piano side of the instrument and let her loose on the forte when she has learned something. [LADY CROOM, holding the book, sails out back into the garden.] BRICE Now! If that was not God speaking through Lady Croom, he never spoke through anyone! CHATER [Awed.] Take command of Lord Byron's pistols! BRICE You hear Mr Chater, sir�how will you answer him? [SEPTIMUS has been watching LADY CROOM'S progress up the garden. He turns back.]

8. Samuel Rogers (1763-1855), English poet; Thomas Moore (1779-1852), Irish poet, friend and biographer of Byron; William Wordsworth (1770-1850), English poet. 9. Lord Byron. 1. Suitcase. "Packet": mail boat, which also carried passengers. "Lesbos": Greek island. 2. France, under Napoleon, was fighting the Peninsula War (1804�14) against Great Britain, Portugal, and Spanish guerrillas in the Iberian Peninsula.

3. Accommodation for troops. 4. Byron was born with a clubfoot. 5. An early form of the piano, its name combining the Italian words for soft and loud, respectively.

.

2782 / TOM STOPPARD

SEPTIMUS By killing him. I am tired of him. CHATER [Startled.] Eh? BRICE [Pleased.] Ah! SEPTIMUS Oh, damn your soul, Chater! Ovid6 would have stayed a lawyer and

Virgil a farmer if they had known the bathos7 to which love would descend in your sportive satyrs and noodle nymphs!8 I am at your service with a half- ounce ball9 in your brain. May it satisfy you�behind the boat-house at daybreak�shall we say five o'clock? My compliments to Mrs Chater�have no fear for her, she will not want for protection while Captain Brice has a guinea1 in his pocket, he told her so himself.

BRICE Yo u lie, sir!

SEPTIMUS No, sir. Mrs Chater, perhaps. BRICE You lie, or you will answer to me! SEPTIMUS [Wearily.] Oh, very well�I can fit you in at five minutes after five.

And then it's off to the Malta packet out of Falmouth. You two will be dead, my penurious2 schoolfriend will remain to tutor Lady Thomasina, and I trust everybody including Lady Croom will be satisfied!

[SEPTIMUS slams the door behind him.]

BRICE He is all bluster and bladder. Rest assured, Chater, I will let the air out of him.

[BRICE leaves by the other door, CHATER S assurance lasts only a moment. When he spots the flaw . . . 3]

CHATER Oh! Rut. . .

[He hurries out after BRICE.]

SCENE FOUR

HANNAH and VALENTINE. She is reading aloud. He is listening. Lightning, the tortoise, is on the table and is not readily distinguishable from Plautus. In front of VALENTINE is Septimus's portfolio, recognizably so but naturally somewhat faded. It is open. Principally associated with the portfolio (although it may contain sheets of blank paper also) are three items: a slim maths primer; a sheet of drawing paper on which there is a scrawled diagram and some mathematical notations, arrow marks, etc.; and Thomasina's mathematics lesson book, i.e. the one she writes in, which VALENTINE is leafing through as he listens to HANNAH reading from the primer.

HANNAH 'I, Thomasina Coverly, have found a truly wonderful method whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves through number alone. This margin being too mean for my purpose, the reader must look elsewhere for the New Geometry of Irregular Forms discovered by Thomasina Coverly.'

[Pause. She hands VALENTINE the text book, VALENTINE looks at what she has been reading. From the next room, a piano is heard, beginning to play quietly, unintrusively, improvisationally. ]

Does it mean anything?

6. Roman poet (43 B.C.E.�1 7? c.E.) 1. British gold coin with a value (in the nineteenth 7. Rhetorical descent from the exalted to the com-century) of twenty-one shillings. monplace. 2. Penniless. 8. Your lustful men and foolish young women. 3. Brice, as Chater's "second," could duel with 9. Bullet. Septimus only if Chater were dead or wounded.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2783

VALENTINE I don't know. I don't know what it means, except mathematically. HANNAH I meant mathematically. VALENTINE [Now with the lesson hook again.] It's an iterated algorithm.4 HANNAH What's that? VALENTINE Well, it's . . . Jesus . . . it's an algorithm that's been . . . iterated.

How'm I supposed to .. . ? [He makes an effort.] The left-hand pages are graphs of what the numbers are doing on the right-hand pages. But all on different scales. Each graph is a small section of the previous one, blown up. Like you'd blow up a detail of a photograph, and then a detail of the detail, and so on, forever. Or in her case, till she ran out of pages.

HANNAH Is it difficult?

VALENTINE The maths isn't difficult. It's what you did at school. You have some %-and-y equation. Any value for x gives you a value for y. So you put a dot where it's right for both x and y. Then you take the next value for x which gives you another value for y, and when you've done that a few times you join up the dots and that's your graph of whatever the equation is.

HANNAH And is that what she's doing?

VALENTINE No. Not exactly. Not at all. What she's doing is, every time she works out a value for y, she's using that as her next value for x. And so on. Like a feedback. She's feeding the solution back into the equation, and then solving it again. Iteration, you see.

HANNAH And that's surprising, is it?

VALENTINE Well, it is a bit. It's the technique I'm using on my grouse numbers, and it hasn't been around for much longer than, well, call it twenty years.

[Pause.]

HANNAH Why would she be doing it? VALENTINE I have no idea.

[Pause.]

I thought you were doing the hermit.

HANNAH I am. I still am. But Bernard, damn him . . . Thomasina's tutor turns out to have interesting connections. Bernard is going through the library like a bloodhound. The portfolio was in a cupboard.

VALENTINE There's a lot of stuff around. Gus loves going through it. No old masters or anything . . . HANNAH The maths primer she was using belonged to him�the tutor; he

wrote his name in it. VALENTINE [Reading.] 'Septimus Hodge.' HANNAH Why were these things saved, do you think? VALENTINE Why should there be a reason? HANNAH And the diagram, what's it of? VALENTINE How would I know? HANNAH Why are you cross? VALENTINE I'm not cross. [Pause.] When your Thomasina was doing maths it

had been the same maths for a couple of thousand years. Classical. And for a century after Thomasina. Then maths left the real world behind, just like modern art really. Nature was classical, maths was suddenly Picassos. But now nature is having the last laugh. The freaky stuff is turning out to be the mathematics of the natural world.

4. Mathematical procedure for computing results through a series of repeated operations.

.

2784 / TOM STOPPARD

HANNAH This feedback thing?

VALENTINE For example.

HANNAH Well, could Thomasina have�

VALENTINE [Swaps.] No, of course she bloody couldn't!

HANNAH All right, you're not cross. What did you mean you were doing the same thing she was doing? [Pause.] What are you doing?

VALENTINE Actually I'm doing it from the other end. She started with an equation and turned it into a graph. I've got a graph�real data�and I'm trying to find the equation which would give you the graph if you used it the way she's used hers. Iterated it. HANNAH What for?

VALENTINE It's how you look at population changes in biology. Goldfish in a pond, say. This year there are x goldfish. Next year there'll be y goldfish. Some get born, some get eaten by herons, whatever. Nature manipulates the x and turns it into y. Then y goldfish is your starting population for the following year. Just like Thomasina. Your value for y becomes your next value for x. The question is: what is being done to x? What is the manipulation? Whatever it is, it can be written down as mathematics. It's called an algorithm. HANNAH It can't be the same every year. VALENTINE The details change, you can't keep tabs on everything, it's not nature in a box. But it isn't necessary to know the details. When they are all put together, it turns out the population is obeying a mathematical rule. HANNAH The goldfish are? VALENTINE Yes. No. The numbers. It's not about the behaviour of fish. It's about the behaviour of numbers. This thing works for any phenomenon which eats its own numbers�measles epidemics, rainfall averages, cotton prices, it's a natural phenomenon in itself. Spooky. HANNAH Does it work for grouse? VALENTINE I don't know yet. I mean, it does undoubtedly, but it's hard to show. There's more noise with grouse. HANNAH Noise? VALENTINE Distortions. Interference. Real data is messy. There's a thousand acres of moorland that had grouse on it, always did till about 1930. But nobody counted the grouse. They shot them. So you count the grouse they shot. But burning the heather interferes, it improves the food supply. A good year for foxes interferes the other way, they eat the chicks. And then there's the weather. It's all very, very noisy out there. Very hard to spot the tune. Like a piano in the next room, it's playing your song, but unfortunately it's out of whack, some of the strings are missing, and the pianist is tone deaf and drunk�I mean, the noise! Impossible! HANNAH What do you do? VALENTINE You start guessing what the tune might be. You try to pick it out of the noise. You try this, you try that, you start to get something�it's half- baked but you start putting in notes which are missing or not quite the right notes . . . and bit by bit . . . [He starts to dumdi-da to the tune of 'Happy Birthday'.] Dumdi-dum-dum, dear Val-en-tine, dumdi-dum-dum to you� the lost algorithm! HANNAH [Soberly.] Yes, I see. And then what? VALENTINE I publish. HANNAH Of course. Sorry. Jolly good.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2785

VALENTINE That's the theory. Grouse are bastards compared to goldfish. HANNAH Why did you choose them? VALENTINE The game books. My true inheritance. Two hundred years of real

data on a plate. HANNAH Somebody wrote down everything that's shot? VALENTINE Well, that's what a game book is. I'm only using from 1870, when

butts and beaters5 came in. HANNAH You mean the game books go back to Thomasina's time? VALENTINE Oh yes. Further. [And then getting ahead of her thought.J No�

really. I promise you. I promise you. Not a schoolgirl living in a country

house in Derbyshire in eighteen-something! HANNAH Well, what was she doing? VALENTINE She was just playing with the numbers. The truth is, she wasn't

doing anything. HANNAH She must have been doing something. VALENTINE Doodling. Nothing she understood. HANNAH A monkey at a typewriter?6 VALENTINE Yes. Well, a piano.

[HANNAH picks up the algebra booh and reads from it.]

HANNAH ".. . a method whereby all the forms of nature must give up their numerical secrets and draw themselves through number alone.' This feedback, is it a way of making pictures of forms in nature? Just tell me if it is or it isn't.

VALENTINE [Irritated.] To me it is. Pictures of turbulence�growth�change� creation�it's not a way of drawing an elephant, for God's sake! HANNAH I'm sorry.

[She picks up an apple leaf from the table. She is timid about pushing the point.]

