by Tom Stoppard
BEAUCHAMP: Really, Martello, you exceed the worst possible taste——
SOPHIE: But I am—blind as a bat, I’m afraid.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh. I’m sorry.
SOPHIE: Please don’t mention it.
BEAUCHAMP: I will not, of course.
SOPHIE: Oh, mention it as much as you like. And please don’t worry about saying ‘you see’ all the time. People do, and I don’t mind a bit.
MARTELLO: Would you like to sit down, Miss Farthingale … Please allow me …
SOPHIE: Oh, thank you … thank you so much. That is most comfortable. I hope no one will remain standing for me.
MARTELLO: Will you take tea?
SOPHIE: I should love some tea.
DONNER: We were just waiting for the kettle to boil.
MARTELLO: Indian or Singhalese?
SOPHIE: I don’t think I’d know the difference.
MARTELLO: Nobody does. That’s why we only keep the one.
SOPHIE: And which one is that?
MARTELLO: I haven’t the slightest idea.
DONNER: It’s best Assam.
(Kettle whistles.)
SOPHIE: Is that the gramophone again?
DONNER: Excuse me.
(Kettle subsides.)
BEAUCHAMP: I have been making gramophone records of various games and pastimes.
SOPHIE: Is it for the blind?
BEAUCHAMP: Heavens, no. At least … the idea is you listen to the sounds with your eyes closed.
SOPHIE: It’s very effective. I could have kept the score just by listening.
BEAUCHAMP: Yes!—you see—sorry!—I’m trying to liberate the visual image from the limitations of visual art. The idea is to create images—pictures—which are purely mental … I think I’m the first artist to work in this field.
SOPHIE: I should think you are, Mr. Beauchamp.
BEAUCHAMP: The one you heard was my latest—Lloyd George versus Clara Bow.
SOPHIE: Goodness! However did you persuade them?
BEAUCHAMP: No, you see——
SOPHIE: Oh—of course! Of course I see. What a very good joke, Mr. Beauchamp.
BEAUCHAMP: Yes … Thank you. May I play you another?—it’s very quiet.
SOPHIE: Please do.
(DONNER with tea tray.)
DONNER: There we are. How would you like your tea, Miss Farthingale?
MARTELLO: Perhaps you will do us the honour, Miss Farthingale?
DONNER: Banjo!
SOPHIE: Yes … Yes … I think so.
(Small sounds of her hands mapping the tea tray.)
Now.
(Tea in first. One cup. Two. Three. Four.)
You will all take milk?
(‘Yes please’ etc. One. Two. Three. Four.)
Mr. Donner, how many lumps?
DONNER: Two please, Miss Farthingale …
(One. Two.)
DONNER: Thank you.
SOPHIE: Mr. Beauchamp?
BEAUCHAMP: None for me, thank you.
SOPHIE: Mr. Martello?
MARTELLO: And just one for me.
(One.)
SOPHIE: There we are.
(The men’s tension breaks. They applaud and laugh.)
DONNER: I say, Miss Farthingale, you’re an absolutely ripping girl.
SOPHIE: How very kind of you, Mr. Donner. Please do not think me ‘fast’ but I was no less struck by you and your friends. I thought you all very pleasant-looking and good humoured, and there was nothing I wished more than that I should find myself having tea with you all one day.
MARTELLO: I have not in fact explained to my friends …
SOPHIE: Oh, forgive me. I must have puzzled you. My late uncle, who was rather progressive in such things, took me to your opening day at the Russell Gallery last year.
(Pause.)
BEAUCHAMP: Forgive my asking … but do you often visit the art galleries?
SOPHIE: Not now, of course, Mr. Beauchamp, but I had not yet lost all of my sight in those days. Oh dear, I’m telling everything back to front.
MARTELLO: Miss Farthingale lives at the Blind School in Prince of Wales Drive. She happened to be sitting on a bench in the public garden next to the School when I walked by. She accosted me in a most shameless manner.
SOPHIE: Absolutely untrue!
MARTELLO: I have been twice to tea at the School since then. She always pours.
SOPHIE: I was in the park with my teacher, but she had left me for a few moments while she went down to the water to feed the ducks. When she looked back she saw a gentleman with a fixed grin and a raised hat staring at me in a most perplexed and embarrassed manner. By the time she returned to rescue me, it was too late.
DONNER: Too late?
SOPHIE: I heard this voice say, ‘Forgive me, but haven’t we met before? My name is Martello.’ Of course he’d never seen me before in his life.
MARTELLO: And she replied, ‘Not the artist, by any chance?’
SOPHIE: ‘I believe so,’ he said, flattered I think.
MARTELLO: ‘Frontiers in Art?’ she asked. I was astonished. And invited to tea; with great firmness and without preamble. Now there you were shameless, admit it.
SOPHIE: Well, I lead such an uneventful life … I was naturally excited.
MARTELLO: I thought she was going to faint with excitement. The chaperone disapproved, even protested, but Miss Farthingale was possessed!
SOPHIE: Please, Mr. Martello …
BEAUCHAMP: Well, of course, the chaperone could see what you look like.
DONNER: You must have been very impressed by the exhibition, Miss Farthingale.
MARTELLO: Not by the exhibition at all! (A bit of a faux pas, perhaps.) I mean … it was Miss Farthingale’s opinion that the pictures were all frivolous and not very difficult to do.
BEAUCHAMP: She was absolutely right.
MARTELLO: As I was quick to explain to her. Why should art be something difficult to do? Why shouldn’t it be something very easy?
SOPHIE: But surely it is a fact about art—regardless of the artist’s subject or his intentions—that it celebrates a world which includes itself—I mean, part of what there is to celebrate is the capability of the artist.
MARTELLO: How very confusing.
SOPHIE: I think every artist willy-nilly is celebrating the impulse to paint in general, the imagination to paint something in particular, and the ability to make the painting in question.
MARTELLO: Goodness!
SOPHIE: The more difficult it is to make the painting, the more there is to wonder at. It is not the only thing, but it is one of the things. And since I do not hope to impress you by tying up my own shoelace, why should you hope to have impressed me by painting a row of black stripes on a white background? Was that one of yours?
MARTELLO: I don’t recall it—you asked me about it when we met.
SOPHIE: So I did. Perhaps one of your friends remembers it—black railings on a field of snow?
MARTELLO: Let me answer for them nonetheless. You seem to forget, or perhaps you do not know, that what may seem very difficult to you may be very easy for the artist. He may paint a perfect apple as easily as you tie your shoelace, and as quickly. Furthermore, anybody could do it—yes, I insist: painting nature, one way or another, is a technique and can be learned, like playing the piano. But how can you teach someone to think in a certain way?—to paint an utterly simple shape in order to ambush the mind with something quite unexpected about that shape by hanging it in a frame and forcing you to see it, as it were, for the first time—
DONNER: Banjo …
MARTELLO: And what, after all, is the point of excellence in naturalistic art—? How does one account for, and justify, the very notion of emulating nature? The greater the success, the more false the result. It is only when the imagination is dragged away from what the eye sees that a picture becomes interesting.
SOPHIE: I think it is chiefly interesting to the artist, and to those who respond to a sense of the history of art rather
than to pictures. I don’t think I shall much miss what is to come, from what I know, and I am glad that I saw much of the pre-Raphaelites before my sight went completely. Perhaps you know Ruskin’s essay, the one on——
BEAUCHAMP: I say, Miss Farthingale—are you wearing blue stockings?
SOPHIE: I don’t know, Mr. Beauchamp. Am I? Whatever happened to the game you were going to play me?
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, it’s been on. I’ll turn the record over for the continuation.
DONNER: You know … I think I do remember you.
BEAUCHAMP: Now, now, Mouse.
DONNER: A girl—with spectacles, and a long pig-tail I think.
SOPHIE: Yes!
DONNER: I believe we exchanged a look!