So you couldn't make a picture of this leaf by iterating a whatsit? VALENTINE [Off-hand.] Oh yes, you could do that. HANNAH [Furiously.] Well, tell me! Honestly, I could kill you! VALENTINE If you knew the algorithm and fed it back say ten thousand times,

each time there'd be a dot somewhere on the screen. You'd never know where to expect the next dot. But gradually you'd start to see this shape, because every dot will be inside the shape of this leaf. It wouldn't be a leaf, it would be a mathematical object. But yes. The unpredictable and the predetermined unfold together to make everything the way it is. It's how nature creates itself, on every scale, the snowflake and the snowstorm. It makes me so happy. To be at the beginning again, knowing almost nothing. People were talking about the end of physics. Relativity and quantum7 looked as if they were going to clean out the whole problem between them. A theory of everything. But they only explained the very big and the very small. The universe, the elementary particles. The ordinary-sized stuff which is our lives, the things people write poetry about�clouds�daffodils�waterfalls� and what happens in a cup of coffee when the cream goes in�these things

5. "Butts": concealed stands (blinds) for shooting birds. "Beaters": people employed to drive the birds toward the guns. 6. Refers to a once-popular belief that, given sufficient time, a monkey jabbing typewriter keys at random would eventually produce the complete plays of Shakespeare.

7. Twentieth-century advances in physics made by Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and others. Valentine continues with a simplified description of chaos theorv.

.

2786 / TOM STOPPARD

are full of mystery, as mysterious to us as the heavens were to the Greeks. We're better at predicting events at the edge of the galaxy or inside the nucleus of an atom than whether it'll rain on auntie's garden party three Sundays from now. Because the problem turns out to be different. We can't even predict the next drip from a dripping tap when it gets irregular. Each drip sets up the conditions for the next, the smallest variation blows prediction apart, and the weather is unpredictable the same way, will always be unpredictable. When you push the numbers through the computer you can see it on the screen. The future is disorder. A door like this has cracked open five or six times since we got up on our hind legs. It's the best possible time to be alive, when almost everything you thought you knew is wrong.

[Pause. ]

HANNAH The weather is fairly predictable in the Sahara.

VALENTINE The scale is different but the graph goes up and down the same way. Six thousand years in the Sahara looks like six months in Manchester, I bet you.

HANNAH How much? VALENTINE Everything you have to lose. HANNAH [Pause.] No. VALENTINE Quite right. That's why there was corn in Egypt.8

[Hiatus. The piano is heard again.]

HANNAH What is he playing? VALENTINE I don't know. He makes it up. HANNAH Chloe called him 'genius'. VALENTINE It's what my mother calls him�only she means it. Last year some

expert had her digging in the wrong place for months to find something or other�the foundations of Capability Brown's boat-house�and Gus put her right first go.

HANNAH Did he ever speak? VALENTINE Oh yes. Until he was five. You've never asked about him. You get high marks here for good breeding. HANNAH Yes, I know. I've always been given credit for my unconcern.

[BERNARD enters in high excitement and triumph.] BERNARD English Bards and Scotch Reviewers. A pencilled superscription.9 Listen and kiss my cycle-clips!

[He is carrying the hook. He reads from it.]

'O harbinger of Sleep, who missed the press' And hoped his drone might thus escape redress! The wretched Chater, bard of Eros' Couch, For his narcotic2 let my pencil vouch!'

You see, you have to turn over every page. HANNAH Is it his' handwriting? BERNARD Oh, come on. HANNAH Obviously not. BERNARD Christ, what do you want? HANNAH Proof. VALENTINE Quite right. Who are you talking about?

8. Cf. Exodus 42.1. to be included in the first edition of Byron's work. 9. Note. 2. Sleep-inducing drug. 1. O herald . . . who published his poem too late 3. Byron's.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2787

BERNARD Proof? Proof? You'd have to be there, you silly bitch! VALENTINE [Mildly.] I say, you're speaking of my fiancee. HANNAH Especially when I have a present for you. Guess what I found. [Pro

ducing the present for BERNARD.] Lady Croom writing from London to her husband. Her brother, Captain Brice, married a Mrs Chater. In other words, one might assume, a widow.

[BERNARD looks at the letter.] BERNARD I said he was dead. What year? 1810! Oh my God, 1810! Well done,

Hannah! Are you going to tell me it's a different Mrs Chater? HANNAH Oh no. It's her all right. Note her Christian name. BERNARD Charity. Charity . . . 'Deny what cannot be proven for Charity's

sake!' HANNAH Don't kiss me! VALENTINE She won't let anyone kiss her. BERNARD You see! They wrote�they scribbled�they put it on paper. It was

their employment. Their diversion. Paper is what they had. And there'll be

more. There is always more. We can find it! HANNAH Such passion. First Valentine, now you. It's moving. BERNARD The aristocratic friend of the tutor�under the same roof as the

poor sod whose book he savaged�the first thing he does is seduce Chater's wife. All is discovered. There is a duel. Chater dead, Byron fled! P.s. guess what?, the widow married her ladyship's brother! Do you honestly think no one wrote a word? How could they not! It dropped from sight but we will write it again!

HANNAH You can, Bernard. I'm not going to take any credit, I haven't done anything.

[The same thought has clearly occurred to BERNARD. He becomes instantly po-faced.}4

BERNARD Well, that's�very fair�generous� HANNAH Prudent. Chater could have died of anything, anywhere.

[The po-face is forgotten.]

BERNARD But he fought a duel with Byron!

HANNAH You haven't established it was fought. You haven't established it was Byron. For God's sake, Bernard, you haven't established Byron was even here!

BERNARD I'll tell you your problem. No guts. HANNAH Really? BERNARD By which I mean a visceral belief in yourself. Gut instinct. The part

of you which doesn't reason. The certainty for which there is no back- reference. Because time is reversed. Tock, tick goes the universe and then recovers itself, but it was enough, you were in there and you bloody know.

VALENTINE Are you talking about Lord Byron, the poet? BERNARD No, you fucking idiot, we're talking about Lord Byron the chartered5 accountant. VALENTINE [Unojfended.] Oh well, he was here all right, the poet.

[SiZewce.] HANNAH How do you know? VALENTINE He's in the game book. I think he shot a hare. I read through the

whole lot once when I had mumps�some quite interesting people�

4. Pompously serious. 5. Certified.

.

278 8 / TOM STOPPARD

HANNAH Where's the book? VALENTINE It's not one I'm using�too early, of course� HANNAH 1809.

VALENTINE They've always been in the commode. Ask Chloe.

[HANNAH looks to BERNARD. BERNARD has been silent because he has been incapable of speech. He seems to have gone into a trance, in which only his mouth tries to work, HANNAH steps over to him and gives him a demure kiss on the cheek. It works. BERNARD lurches out into the garden and can be heard croaking for 'Chloe . . . Chloe!']

VALENTINE My mother's lent him her bicycle. Lending one's bicycle is a form of safe sex, possibly the safest there is. My mother is in a flutter about Bernard, and he's no fool. He gave her a first edition of Horace Walpole, and now she's lent him her bicycle.

[He gathers up the three items [the primer, the lesson book and the diagramj and puts them into the portfolio.]

Can I keep these for a while? HANNAH Yes, of course. [The piano stops. GUS enters hesitantly from the music room.] VALENTINE [To GUS.] Yes, finished . . . coming now. [To HANNAH.] I'm trying to work out the diagram.

[GUS nods and smiles, at HANNAH too, but she is preoccupied.]

HANNAH What I don't understand is . . . why nobody did this feedback thing before�it's not like relativity, you don't have to be Einstein. VALENTINE YOU couldn't see to look before. The electronic calculator was

what the telescope was for Galileo.6 HANNAH Calculator? VALENTINE There wasn't enough time before. There weren't enough pencilsl

[He flourishes Thomasina's lesson book.] This took her I don't know how many days and she hasn't scratched the paintwork. Now she'd only have to press a button, the same button over and over. Iteration. A few minutes. And what I've done in a couple of months, with only a pencil the calculations would take me the rest of my life to do again�thousands of pages�tens of thousands! And so boring!

HANNAH Do you mean�? [She stops because GUS is plucking VALENTINE S sleeve.]

Do you mean�? VALENTINE All right, Gus, I'm coming. HANNAH Do you mean that was the only problem? Enough time? And paper?

And the boredom? VALENTINE We're going to get out the dressing-up box. HANNAH [Driven to raising her voice.] Val! Is that what you're saying? VALENTINE [Surprised by her. Mildly.] No, I'm saying you'd have to have a

reason for doing it. [GUS runs out of the room, upset.] [Apologetically.] He hates people shouting. HANNAH I'm sorry. [VALENTINE starts to follow GUS.]

But anything else? VALENTINE Well, the other thing is, you'd have to be insane.

6. Galileo Galilei (1 564�1 642), Italian astronomer.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2789

[VALENTINE leaves.

HANNAH stays, thoughtful. After a moment, she turns to the tahle and picks up the Cornhill Magazine. She looks into it briefly, then closes it, and leaves the room, taking the magazine with her.

The empty room.

The light changes to early morning. From a long way off , there is a pistol shot. A moment later there is the cr)> of dozens of crows disturbed from the unseen trees.]

Act Two

scene five

BERNARD is pacing around, reading aloud from a handfid of typed sheets, VALENTINE and CHLOE are his audience, VALENTINE has his tortoise and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds of lettuce to offer the tortoise.

BERNARD 'Did it happen? Could it happen?

Undoubtedly it could. Only three years earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: 'If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.' To which, the editor's note in the Collected Letters reads as follows: 'What Byron's urgent reasons for leaving England were at this time has never been revealed.' The letter was written from the family seat, Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day's ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys�a far grander family, raised by Charles II to the Earldom of Croom . . . '

[HANNAH enters briskly, a piece of paper in her hand.]

HANNAH Bernard . . . ! Val . . . BERNARD Do you mind? [HANNAH puts her piece of paper down in front of VALENTINE.] CHLOE [Angrily.] Hannah!

HANNAH What? CHLO E She's so rude! HANNAH [Taken aback.] What? Am I?

VALENTINE Bernard's reading us his lecture. HANNAH Yes, I know. [Then recollecting herself] Yes�yes�that ivas rude.

I'm sorry, Bernard. VALENTINE [With the piece of paper.] What is this? HANNAH [To BERNARD.] Spot on�the India Office Library. [To VALENTINE.]

Peacock's letter in holograph,7 I got a copy sent�

7. Handwriting.

.

279 0 / TOM STOPPARD

CHLOE Hannah! Shut up! HANNAH [Sitting down.] Yes, sorry. BERNARD It's all right, I'll read it to myself.

CHLOE NO. [HANNAH reaches for the Peacock letter and takes it hack.]

HANNAH Go on, Bernard. Have I missed anything? Sorry.

[BERNARD stares at her halefully hut then continues to read.]