SOPHIE: Perhaps we did. Tell me, Mr. Donner—which one were you?
DONNER: Which one?
SOPHIE: Yes. I have a picture in my mind of the three of you but I never found out, and was too shy at the time to ask, which was Donner, and which Beauchamp, and which Martello. I asked my uncle afterwards, but although he knew which of you was which, I was unable to describe you with enough individuality …
DONNER: Shame, Miss Farthingale!
SOPHIE: Well, you were all fair, and well built. None of you had a beard or jug ears—and if you remember you were all wearing your army uniforms, all identical …
MARTELLO: Yes, it was a sort of joke. We had not been long back from France. beauchamp: Late going, late returning.
SOPHIE: A few months later my blindness descended on me, and the result is that I do not know which of your voices goes with the face that has stayed in my mind—that is, all three faces, of course.
(Pause.)
BEAUCHAMP: Is it that you remember one of our faces particularly, Miss Farthingale?
SOPHIE: Well, yes, Mr. Beauchamp.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh.
SOPHIE: I mean, I thought you were all engaging.
BEAUCHAMP: But one of us more engaging than the others.
MARTELLO: Ah. Well, we shall never know!
DONNER: Oh!, but it was my eye you caught.
SOPHIE: As a matter of fact, there is a way of … satisfying my curiosity. There was a photographer there, for one of the illustrated magazines …
DONNER: The Tatler.
SOPHIE: No, there was no photograph in the Tatler, I happened to see … but this man posed each of you against a picture you had painted.
MARTELLO: I see. And you want to know which of us was the one who posed against the painting you have described.
SOPHIE: Well, yes. It would satisfy my curiosity. It was a background of snow, I think.
DONNER: Yes, there was a snow scene. Only one.
SOPHIE: A field of snow, occupying the whole canvas——
MARTELLO: Not the whole canvas——
SOPHIE: No—there was a railing——
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, that’s it—a border fence in the snow!
SOPHIE: Yes! (Pause.) Well, which of you …?
DONNER: It was Beauchamp you had in mind.
SOPHIE: Mr. Beauchamp!
BEAUCHAMP: Yes, Miss Farthingale … It seems it was me.
(Pause.)
SOPHIE (brightly): Well, is anybody ready for some more tea?
MARTELLO: I will replenish the pot.
(Pause.)
(GRAMOPHONE: ‘Check.’)
SOPHIE: Oh!—is it chess, Mr. Beauchamp?
BEAUCHAMP: It is. Lenin versus Jack Dempsey.
SOPHIE: Oh, that’s very good. But do you no longer paint?
BEAUCHAMP: No. Nobody will be painting in fifty years. Except Donner, of course.
SOPHIE: Well, I hope you will paint beauty, Mr. Dornner, and the subtlest beauty is in nature.
BEAUCHAMP: Oh, please don’t think that I am against beauty, or nature, Miss Farthingale. Indeed, I especially enjoy the garden where you met Martello, a most delightful prospect across the river, isn’t it?—I mean——
SOPHIE: You are quite right, Mr. Beauchamp. It is a delightful prospect, for me too. It is only my sight I have lost. I enjoy the view just as much as anyone who sits there with eyes closed in the sun; more, I think, because I can improve on reality, like a painter, but without fear of contradiction. Indeed, if I hear hoofbeats, I can put a unicorn in the garden and no one can open my eyes against it and say it isn’t true.
MARTELLO (returning): To the Incas, who had never seen a horse, unicorns had the same reality as horses, which is a very high degree of reality.—Listen! Miss Farthingale, is that a hansom or a landau?
(Carriage in the street below.)
SOPHIE: Eight hooves, Mr. Martello, but it’s not a landau for all that. Those are shire horses, probably a brewer’s dray.
MARTELLO (at window): A brewer’s dray as I live!—More games!
BEAUCHAMP: I say—that has suddenly brought to mind—do you remember——?