BERNARD 'The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her undistinguished son, the "lame brat", who until the age of ten when he came into the title, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother�' [HANNAH S hand has gone up.]�overruled�'and who four months past his twenty-first birthday was master of nothing but his debts and his genius. Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was with Septimus Hodge, Byron's friend at Harrow and Trinity College�' [HANNAH'S hand goes up again.]�sustained�[He makes an instant correction with a silver pencil.] 'Byron's contemporary at Harrow and Trinity College, and now tutor in residence to the Croom daughter, Thomasina Coverly. Byron's letters tell us where he was on April 8th and on April 12th. He was at Newstead. But on the 10th he was at Sidley Park, as attested by the game book preserved there: "April 10th 1809�forenoon. High cloud, dry, and sun between times, wind southeasterly. Self�Augustus�Lord Byron. Fourteen pigeon, one hare (Lord B.)." But, as we know now, the drama of life and death at Sidley Park was not about pigeons but about sex and literature.'

VALENTINE Unless you were the pigeon. BERNARD I don't have to do this. I'm paying you a compliment. CHLOE Ignore him, Bernard�go on, get to the duel. BERNARD Hannah's not even paying attention. HANNAH Yes I am, it's all going in. I often work with the radio on. BERNARD Oh thanks! HANNAH Is there much more? CHLOE Hannah!

HANNAH No, it's fascinating. I just wondered how much more there was. I need to ask Valentine about this [letter.]�sorry, Bernard, go on, this will keep.

VALENTINE Yes�sorry, Bernard. CHLOE Please, Bernard! BERNARD Where was I? VALENTINE Pigeons. CHLOE Sex. HANNAH Literature. BERNARD Life and death. Right. 'Nothing could be more eloquent of that

than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of "my husband has sent for pistols"; and on April 11 th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater. The covers8 have not survived. What is certain is that all three letters were in Ryron's possession when his books were sold in

8. Envelopelike wrappers of letters. "Cuckolded": whose wife is adulterous.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2791

1816�preserved in the pages of "The Couch of Eros" which seven years

earlier at Sidley Park Byron had borrowed from Septimus Hodge.' HANNAH Borrowed? BERNARD I will be taking questions at the end. Constructive comments will

be welcome. Which is indeed my reason for trying out in the provinces before my London opening9 under the auspices of the Byron Society prior to publication. By the way, Valentine, do you want a credit?�'the game book recently discovered by'?

VALENTINE It was never lost, Bernard.

BERNARD 'As recently pointed out by.' I don't normally like giving credit where it's due, but with scholarly articles as with divorce, there is a certain cachet1 in citing a member of the aristocracy. I'll pop it in ad lib2 for the lecture, and give you a mention in the press release. How's that?

VALENTINE Very kind. HANNAH Press release? What happened to the Journal of English Studies? BERNARD That comes later with the apparatus,3 and in the recognized tone�

very dry, very modest, absolutely gloat-free, and yet unmistakably 'Eat your heart out, you dozy bastards'. But first, it's 'Media Don,4 book early to avoid disappointment'. Where was I?

VALENTINE Game book. CHLOE Eros. HANNAH Borrowed. BERNARD Right. '�borrowed from Septimus Hodge. Is it conceivable that

the letters were already in the book when Byron borrowed it?'

VALENTINE Yes. CHLOE Shut up, Val. VALENTINE Well, it's conceivable. BERNARD 'Is it likely that Hodge would have lent Byron the book without first

removing the three private letters?' VALENTINE Look, sorry�I only meant, Byron could have borrowed the book

without asking. HANNAH That's true. BERNARD Then why wouldn't Hodge get them back? HANNAH I don't know, I wasn't there. BERNARD That's right, you bloody weren't. CHLOE G O on, Bernard. BERNARD 'It is the third document, the challenge itself, that convinces. Cha

ter "as a man and a poet", points the finger at his "slanderer in the press". Neither as a man nor a poet did Ezra Chater cut such a figure as to be habitually slandered or even mentioned in the press. It is surely indisputable that the slander was the review of "The Maid of Turkey" in the Piccadilly Recreation. Did Septimus Hodge have any connection with the London periodicals? No. Did Byron? Yes! He had reviewed Wordsworth two years earlier, he was to review Spencer5 two years later. And do we have any clue as to Byron's opinion of Chater the poet? Yes! Who but Byron could have written

9. New plays in Britain are frequently first per-neous aside. formed outside London in preparation for more-3. In the later version with footnotes. sophisticated audiences in the capital. 4. Professor in the media spotlight. 1. Distinction. 5. William Robert Spencer (1769-1834), poet 2. Short for ad libitum (Latin): as an extempora-and wit.

.

2792 / TOM STOPPARD

the four lines pencilled into Lady Croom's copy of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers'�

HANNAH Almost anybody. BERNARD Darling� HANNAH Don't call me darling. BERNARD Dickhead, then, is it likely that the man Chater calls his friend

Septimus Hodge is the same man who screwed his wife and kicked the shit

out of his last book? HANNAH Put it like that, almost certain. CHLOE [Earnestly.] You've been deeply wounded in the past, haven't you,

Hannah? HANNAH Nothing compared to listening to this. Why is there nothing in

Byron's letters about the Piccadilly reviews? BERNARD Exactly. Because he killed the author. HANNAH But the first one, 'The Maid of Turkey', was the year before. Was

he clairvoyant? CHLO E Letters get lost. BERNARD Thank you! Exactly! There is a platonic6 letter which confirms

everything�lost but ineradicable, like radio voices rippling through the universe for all eternity. "My dear Hodge�here I am in Albania and you're the only person in the whole world who knows why. Poor C! I never wished him any harm�except in the Piccadilly, of course�it was the woman who bade me eat,7 dear Hodge!�what a tragic business, but thank God it ended well for poetry. Yours ever, B.�PS. Burn this.'

VALENTINE HOW did Chater find out the reviewer was Byron? BERNARD [Irritated.] I don't know, I wasn't there, was I? [Pause. To HANNAH.]

You wish to say something? HANNAH Moi?8 CHLOE I know. Byron told Mrs Chater in bed. Next day he dumped her so

she grassed on him, and pleaded date rape. BERNARD [Fastidiously.] Date rape? What do you mean, date rape? HANNAH April the tenth.

[BERNARD cracks. Everything becomes loud and overlapped as BERNARD threatens to walk out and is cajoled into continuing.]

BERNARD Right!�forget it! HANNAH Sorry� BERNARD No�I've had nothing but sarcasm and childish interruptions� VALENTINE What did I do? BERNARD No credit for probably the most sensational literary discovery of the

century� CHLOE I think you're jolly unfair�they're jealous, Bernard� HANNAH I won't say another word� VALENTINE Yes, go on, Bernard�we promise. BERNARD [Finally.] Well, only if you stop feeding tortoises! VALENTINE Well, it's his lunch time. BERNARD And on condition that I am afforded the common courtesy of a

scholar among scholars� HANNAH Absolutely mum till you're finished�

6. Nonexistent ideal. 8. Me? (French). 7. Cf. Genesis 3.12.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2793

BERNARD After which, any comments are to be couched in terms of accepted

academic� HANNAH Dignity�you're right, Bernard. BERNARD �respect. HANNAH Respect. Absolutely. The language of scholars. Count on it.

[Having made a great show of putting his pages away, BERNARD reassembles them and finds his place, glancing suspiciously at the other three for signs of levity. ]

BERNARD Last paragraph. 'Without question, Ezra Chater issued a challenge to somebody. If a duel was fought in the dawn mist of Sidley Park in April 1809, his opponent, on the evidence, was a critic with a gift for ridicule and a taste for seduction. Do we need to look far? Without question, Mrs Chater was a widow by 1810. If we seek the occasion of Ezra Chater's early and unrecorded death, do we need to look far? Without question, Lord Byron, in the very season of his emergence as a literary figure, quit the country in a cloud of panic and mystery, and stayed abroad for two years at a time when Continental travel was unusual and dangerous. If we seek his reason�do we need to look far?'

[No mean performer, he is pleased with the effect of his peroration. There is a significant silence.]

HANNAH Bollocks.9 CHLOE Well, I think it's true. HANNAH You've left out everything which doesn't fit. Byron had been banging

on' for months about leaving England�there's a letter in February� BERNARD But he didn't go, did he? HANNAH And then he didn't sail until the beginning of July! BERNARD Everything moved more slowly then. Time was different. He was

two weeks in Falmouth waiting for wind or something�

HANNAH Bernard, I don't know why I'm bothering�you're arrogant, greedy and reckless. You've gone from a glint in your eye to a sure thing in a hop, skip and a jump. You deserve what you get and I think you're mad. But I can't help myself, you're like some exasperating child pedalling its tricycle towards the edge of a cliff, and I have to do something. So listen to me. If Byron killed Chater in a duel I'm Marie of Romania.2 You'll end up with so much fame you won't leave the house without a paper bag over your head.

VALENTINE Actually, Rernard, as a scientist, your theory is incomplete. BERNARD But I'm not a scientist. VALENTINE [Patiently.] No, as a scientist� BERNARD [Beginning to shout.] I have yet to hear a proper argument. HANNAH Nobody would kill a man and then pan his book. I mean, not in that

order. So he must have borrowed the book, written the review, posted it, seduced Mrs Chater, fought a duel and departed, all in the space of two or three days. Who would do that?

BERNARD Byron. HANNAH It's hopeless. BERNARD You've never understood him, as you've shown in your novelette.3 HANNAH In my what?

9. Nonsense (slang). 3�4: "And love is a thing that can never go wrong; 1. Talking (slang). / And I am Marie of Roumania." 2. Cf. Dorothy Parker's poem "Comment," lines 3. Sentimental short novel.

.

2794 / TOM STOPPARD

BERNARD Oh, sorry�did you think it was a work of historical revisionism?

Byron the spoilt child promoted beyond his gifts by the spirit of the age!

And Caroline the closet intellectual shafted by a male society! VALENTINE I read that somewhere� HANNAH It's his review. BERNARD And bloody well said, too!

[Things are turning a little ugly and BERNARD seems in a mood to push them that way.]

You got them backwards, darling. Caroline was Romantic waffle on wheels

with no talent, and Byron was an eighteenth-century Rationalist4 touched

by genius. And he killed Chater. HANNAH [Pause.] If it's not too late to change my mind, I'd like you to go ahead. BERNARD I intend to. Look to the mote in your own eye!5�you even had the

wrong bloke on the dust-jacket! HANNAH Dust-jacket? VALENTINE What about my computer model? Aren't you going to mention it? BERNARD It's inconclusive. VALENTINE [TO HANNAH.] The Piccadilly reviews aren't a very good fit with

Byron's other reviews, you see. HANNAH [To BERNARD.] What do you mean, the wrong bloke? BERNARD [Ignoring her.] The other reviews aren't a very good fit for each

other, are they? VALENTINE No, but differently. The parameters�6 BERNARD [Jeering.] Parameters! You can't stick Byron's head in your laptop!

Genius isn't like your average grouse. VALENTINE [Casually.] Well, it's all trivial anyway. BERNARD What is? VALENTINE Who wrote what when . . . BERNARD Trivial? VALENTINE Personalities. BERNARD I'm sorry�did you say trivial? VALENTINE It's a technical term.7 BERNARD Not where I come from, it isn't. VALENTINE The questions you're asking don't matter, you see. It's like arguing

who got there first with the calculus. The English say Newton, the Germans

say Leibnitz.8 But it doesn't matter. Personalities. What matters is the cal

culus. Scientific progress. Knowledge.

BERNARD Really? Why? VALENTINE Why what? BERNARD Why does scientific progress matter more than personalities? VALENTINE IS he serious? HANNAH No, he's trivial. Bernard� VALENTINE [Interrupting, to BERNARD. ] D O yourself a favour, you're on a loser. BERNARD Oh, you're going to zap me with penicillin and pesticides. Spare

me that and I'll spare you the bomb and aerosols. But don't confuse progress

with perfectibility. A great poet is always timely. A great philosopher is an

4. Person whose opinions are based on pure rea-7. From mathematics. soning. "Waffle": gossip. 8. Gottfried Wilhelm, Baron von Leibnitz (16465. Cf. Matthew 7.3. 1716), German philosopher and mathematician. 6. Distinguishing or defining characteristics.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2795

urgent need. There's no rush for Isaac Newton. We were quite happy with Aristotle's cosmos. Personally, I preferred it. Fifty-five crystal spheres geared to God's crankshaft is my idea of a satisfying universe. I can't think of anything more trivial than the speed of light. Quarks, quasars�big bangs, black holes�who gives a shit? How did you people9 con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so pleased with yourselves?

CHLO E Are you against penicillin, Bernard?

BERNARD Don't feed the animals.1 [Back to VALENTINE.] I'd push the lot of you over a cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair,2 I think I'd lose the sympathy vote before people had time to think it through.

HANNAH [Loudly.] What the hell do you mean, the dust-jacket?

BERNARD [Ignoring her.] If knowledge isn't self-knowledge it isn't doing much, mate. Is the universe expanding? Is it contracting? Is it standing on one leg and singing 'When Father Painted the Parlour'? Leave me out. I can expand my universe without you. 'She walks in beauty, like the night of cloudless climes and starry skies, and all that's best of dark and bright meet in her aspect and her eyes.'3 There you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. [With offensive politeness.] What is it that you're doing with grouse, Valentine, I'd love to know?

[VALENTINE stands up and it is suddenly apparent that he is shaking and close to tears.]

VALENTINE [To CHLOE.] He's not against penicillin, and he knows I'm not

against poetry. [To BERNARD.] I've given up on the grouse. HANNAH You haven't, Valentine! VALENTINE [Leaving.] I can't do it. HANNAH Why? VALENTINE TOO much noise. There's just too much bloody noisel

[On which, VALENTINE leaves the room. CHLOE, upset and in tears, jumps up and briefly pummels BERNARD ineffectually with her fists.] CHLOE YOU bastard, Bernard! [She follows VALENTINE out. Pause.]

HANNAH Well, I think that's everybody. You can leave now, give Gus a kick on your way out. BERNARD Yes, I'm sorry about that. It's no fun when it's not among pros, is it?

HANNAH No.

BERNARD Oh, well . . . [He begins to put his lecture sheets away in his briefcase, and is thus reminded . . . ] do you want to know about your book jacket? 'Lord Byron and Caroline Lamb at the Royal Academy'? Ink study by Henry Fuseli?4

HANNAH What about it? BERNARD It's not them. HANNAH [She explodes.] Who says!?

[BERNARD brings the Byron Society Journal from his briefcase.] BERNARD This Fuseli expert in the Byron Society Journal. They sent me the latest .. . as a distinguished guest speaker. HANNAH But of course it's them! Everyone knows�

9. Scientists. 3. Lord Byron, "She walks in beauty," lines 1^4. 1. Don't encourage them; i.e., don't keep the dis-4. Swiss-born artist (1741 � 1825) who lived and cussion going. worked in England. 2. Stephen Hawking (b. 1942), physicist.

.

279 6 / TOM STOPPARD

BERNARD Popular tradition only. [He is finding the place in the journal.] Here

we are. 'No earlier than 1820'. He's analysed it. [Offers it to her.] Read at

your leisure. HANNAH [She sounds like BERNARD jeering. ] Analysed it? BERNARD Charming sketch, of course, but Byron was in Italy . . . HANNAH But, Bernard�I know it's them. BERNARD How? HANNAH How? It just is. 'Analysed it', my big toe! BERNARD Language! HANNAH He's wrong. BERNARD Oh, gut instinct, you mean? HANNAH [Flatly.] He's wrong.

[BERNARD snaps shut his briefcase.]

BERNARD Well, it's all trivial, isn't it? Why don't you come? HANNAH Where? BERNARD With me. HANNAH To London? What for? BERNARD What for. HANNAH Oh, your lecture. BERNARD No, no, bugger that. Sex. HANNAH Oh . . . No. Thanks . . . [Then, protesting.] Bernard! BERNARD You should try it. It's very underrated. HANNAH Nothing against it. BERNARD Yes, you have. You should let yourself go a bit. You might have

written a better book. Or at any rate the right book. ELANNAH Sex and literature. Literature and sex. Your conversation, left to

itself, doesn't have many places to go. Like two marbles rolling around a

pudding basin. One of them is always sex. BERNARD Ah well, yes. Men all over. HANNAH No doubt. Einstein�relativity and sex. Chippendale�5 sex and fur

niture. Galileo�'Did the earth move?' What the hell is it with you people?

Chaps sometimes wanted to marry me, and I don't know a worse bargain.

Available sex against not being allowed to fart in bed. What do you mean

the right book? BERNARD It takes a romantic to make a heroine of Caroline Lamb. You were cut out for Byron.

[Pause.]

HANNAH So, cheerio. BERNARD Oh, I'm coming back for the dance, you know. Chloe asked me. HANNAH She meant well, but I don't dance. BERNARD No, no�I'm going with her. HANNAH Oh, I see. I don't, actually. BERNARD I'm her date. Sub rosa.6 Don't tell Mother. HANNAH She doesn't want her mother to know? BERNARD No�I don't want her mother to know. This is my first experience

of the landed aristocracy. I tell you, I'm boggle-eyed. HANNAH Bernard!�you haven't seduced that girl? BERNARD Seduced her? Every time I turned round she was up a library ladder.

5. Thomas Chippendale (1718�1779), famous 6. Secretly (Latin). English cabinetmaker.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2797

In the end I gave in. That reminds me�I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.

[He instantly receives a sharp stinging slap on the face hut manages to remain completely unperturbed by it. He is already producing from his pocket a small book. His voice has hardly hesitated.]

The Peaks Traveller and Gazetteer�James Godolphin 1832�unillustrated, I'm afraid. [He has opened the hook to a marked place.] Sidley Park in Derbyshire, property of the Earl of Croom . . . '

HANNAH [Numbly.] The world is going to hell in a handcart.

BERNARD 'Five hundred acres including forty of lake�the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style�viaduct, grotto,7 etc� a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.' [He holds out the book for her.] A tortoise. They must be a feature. [After a moment HANNAH takes the book.]

HANNAH Thank you. [VALENTINE comes to the door. ]

VALENTINE The station taxi is at the front . . . BERNARD Yes . . . thanks . . . Oh�did Peacock come up trumps?8

HANNAH For some. BERNARD Hermit's name and cv? [He picks up and glances at the Peacock letter. ] 'My dear Thackeray ... " God, I'm good. [He puts the letter down.] Well, wish me luck� [Vaguely to VALENTINE] Sorry about . . . you know . . . [and to HANNAH] and about your . . .

VALENTINE Piss off, Bernard. BERNARD Bight. [BERNARD goes.] HANNAH Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT.9 It's not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard's indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television. VALENTINE I don't care to be rubbished by the dustbin man.1 [He has been looking at the letter. ] The what of the lunatic? [HANNAH reclaims the letter and reads it for him.] HANNAH 'The testament of the lunatic serves as a caution against French fashion . . . for it was Frenchified mathematick that brought him to the melancholy certitude of a world without light or life .. . as a wooden stove that must consume itself until ash and stove are as one, and heat is gone from the earth.' VALENTINE [Amused, surprised.] Huh! HANNAH 'He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as Job2 and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English algebra.'

7. Artificial cave or cavern. "Horrid": Gothic. "Via-audience and sometimes involves acting. duct": bridgelike structure designed to carry a road 1. Garbage collector. over a valley, river, etc. 2. As old as Job, who, according to the Bible, lived 8. Give you what you wanted. to be 140. "Two score years and seven": forty9. Physical training. "Performance art": nontradi-seven. tional art form that involves presentation to an

.

279 8 / TOM STOPPARD

VALENTINE That's it? HANNAH [Nods.] Is there anything in it? VALENTINE In what? We are all doomed? [Casually.] Oh yes, sure�it's called

the second law of thermodynamics. HANNAH Was it known about? VALENTINE By poets and lunatics from time immemorial. HANNAH Seriously.

VALENTINE NO.

HANNAH Is it anything to do with . . . you know, Thomasina's discovery? VALENTINE She didn't discover anything. HANNAH Her lesson book.

VALENTINE NO.

HANNAH A coincidence, then? VALENTINE What is? HANNAH [Reading.] 'He died aged two score years and seven.' That was in

1834. So he was born in 1787. So was the tutor. He says so in his letter to Lord Croom when he recommended himself for the job: 'Date of birth� 1787.' The hermit was born in the same year as Septimus Hodge.

VALENTINE [Pause.] Did Bernard bite you in the leg?3

HANNAH Don't you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect symbol. An idiot in the landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a hermit's hut!

VALENTINE You don't know that. HANNAH Oh, but I do. I do. Somewhere there will be something ... if only I can find it.

SCENE SIX

The room is empty. A reprise: early morning�a distant pistol shot�the sound of the crows. JELLABY enters the dawn-dark room with a lamp. He goes to the windows and

looks out. He sees something. He returns to put the lamp on the table, and then opens one of the french windows and steps outside.

JELLABY [Otitside.] Mr Hodge! [SEPTIMUS comes in, followed by JELLABY, who closes the garden door. SEPTIMUS is wearing a greatcoat. ]

SEPTIMUS Thank you, Jellaby. I was expecting to be locked out. What time is

it? JELLABY Half past five. SEPTIMUS That is what I have. Well!�what a bracing experience!

[He produces two pistols from inside his coat and places them on the table.]

The dawn, you know. Unexpectedly lively. Fishes, birds, frogs . . . rabbits . . . [he produces a dead rabbit from inside his coat.] and very beautiful. If only it did not occur so early in the day. I have brought Lady Thomasina a rabbit. Will you take it?

JELLABY It's dead.

3. Like a mad dog, whose bite transmits madness (rabies).

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2799

SEPTIMUS Yes. Lady Thomasina loves a rabbit pie.

[JELLABY takes the rahhit without enthusiasm. There is a little blood on it.]

JELLABY You were missed, Mr Hodge. SEPTIMUS I decided to sleep last night in the boat-house. Did I see a carriage

leaving the Park? JELLABY Captain Brice's carriage, with Mr and Mrs Chater also. SEPTIMUS Gone?! JELLABY Yes, sir. And Lord Byron's horse was brought round at four o'clock. SEPTIMUS Lord Byron too! JELLABY Yes, sir. The house has been up and hopping. SEPTIMUS But I have his rabbit pistols! What am I to do with his rabbit

pistols? JELLABY YOU were looked for in your room. SEPTIMUS By whom? JELLABY By her ladyship. SEPTIMUS In my room? JELLABY I will tell her ladyship you are returned.

[He starts to leave.]

SEPTIMUS Jellaby! Did Lord Byron leave a book for me? JELLABY A book? SEPTIMUS He had the loan of a book from me. JELLABY His lordship left nothing in his room, sir, not a coin.4 SEPTIMUS Oh. Well, I'm sure he would have left a coin if he'd had one.

Jellaby�here is a half-guinea for you. JELLABY Thank you very much, sir. SEPTIMUS What has occurred? JELLABY The servants are told nothing, sir. SEPTIMUS Come, come, does a half-guinea buy nothing any more? JELLABY [Sighs.] Her ladyship encountered Mrs Chater during the night. SEPTIMUS Where? JELLABY On the threshold of Lord Byron's room. SEPTIMUS Ah. Which one was leaving and which entering? JELLABY Mrs Chater was leaving Lord Byron's room. SEPTIMUS And where was Mr Chater? JELLABY Mr Chater and Captain Brice were drinking cherry brandy. They

had the footman to keep the fire up until three o'clock. There was a loud

altercation upstairs, and�

[LADY CROOM enters the room.]

LADY CROOM Well, Mr Hodge.

SEPTIMUS My lady.

LADY CROOM All this to shoot a hare?

SEPTIMUS A rabbit. [She gives him one of her looks.] No, indeed, a hare,

though very rabbit-like�

[JELLABY is about to leave.] LADY CROOM My infusion.5 JELLABY Yes, my lady.

4. Guests staying in country houses were expected 5. Tea. to leave tips for the servants.

.

280 0 / TOM STOPPARD

[He leaves, LADY CROOM is carrying two letters. We have not seen them before. Each has an envelope which has been opened. She flings them on the table.]

LADY CROOM HOW dare you!

SEPTIMUS I cannot be called to account for what was written in private and read without regard to propriety.

LADY CROOM Addressed to me!

SEPTIMUS Left in my room, in the event of my death� LADY CROOM Pah!�what earthly use is a love letter from beyond the grave?

SEPTIMUS As much, surely, as from this side of it. The second letter, however, was not addressed to your ladyship. LADY CROOM I have a mother's right to open a letter addressed by you to my daughter, whether in the event of your life, your death, or your imbecility. What do you mean by writing to her of rice pudding when she has just suffered the shock of violent death in our midst? SEPTIMUS Whose death? LADY CROOM Yours, you wretch! SEPTIMUS Yes, I see. LADY CROOM I do not know which is the madder of your ravings. One envelope full of rice pudding, the other of the most insolent familiarities regarding several parts of my body, but have no doubt which is the more intolerable to me. SEPTIMUS Which? LADY CROOM Oh, aren't we saucy when our bags are packed! Your friend has gone before you, and 1 have despatched the harlot Chater and her husband� and also my brother for bringing them here. Such is the sentence, you see, for choosing unwisely in your acquaintance. Banishment. Lord Byron is a rake and a hypocrite, and the sooner he sails for the Levant6 the sooner he will find society congenial to his character. SEPTIMUS It has been a night of reckoning. LADY CROOM Indeed, I wish it had passed uneventfully with you and Mr Chater shooting each other with the decorum due to a civilized house. You have no secrets left, Mr Hodge. They spilled out between shrieks and oaths and tears. It is fortunate that a lifetime's devotion to the sporting gun has halved my husband's hearing to the ear he sleeps on. SEPTIMUS I'm afraid I have no knowledge of what has occurred. LADY CROOM Your trollop7 was discovered in Lord Byron's room. SEPTIMUS Ah. Discovered by Mr Chater? LADY CROOM Who else? SEPTIMUS I am very sorry, madam, for having used your kindness to bring my unworthy friend to your notice. He will have to give an account of himself to me, you may be sure. [Before LADY CROOM can respond to this threat, JELLABY enters the room with her 'infusion'. This is quite an elaborate affair: a pewter tray on small feet on which there is a kettle suspended over a spirit lamp. There is a cup and saucer and the silver 'basket' containing the dry leaves for the tea. JELLABY places the tray on the table and is about to offer further assistance with it.]

6. Eastern part of the Mediterranean. "Rake": sex-7. Loose woman (Mrs. Chater). ually promiscuous man.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2801

LADY CROOM I will do it. JELLABY Yes, my lady. [To SEPTIMUS.] Lord Byron left a letter for you with the valet,8 sir.

SEPTIMUS Thank you. [SEPTIMUS takes the letter off the tray, JELLABY prepares to leave, LADY CROOM eyes the letter.]

LADY CROOM When did he do so? JELLABY AS he was leaving, your ladyship. [JELLABY leaves, SEPTIMUS puts the letter into his pocket. ] SEPTIMUS Allow me.

[Since she does not object, he pours a cup of tea for her. She accepts it.]

LADY CROOM I do not know if it is proper for you to receive a letter written in my house from someone not welcome in it.

SEPTIMUS Very improper, I agree. Lord Byron's want of delicacy is a grief to his friends, among whom I no longer count myself. I will not read his letter until I have followed him through the gates.

[She considers that for a moment.]

LADY CROOM That may excuse the reading but not the writing. SEPTIMUS Your ladyship should have lived in the Athens of Pericles!9 The philosophers would have fought the sculptors for your idle hour! LADY CROOM [Protesting.] Oh, really! . . . [Protesting less.] Oh really . . . [SEPTIMUS has taken Byron's letter from his pocket and is now setting fire to a corner of it using the little flame from the spirit lamp.]

Oh . . . really . . . [The paper blazes in SEPTIMUS S hand and he drops it and lets it burn out on the metal tray.]

SEPTIMUS Now there's a thing�a letter from Lord Byron never to be read by

a living soul. I will take my leave, madam, at the time of your desiring it. LADY CROOM TO the Indies?1 SEPTIMUS The Indies! Why? LADY CROOM TO follow the Chater, of course. She did not tell you? SEPTIMUS She did not exchange half-a-dozen words with me . LADY CROOM I expect she did not like to waste the time. The Chater sails

with Captain Brice. SEPTIMUS Ah. As a member of the crew? LADY CROOM NO, as wife to Mr Chater, plant-gatherer to my brother's

expedition. SEPTIMUS I knew he was no poet. I did not know it was botany under the false colours.

LADY CROOM He is no more a botanist. My brother paid fifty pounds to have him published, and he will pay a hundred and fifty to have Mr Chater picking flowers in the Indies for a year while the wife plays mistress of the Captain's quarters. Captain Brice has fixed his passion on Mrs Chater, and to take her on voyage he has not scrupled to deceive the Admiralty, the Linnean Society and Sir Joseph Banks, botanist to His Majesty at Kew.2

SEPTIMUS Her passion is not as fixed as his.

8. Manservant. 2. See p. 2761, n. 7. "Admiralty": headquarters of 9. Athenian military commander, statesman, and the British navy. "Linnean Society": Britain's lead- patron of the arts (ca. 495^129 B.C.E.). ing botanical association. Sir Joseph Banks (1743� 1. West Indies. 1820), naturalist and patron of the sciences.

.

280 2 / TOM STOPPARD

LADY CROOM It is a defect of God's humour that he directs our hearts every

where but to those who have a right to them. SEPTIMUS Indeed, madam. [Pause.] But is Mr Chater deceived? LADY CROOM He insists on it, and finds the proof of his wife's virtue in his

eagerness to defend it. Captain Brice is not deceived but cannot help him

self. He would die for her. SEPTIMUS I think, my lady, he would have Mr Chater die for her. LADY CROOM Indeed, I never knew a woman worth the duel, or the other way

about. Your letter to me goes very ill with your conduct to Mrs Chater, Mr Hodge. I have had experience of being betrayed before the ink is dry, but to be betrayed before the pen is even dipped, and with the village notice- board, what am I to think of such a performance?

SEPTIMUS My lady, I was alone with my thoughts in the gazebo, when Mrs Chater ran me to ground, and I being in such a passion, in an agony of unrelieved desire-�

LADY CROOM Oh . . . !

SEPTIMUS �I thought in my madness that the Chater with her skirts over her head would give me the momentary illusion of the happiness to which I dared not put a face.

[Pause.]

LADY CROOM I do not know when I have received a more unusual compliment, Mr Hodge. I hope I am more than a match for Mrs Chater with her head in a bucket. Does she wear drawers?

SEPTIMUS She does. LADY CROOM Yes, I have heard that drawers are being worn now. It is unnatural for women to be got up like jockeys. I cannot approve.

[She turns with a whirl of skirts and moves to leave.]

I know nothing of Pericles or the Athenian philosophers. I can spare them an hour, in my sitting room when I have bathed. Seven o'clock. Bring a book.

[She goes out. SEPTIMUS picks up the two letters, the ones he wrote, and starts to burn them in the flame of the spirit lamp.]

SCENE SEVEN

VALENTINE and CHLOE are at the table, GUS is in the room. CHLOE is reading from two Saturday newspapers. She is wearing workaday period clothes, a Regency dress,3 no hat. VALENTINE is pecking at a portable computer. He is wearing unkempt Regency clothes, too.

The clothes have evidently come from a large wicker laundry hamper, from which GUS is producing more clothes to try on himself. He finds a Regency coat and starts putting it on.

The objects on the table now include two geometrical solids, pyramid and cone, about twenty inches high, of the type used in a drawing lesson; and a pot of dwarf dahlias (which do not look like modern dahlias).

CHLOE 'Even in Arcadia�Sex, Literature and Death at Sidley Park'. Picture of Byron.

3. Fashionable in the "Regency" period, 1811�20, when George, Prince of Wales, was regent, ruling England after his father, George III, had been judged insane.

.

ARCADIA II.5 / 2803

VALENTINE Not of Bernard? CHLOE 'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don' . . . Valentine, do you think I'm the first person to think of this?

VALENTINE NO.

CHLOE I haven't said yet. The future is all programmed like a computer�

that's a proper theory, isn't it? VALENTINE The deterministic4 universe, yes. CHLOE Right. Because everything including us is just a lot of atoms bouncing

off each other like billiard balls.

VALENTINE Yes. There was someone, forget his name, 1820s, who pointed out that from Newton's laws you could predict everything to come�I mean, you'd need a computer as big as the universe but the formula would exist.

CHLOE But it doesn't work, does it? VALENTINE NO. It turns out the maths is different. CHLOE No, it's all because of sex. VALENTINE Really? CHLOE That's what I think. The universe is deterministic all right, just like

Newton said, I mean it's trying to be, but the only thing going wrong is people fancying people who aren't supposed to be in that part of the plan.

VALENTINE Ah. The attraction that Newton left out. All the way back to the apple in the garden.5 Yes. [Pause.] Yes, I think you're the first person to think of this.

[HANNAH enters, carrying a tabloid pa-per, and a mug of tea.] HANNAH Have you seen this? 'Bonking6 Byron Shot Poet'. CHLOE [Pleased.] Let's see.

[HANNAH gives her the paper, smiles at GUS.] VALENTINE He's done awfully well, hasn't he? How did they all know? HANNAH Don't be ridiculous. [To CHLOE] Your father wants it back. CHLOE All right. HANNAH What a fool. CHLOE Jealous. I think it's brilliant. [She gets up to go. To GUS.] Yes, that's

perfect, but not with trainers. Come on, I'll lend you a pair of flatties,7 they'll look period on you� HANNAH Hello, Gus. You all look so romantic. [GUS following CHLOE out, hesitates, smiles at her.]

CHLOE [Pointedly. ] Are you coming? [She holds the door for GUS and follows him out, leaving a sense of her disapproval behind her.]

HANNAH The important thing is not to give two monkeys for what young people think about you.

[She goes to look at the other newspapers.] VALENTINE [Anxiously.] You don't think she's getting a thing about8 Bernard, do you? HANNAH I wouldn't worry about Chloe, she's old enough to vote on her back.

'Byron Fought Fatal Duel, Says Don'. Or rather�[Sceptically.] 'Says Don!' VALENTINE It may all prove to be true. HANNAH It can't prove to be true, it can only not prove to be false yet.

4. Predetermined (see Valentine and Chloe's dis- of gravity, cussion below). 6. Fucking (slang). 5. Of Eden; cf. Genesis 3. Also the apple whose 7. Flat-soled shoes. "Trainers": sneakers, fall from the tree alerted Isaac Newton to the law 8. A crush on.

.

2804 / TOM STOPPARD

VALENTINE [Pleased.] Just like science. HANNAH If Bernard can stay ahead of getting the rug pulled till he's dead,

he'll be a success. VALENTINE Just like science . . . The ultimate fear is of posterity . . . HANNAH Personally I don't think it'll take that long. VALENTINE . . . and then there's the afterlife. An afterlife would be a mixed

blessing. 'Ah�Bernard Nightingale, I don't believe you know Lord Byron.'

It must be heaven up there. HANNAH You can't believe in an afterlife, Valentine. VALENTINE Oh, you're going to disappoint me at last. HANNAH Am I? Why? VALENTINE Science and religion. HANNAH No, no, been there, done that, boring. VALENTINE Oh, Hannah. Fiancee. Have pity. Can't we have a trial marriage

and I'll call it off in the morning? HANNAH [Amused.] I don't know when I've received a more unusual proposal. VALENTINE [Interested.] Have you had many? HANNAH That would be telling. VALENTINE Well, why not? Your classical reserve is only a mannerism; and

neurotic. HANNAH Do you want the room? VALENTINE You get nothing if you give nothing. HANNAH I ask nothing. VALENTINE No, stay.

[VALENTINE resumes work at his computer, HANNAH establishes herself among her references at 'her' end of the table. She has a stack of pocket- sized volumes, Lady Croom's 'garden books'.]

HANNAH What are you doing? Valentine? VALENTINE The set of points on a complex plane9 made by� HANNAH Is it the grouse? VALENTINE Oh, the grouse. The damned grouse. HANNAH You mustn't give up. VALENTINE Why? Didn't you agree with Bernard? HANNAH Oh, that. It's all trivial�your grouse, my hermit, Bernard's Byron.

Comparing what we're looking for misses the point. It's wanting to know that makes us matter. Otherwise we're going out the way we came in. That's why you can't believe in the afterlife, Valentine. Believe in the after, by all means, but not the life. Believe in God, the soul, the spirit, the infinite, believe in angels if you like, but not in the great celestial get-together for an exchange of views. If the answers are in the back of the book I can wait, but what a drag. Better to struggle on knowing that failure is final. [She looks over VALENTINE'S shoulder at the computer screen. Reacting.] Oh!, but . . . how beautiful!

VALENTINE The Coverly set.1 HANNAH The Coverly set! My goodness, Valentine! VALENTINE Lend me a finger.

[He takes her finger and presses one of the computer keys several times.]

9. The "complex numbers" of mathematics laid 1. Graphic patterns of changes in Sidley Park's out in a two-dimensional plane. grouse population.

.

ARCADIA II.7 / 2805

See? In an ocean of ashes, islands of order. Patterns making themselves out of nothing. I can't show you how deep it goes. Each picture is a detail of the previous

one, blown up. And so on. For ever. Pretty nice, eh? HANNAH Is it important? VALENTINE Interesting. Publishable. HANNAH Well done! VALENTINE Not me. It's Thomasina's. I just pushed her equations through

the computer a few million times further than she managed to do with her pencil.

[From the old portfolio he takes Thomasina 's lesson hook and gives it to HANNAH. The piano starts to he heard.]

You can have it back now. HANNAH What does it mean? VALENTINE Not what you'd like it to. HANNAH Why not? VALENTINE Well, for one thing, she'd be famous. HANNAH No, she wouldn't. She was dead before she had time to be

famous . . . VALENTINE She died? HANNAH . . . burned to death. VALENTINE [Realizing.] Oh . . . the girl who died in the fire! HANNAH The night before her seventeenth birthday. You can see where the

dormer2 doesn't match. That was her bedroom under the roof. There's a memorial in the Park.

VALENTINE [Irritated.] I know�it's my house. [VALENTINE turns his attention hack to his computer, HANNAH goes back to her chair. She looks through the lesson book.]

HANNAH Val, Septimus was her tutor�he and Thomasina would have� VALENTINE You do yours. [Pawse. Two researchers.

LORD AUGUSTUS, fifteen years old, wearing clothes of 1812, bursts in through the non�music room door. He is laughing. He dives under the table. He is chased into the room by THOMASINA, aged sixteen and furious. She spots AUGUSTUS immediately.]

THOMASINA YOU swore! You crossed your heart! [AUGUSTUS scampers out from under the table and THOMASINA chases him around it.]

AUGUSTUS I'll tell mama! I'll tell mama!

THOMASINA YOU beast! [She catches AUGUSTUS as SEPTIMUS enters from the other door, carrying a book, a decanter3 and a glass, and his portfolio.]

SEPTIMUS Hush! What is this? My lord! Order, order! [THOMASINA and AUGUSTUS separate.] I am obliged.4

2. Vertical window that projects from a sloping is served, roof. 4. Thank you. 3. Glass bottle (with a stopper) from which wine

.

280 6 / TOM STOPPARD

[SEPTIMUS goes to his place at the table. He pours himself a glass of wine.]

AUGUSTUS Well, good day to you, Mr Hodge!

[He is smirking about something. THOMASINA dutifully picks up a drawing book and settles down to draw the geometrical solids. SEPTIMUS opens his portfolio.]

SEPTIMUS Will you join us this morning, Lord Augustus? We have our drawing lesson. AUGUSTUS I am a master of it at Eton, Mr Hodge, but we only draw naked

women. SEPTIMUS You may work from memory. THOMASINA Disgusting! SEPTIMUS We will have silence now, if you please.

[From the portfolio SEPTIMUS takes Thomasina's lesson book and tosses it to her; returning homework. She snatches it and opens it.]

THOMASINA No marks?! Did you not like my rabbit equation? SEPTIMUS I saw no resemblance to a rabbit. THOMASINA It eats its own progeny.5 SEPTIMUS [Pause.] I did not see that.

[He extends his hand for the lesson book. She returns it to him.]

THOMASINA I have not room to extend it. [SEPTIMUS and HANNAH turn the pages doubled by time. AUGUSTUS indolently starts to draw the models.]

HANNAH Do you mean the world is saved after all? VALENTINE No, it's still doomed. But if this is how it started, perhaps it's how

the next one will come. HANNAH From good English algebra? SEPTIMUS It will go to infinity or zero, or nonsense. THOMASINA NO, if you set apart the minus roots they square back to sense.

[SEPTIMUS turns the pages. THOMASINA starts drawing the models.

HANNAH closes the lesson book and turns her attention to her stack of 'garden books'.]

VALENTINE Listen�you know your tea's getting cold. HANNAH I like it cold. VALENTINE [Ignoring that.] I'm telling you something. Your tea gets cold by

itself, it doesn't get hot by itself. Do you think that's odd?

HANNAH No.

VALENTINE Well, it is odd. Heat goes to cold. It's a one-way street. Your tea will end up at room temperature. What's happening to your tea is happening to everything everywhere. The sun and the stars. It'll take a while but we're all going to end up at room temperature. When your hermit set up shop nobody understood this. But let's say you're right, in 18-whatever nobody knew more about heat than this scribbling nutter6 living in a hovel in Derbyshire.

5. See p. 2783. VALENTINE: "She's feeding the 6. Madman, solution hack into the equation."

.

ARCADIA II.7 / 2807

HANNAH He was at Cambridge�a scientist. VALENTINE Say he was. I'm not arguing. And the girl was his pupil, she had

a genius for her tutor. HANNAH Or the other way round. VALENTINE Anything you like. But not thisl Whatever he thought he was doing

to save the world with good English algebra it wasn't this! HANNAH Why? Because they didn't have calculators? VALENTINE No. Yes. Because there's an order things can't happen in. You

can't open a door till there's a house. HANNAH 1 thought that's what genius was. VALENTINE Only for lunatics and poets.

[Pause.] HANNAH 'I had a dream which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguished, and the stars

Did wander darkling in the eternal space,

Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth

Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air . . . '7 VALENTINE Your own? HANNAH Byron.

[Pause. Tivo researchers again. ] THOMASINA Septimus, do you think that I will marry Lord Byron? AUGUSTUS Wh o is he? THOMASINA He is the author of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', the most poet

ical and pathetic and bravest hero of any book I ever read before, and the

most modern and the handsomest, for Harold is Lord Byron himself to those

who know him, like myself and Septimus. Well, Septimus?

SEPTIMUS [Absorbed.] No. [Then he puts her lesson book away into the portfolio and picks up his own book to read.]

THOMASINA Why not? SEPTIMUS For one thing, he is not aware of your existence. THOMASINA We exchanged many significant glances when he was at Sidley

Park. I do wonder that he has been home almost a year from his adventures

and has not written to me once. SEPTIMUS It is indeed improbable, my lady. AUGUSTUS Lord Byron?!�he claimed my hare, although my shot was the

earlier! He said I missed by a hare's breadth. His conversation was very

facetious. But I think Lord Byron will not marry you, Thom, for he was only

lame and not blind. SEPTIMUS Peace! Peace until a quarter to twelve. It is intolerable for a tutor

to have his thoughts interrupted by his pupils. AUGUSTUS You are not my tutor, sir. I am visiting your lesson by my free will. SEPTIMUS If you are so determined, my lord.

[THOMASINA laughs at that, the joke is for her. AUGUSTUS, not included, becomes angry.]

AUGUSTUS Your peace is nothing to me, sir. You do not rule over me. THOMASINA [Admonishing.] Augustus! SEPTIMUS I do not rule here, my lord. I inspire by reverence for learning and

7. Byron, "Darkness," lines 1�5.

.

280 8 / TOM STOPPARD

the exaltation of knowledge whereby man may approach God. There will be

a shilling8 for the best cone and pyramid drawn in silence by a quarter to

twelve at the earliest. AUGUSTUS You will not buy my silence for a shilling, sir. What I know to tell

is worth much more than that.

[And throwing down his drawing book and pencil, he leaves the room on his dignity, closing the door sharply. Pause, SEPTIMUS looks enquiringly at THOMASINA.]

THOMASINA I told him you kissed me. But he will not tell. SEPTIMUS When did I kiss you? THOMASINA What! Yesterday! SEPTIMUS Where? THOMASINA On the lips! SEPTIMUS In which country? THOMASINA In the hermitage, Septimus! SEPTIMUS On the lips in the hermitage! That? That was not a shilling kiss! I

would not give sixpence to have it back. I had almost forgot it already. THOMASINA Oh, cruel! Have you forgotten our compact? SEPTIMUS God save me! Our compact? THOMASINA TO teach me to waltz! Sealed with a kiss, and a second kiss due

when I can dance like mama! SEPTIMUS Ah yes. Indeed. We were all waltzing like mice in London. THOMASINA I must waltz, Septimus! I will be despised if I do not waltz! It is

the most fashionable and gayest and boldest invention conceivable�started

in Germany! SEPTIMUS Let them have the waltz, they cannot have the calculus. THOMASINA Mama has brought from town a whole book of waltzes for the

Broadwood,9 to play with Count Zelinsky. SEPTIMUS I need not be told what I cannot but suffer. Count Zelinsky banging

on the Broadwood without relief has me reading in waltz time. THOMASINA Oh, stuff! What is your book? SEPTIMUS A prize essay of the Scientific Academy in Paris. The author

deserves your indulgence, my lady, for you are his prophet. THOMASINA I? What does he write about? The waltz? SEPTIMUS Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation of heat in a

solid body.1 But in doing so he has discovered heresy�a natural contradic

tion of Sir Isaac Newton. THOMASINA Oh!�he contradicts determinism? SEPTIMUS No! . . . Well, perhaps. He shows that the atoms do not go accord

ing to Newton.

[Her interest has switched in the mercurial way characteristic of her� she has crossed to take the hook. ]

THOMASINA Let me see�oh! In French?

SEPTIMUS Yes. Paris is the capital of France.

THOMASINA Show me where to read.

[He takes the book back from her and finds the page for her. Meanwhile,

8. British coin (before decimalization) equal to The French scientist most relevant is Sadi Carnot, twelve old pennies/pence, or one-twentieth of a founder of thermodynamics; but he was only six- pound. teen in 1812. The essay is about the passing of heat 9. Brand of piano. from one body to another, which is why Septimus 1. "Paris was the center of such studies: in 1807 can humourously agree that it is 'about* the Jean-Baptiste Fourier had written about heat flow. 'waltz' " (Jim Hunter, Tom Stoppard, 2000).

.

ARCADIA II.7 / 2809

the piano music from the next room has doubled its notes and its emotion.]

THOMASINA Four-handed now! Mama is in love with the Count. SEPTIMUS He is a Count in Poland. In Derbyshire he is a piano tuner.

[She has taken the book and is already immersed in it. The piano music becomes rapidly more passionate, and then breaks off suddenly in mid- phrase. There is an expressive silence next door which makes SEPTIMUS raise his eyes. It does not register with THOMASINA. The silence allows us to hear the distant regular thump of the steam engine which is to be a topic. A few moments later LADY CROOM enters from the music room, seeming surprised and slightly flustered to find the schoolroom occupied. She collects herself, closing the door behind her. And remains watching, aimless and discreet, as though not wanting to interrupt the lesson. SEPTIMUS has stood, and she nods him back into his chair.

CHLOE, in Regency dress, enters from the door opposite the music room. She takes in VALENTINE and HANNAH but crosses without pausing to the music room door.]

CHLOE Oh!�where's Gus? VALENTINE Dunno. [CHLOE goes into the music room.] LADY CROOM [Annoyed] Oh!�Mr Noakes's engine! [She goes to the garden door and steps outside.

CHLOE re-enters.] CHLOE Damn. LADY CROOM [Calls out.] Mr Noakes! VALENTINE He was there not long ago . . . LADY CROOM Halloo! CHLOE Well, he has to be in the photograph�is he dressed? HANNAH Is Bernard back? CHLOE NO�he's late!

[The piano is heard again, under the noise of the steam engine, LADY CROOM steps back into the room.

CHLOE steps outside the garden door. Shouts.] Gus! LADY CROOM I wonder you can teach against such a disturbance and I am sorry for it, Mr Hodge.

[CHLOE comes back inside.] VALENTINE [Getting up.] Stop ordering everybody about. LADY CROOM It is an unendurable noise. VALENTINE The photographer will wait.

[But, grumbling, he follows CHLOE out of the door she came in by, and closes the door behind them, HANNAH remains absorbed. In the silence, the rhythmic thump can be heard again.]

LADY CROOM The ceaseless dull overbearing monotony of it! It will drive me distracted. I may have to return to town to escape it. SEPTIMUS Your ladyship could remain in the country and let Count Zelinsky return to town where you would not hear him. LADY CROOM I mean Mr Noakes's engine! [Semi-aside to SEPTIMUS.] Would you sulk? I will not have my daughter study sulking.

.

2810 / TOM STOPPARD

THOMASINA [Not listening.] What, mama? [THOMASINA remains lost in her hook, LADY CROOM returns to close the garden door and the noise of the steam engine subsides.

HANNAH closes one of the 'garden books', and opens the next. She is making occasional notes.

The piano ceases.] LADY CROOM [To THOMASINA.] What are we learning today? [Pause.] Well, not manners.

SEPTIMUS We are drawing today. [LADY CROOM negligently examines what THOMASINA had started to draw. ]

LADY CROOM Geometry. I approve of geometry. SEPTIMUS Your ladyship's approval is my constant object. LADY CROOM Well, do not despair of it. [Returning to the window impatiently. ]

Where is 'Culpability' Noakes?2 [She looks out and is annoyed.] Oh!�he has gone for his hat so that he may remove it.

[She returns to the table and touches the bowl of dahlias.

HANNAH sits back in her chair, caught by what she is reading.] For the widow's dowry of dahlias I can almost forgive my brother's marriage. We must be thankful the monkey bit the husband. If it had bit the wife the monkey would be dead and we would not be first in the kingdom to show a dahlia, [HANNAH, still reading the garden book, stands up. ] I sent one potted to Chatsworth.3 The Duchess was most satisfactorily put out4 by it when I called at Devonshire House. Your friend was there lording it as a poet.

[HANNAH leaves through the door, following VALENTINE and CHLOE.

Meanwhile, THOMASINA thumps the book down on the table.]

THOMASINA Well! Just as I said! Newton's machine which would knock our atoms from cradle to grave by the laws of motion is incomplete! Determinism leaves the road at every corner, as I knew all along, and the cause is very likely hidden in this gentleman's observation.

LADY CROOM Of what? THOMASINA The action of bodies in heat. LADY CROOM IS this geometry? THOMASINA This? No, I despise geometry!

[Touching the dahlias she adds, almost to herself] The Chater would overthrow the Newtonian system in a weekend. SEPTIMUS Geometry, Hobbes assures us in the Leviathan,5 is the only science

God has been pleased to bestow on mankind. LADY CROOM And what does he mean by it? SEPTIMUS Mr Hobbes or God? LADY CROOM I am sure I do not know what either means by it.

2. Noakes is called "culpable" (deserving of duchess of Devonshire, whose London residence blame) for ruining the landscape designed by the is Devonshire House. "capable" Brown (so called because of his habit of 4. Jealously annoyed. saying a landscape had "capabilities," or potential). 5. Philosophic treatise, published in 1651, by See p. 2771, n. 6. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). 3. Derbyshire "stately home" of the duke and

.

ARCADIA II.7 / 2811

THOMASINA Oh, pooh to Hobbes! Mountains are not pyramids and trees are not cones. God must love gunnery and architecture if Euclid6 is his only geometry. There is another geometry which I am engaged in discovering by trial and error, am I not, Septimus?

SEPTIMUS Trial and error perfectly describes your enthusiasm, my lady. LADY CROOM How old are you today? THOMASINA Sixteen years and eleven months, mama, and three weeks. LADY CROOM Sixteen years and eleven months. We must have you married

before you are educated beyond eligibility.7 THOMASINA I am going to marry Lord Byron. LADY CROOM Are you? He did not have the manners to mention it. THOMASINA You have spoken to him?! LADY CROOM Certainly not. THOMASINA Where did you see him? LADY CROOM [With some bitterness.] Everywhere. THOMASINA Did you, Septimus? SEPTIMUS At the Boyal Academy where I had the honour to accompany your

mother and Count Zelinsky. THOMASINA What was Lord Byron doing? LADY CROOM Posing. SEPTIMUS [Tactfully.] He was being sketched during his visit .. . by the Pro

fessor of Painting . . . Mr Fuseli.8

LADY CROOM There was more posing at the pictures than in them. His companion likewise reversed the custom of the Academy that the ladies viewing wear more than the ladies viewed�well, enough! Let him be hanged there for a Lamb.9 I have enough with Mr Noakes, who is to a garden what a bull is to a china shop.

[This as NOAKES enters.]

THOMASINA The Emperor of Irregularity! [Sfoe settles down to drawing the diagram which is to be the third item in the surviving portfolio.]

LADY CROOM Mr Noakes! NOAKES Your ladyship� LADY CROOM What have you done to me! NOAKES Everything is satisfactory, I assure you. A little behind, to be sure,

but my dam will be repaired within the month� LADY CROOM [Banging the table.] Hush! [In the silence, the steam engine thumps in the distance.]

Can you hear, Mr Noakes? NOAKES [Pleased and proud.] The Improved Newcomen steam pump1�the only one in England!

LADY CROOM That is what I object to. If everybody had his own I would bear my portion of the agony without complaint. But to have been singled out by the only Improved Newcomen steam pump in England, this is hard, sir, this is not to be borne.

NOAKES Your lady�

6. Greek mathematician (flourished ca. 300 8. See p. 2795, n. 4. B.C.E.), famous for his Elements, a presentation of 9. Cf. the old proverb "One might as well be hung the geometry and other mathematics known in his for a sheep as a lamb." day. 1. Thomas Newcomen had produced his first, very 7. Suitability (as a partner in marriage). inefficient, steam pump in 1712.

.

281 2 / TOM STOPPARD

LADY CROOM And for what? My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew2 have deserted three counties so that they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation, your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencast mine for the mud that was lacking in the dell.3 [Pointing through the window.] What is that cowshed?

NOAKES The hermitage, my lady? LADY CROOM It is a cowshed. NOAKES Madam, it is, I assure you, a very habitable cottage, properly

founded and drained, two rooms and a closet under a slate roof and a stone

chimney� LADY CROOM And who is to live in it? NOAKES Why, the hermit. LADY CROOM Where is he? NOAKES Madam? LADY CROOM YOU surely do not supply a hermitage without a hermit? NOAKES Indeed, madam� LADY CROOM Come, come, Mr Noakes. If I am promised a fountain I expect

it to come with water. What hermits do you have? NOAKES I have no hermits, my lady. LADY CROOM Not one? I am speechless. NOAKES I am sure a hermit can be found. One could advertise. LADY CROOM Advertise? NOAKES In the newspapers. LADY CROOM But surely a hermit who takes a newspaper is not a hermit in

whom one can have complete confidence. NOAKES I do not know what to suggest, my lady. SEPTIMUS Is there room for a piano? NOAKES [Baffled.] A piano? LADY CROOM We are intruding here�this will not do, Mr Hodge. Evidently,

nothing is being learned. [To NOAKES.] Come along, sir! THOMASINA Mr Noakes�bad news from Paris! NOAKES Is it the Emperor Napoleon? THOMASINA NO. [She tears the page off her drawing hlock, with her 'diagram'

on it.] It concerns your heat engine. Improve it as you will, you can never get out of it what you put in. It repays eleven pence in the shilling at most. The penny is for this author's thoughts.

[She gives the diagram to SEPTIMUS who looks at it.] NOAKES [Baffled again.] Thank you, my lady.

[NOAKES goes out into the garden.] LADY CROOM [TO SEPTIMUS.] DO you understand her? SEPTIMUS No . LADY CROOM Then this business is over. I was married at seventeen. Ce soir

ilfaut qu'on parte franqais, je te demanded Thomasina, as a courtesy to the Count. Wear your green velvet, please, 1 will send Briggs to do your hair. Sixteen and eleven months . . . !

[She follows NOAKES out of view.] THOMASINA Lord Byron was with a lady?

2. Two species of game bird. 4. This evening I must ask you to speak French 3. Small valley. (French).

.

ARCADIA II.7 / 2813

SEPTIMUS Yes.

THOMASINA Huh ! [Now SEPTIMUS retrieves his hook from THOMASINA. He turns the pages, and also continues to study Thomasina's diagram. He strokes the tortoise absently as he reads, THOMASINA takes up pencil and paper and starts to draw SEPTIMUS with Plautus.]

SEPTIMUS Why does it mean Mr Noakes's engine pays eleven pence in the

shilling? Where does he say it? THOMASINA Nowhere. I noticed it by the way. I cannot remember now. SEPTIMUS Nor is he interested by determinism� THOMASINA Oh . . . yes. Newton's equations go forwards and backwards, they

do not care which way. But the heat equation cares very much, it goes only one way. That is the reason Mr Noakes's engine cannot give the power to drive Mr Noakes's engine.

SEPTIMUS Everybody knows that. THOMASINA Yes, Septimus, they know it about engines! SEPTIMUS [Pause. He looks at his watch.] A quarter to twelve. For your essay

this week, explicate5 your diagram. THOMASINA I cannot, I do not know the mathematics. SEPTIMUS Without mathematics, then.

[THOMASINA has continued to draw. She tears the top page from her

drawing pad and gives it to SEPTIMUS.] THOMASINA There. I have made a drawing of you and Plautus. SEPTIMUS [Looking at it.] Excellent likeness. Not so good of me.

[THOMASINA laughs, and leaves the room. AUGUSTUS appears at the garden door. His manner cautious and diffident. 6 SEPTIMUS does not notice him for a moment.

SEPTIMUS gathers his papers together.] AUGUSTUS Sir . . . SEPTIMUS My lord . . . ? AUGUSTUS I gave you offence, sir, and I am sorry for it. SEPTIMUS I took none, my lord, but you are kind to mention it. AUGUSTUS I would like to ask you a question, Mr Hodge. [Pause.] You have

an elder brother, I dare say, being a Septimus?7 SEPTIMUS Yes, my lord. He lives in London. He is the editor of a newspaper,

the Piccadilly Recreation. [Pause. ] Was that your question? [AUGUSTUS, evidently embarrassed about something, picks up the drawing of Septimus.]

AUGUSTUS No. Oh ... it is you? ... I would like to keep it. [SEPTIMUS inclines his head in assent.] There are things a fellow cannot ask his friends. Carnal things. My sister has told me . . . my sister believes such things as I cannot, I assure you, bring myself to repeat.

SEPTIMUS You must not repeat them, then. The walk between here and dinner will suffice to put us straight, if we stroll by the garden. It is an easy business. And then I must rely on you to correct your sister's state of ignorance.

[A commotion is heard outside�BERNARDS loud voice in a sort of agony.]

5. Explain. 7. Latin for "seventh." 6. Shy.

.

2814 / TOM STOPPARD

BERNARD [outside the door.] Oh no�no�no�oh, bloody hell!�

AUGUSTUS Thank you, Mr Hodge, I will. [Taking the drawing with him, AUGUSTUS allows himself to he shown out through the garden door, and SEPTIMUS follows him.

BERNARD enters the room, through the door HANNAH left by. VALENTINE comes in with him, leaving the door open and they are followed by HANNAH who is holding the 'garden book'.]

BERNARD Oh, no�no� HANNAH I'm sorry, Bernard. BERNARD Fucked by a dahlia! Do you think? Is it open and shut? Am I fucked?

What does it really amount to? When all's said and done? Am I fucked?

What do you think, Valentine? Tell me the truth. VALENTINE You're fucked. BERNARD Oh God! Does it mean that? HANNAH Yes, Bernard, it does. BERNARD I'm not sure. Show me where it says. I want to see it. No�read it�

no, wait . . .

[BERNARD sits at the table. He prepares to listen as though listening were an oriental art.]

Right.

HANNAH [Reading.] 'October 1st, 1810. Today under the direction of Mr Noakes, a parterre8 was dug on the south lawn and will be a handsome show next year, a consolation for the picturesque catastrophe of the second and third distances. The dahlia having propagated under glass with no ill effect from the sea voyage, is named by Captain Brice 'Charity' for his bride, though the honour properly belongs to the husband who exchanged beds with my dahlia, and an English summer for everlasting night in the Indies.'

[Pause.]

BERNARD Well, it's so round the houses, isn't it? Who's to say what it means?

HANNAH [Patiently.] It means that Ezra Chater of the Sidley Park connection is the same Chater who described a dwarf dahlia in Martinique in 1810 and died there, of a monkey bite.

BERNARD [Wildly.] Ezra wasn't a botanist! He was a poet! HANNAH He was not much of either, but he was both. VALENTINE It's not a disaster. BERNARD Of course it's a disaster! I was on 'The Breakfast Hour'!9 VALENTINE It doesn't mean Byron didn't fight a duel, it only means Chater

wasn't killed in it. BERNARD Oh, pull yourself together!�do you think I'd have been on 'The

Breakfast Hour' if Byron had missedl HANNAH Calm down, Bernard. Valentine's right. BERNARD [Grasping at straws.] Do you think so? You mean the Piccadilly

reviews? Yes, two completely unknown Byron essays�and my discovery of

the lines he added to 'English Bards'. That counts for something. HANNAH [Tactfully.] Very possible�persuasive, indeed. BERNARD Oh, bugger persuasive! I've proved Byron was here and as far as

I'm concerned he wrote those lines as sure as he shot that hare. If only I

8. Level space in a garden occupied by an orna- 9. Popular British TV program, mental arrangement of flower beds.

.

ARCADIA II.7 / 2815

hadn't somehow . . . made it all about killing Chater. Why didn't you stop me?! It's bound to get out, you know�I mean this�this gloss1 on my discovery� I mean how long do you think it'll be before some botanical pedant2 blows the whistle on me?

HANNAH The day after tomorrow. A letter in The Times. BERNARD You wouldn't. HANNAH It's a dirty job but somebody� BERNARD Darling. Sorry. Hannah� HANNAH �and, after all, it is my discovery. BEBNARD Hannah. HANNAH Bernard. BERNARD Hannah. HANNAH Oh, shut up. It'll be very short, very dry, absolutely gloat-free. Would

you rather it were one of your friends? BERNARD [Fervently.] Oh God, no! HANNAH And then in your letter to The Times� BERNARD Mine? HANNAH Well, of course. Dignified congratulations to a colleague, in the lan

guage of scholars, I trust. BERNARD Oh, eat shit, you mean? HANNAH Think of it as a breakthrough in dahlia studies.

[CHLOE hurries in from the garden.] CHLO. Why aren't you coming?!�Bernard! And you're not dressed! How

long have you been back? [BERNARD looks at her and then at VALENTINE and realizes for the first time that VALENTINE is unusually dressed.]

BERNARD Why are you wearing those clothes?

CHLOE D O be quick! [She is already digging into the basket and -producing odd garments for BERNARD.]

Just put anything on. We're all being photographed. Except Hannah.

HANNAH I'll come and watch. [VALENTINE and CHLOE help BERNARD into a decorative coat and fix a lace collar round his neck.]

CHLOE [TO HANNAH.] Mummy says have you got the theodolite? VALENTINE What are you supposed to be, Chlo? Bo-Peep? CHLOE Jane Austen!3 VALENTINE Of course. HANNAH [TO CHLOE.] Oh�it's in the hermitage! Sorry. BERNARD I thought it wasn't till this evening. What photograph? CHLOE The local paper, of course�they always come before we start. We