MARTELLO: Yes—I was just thinking the same thing——
BEAUCHAMP: Beauchamp’s Tenth Horse!
Flasnback
(Clip-clop … BEAUCHAMP’s Horse. Flies buzzing in the heat. Feet walking.)
BEAUCHAMP (declaiming): Art consists of constant surprise. Art should never conform. Art should break its promises. Art is nothing to do with expertise: doing something well is no excuse for doing the expected. My God, this is fun. All my life I have wanted to ride through the French countryside in summer, with my two best friends, and make indefensible statements about art. I am most obliged to you, Martello. I am delighted to know you, Donner. How do you like my horse?
MARTELLO: Beautiful, your Majesty.
DONNER: Very nice. Why don’t you give it a rest?
BEAUCHAMP: Mouse is a bit mousey today. You should have invested in a horse. It makes an enormous difference. In fact I have never felt so carefree. When we are old and doddery and famous and life is given over to retrospection and retrospectives, this is as far back as I want memory to go——
(Smack!)
I’ve never been so hot … and the flies …
(Smack!)
Are we nearly there?
MARTELLO: Nearly where?
DONNER: How do I know?
BEAUCHAMP: Secondly!—how can the artist justify himself in the community? What is his role? What is his reason?—Donner, why are you trying to be an artist?
DONNER: I heard there were opportunities to meet naked women.
BEAUCHAMP: Donner is feeling cynical.
DONNER: I had never seen a naked woman, and the way things were going I was never likely to. My family owned land.
BEAUCHAMP: Interesting line of thought; don’t pretend to follow it myself. I repeat—how can the artist justify himself? The answer is that he cannot, and should stop boring people with his egocentric need to try. The artist is a lucky dog. That is all there is to say about him. In any community of a thousand souls there will be nine hundred doing the work, ninety doing well, nine doing good, and one lucky dog painting or writing about the other nine hundred and ninety-nine. Whoa, boy, whoa …
DONNER: Oh, shut up.
BEAUCHAMP: I don’t know what to call him.
MARTELLO: I’ve had the most marvellous idea.
DONNER: So have I.
MARTELLO: A portrait … an idealization of female beauty, based on the Song of Solomon.
BEAUCHAMP: I don’t get it.
DONNER: My idea is that next year we should go on a motoring tour, and if we can’t afford a car we should stay at home.
MARTELLO: You were dead keen about a walking tour, Mouse.
DONNER: Well, I like some parts more than others. The part I liked best was the first part when we planned our route, sitting by the fire at home with a cup of cocoa and a map of France. If you remember, we decided to make the journey in easy stages, between one charming village and the next … setting off each morning after a simple breakfast on a terrace overhung with vines, striking out cross-country along picturesque footpaths, occasionally fording a laughing brook, resting at midday in the shade, a
picnic, perhaps a nap, and then another little walk to a convenient inn … a hot bath, a good dinner, a pipe in the tap-room with the honest locals, and so to bed with a candle and a good book, to sleep dreamlessly——
(Smack!)
take that you little devil!
BEAUCHAMP (hooves skittering): Whoa—whoa—Try not to startle my mount, Donner.
DONNER: Oh, shut up, Biscuit. I’m bitten all day by French flies and at night the mosquitoes take over. I nearly drowned trying to cross a laughing torrent, the honest locals have stolen most of our money so that we have had to sleep rough for three days, I’ve had nothing to eat today except for half a coconut, and as for the picturesque footpaths—oh God, here they bloody come again!
(Improbably, a convoy of rattletrap lorries roars past. Between their approach and their decline, nothing else is audible. At the end of it, BEAUCHAMP’s horse is skittering about.)
BEAUCHAMP: Steady, steady … good boy …
MARTELLO: Tell you what—give Mouse a go on the horse.
BEAUCHAMP: No. This horse only believes in me. What an animal!—I’ve had nine horses at various times counting my first pony, but none has been remotely like this one … Absolutely no trouble, and he gives me a magical feeling of confidence. My spirits lift, the road slips by … What shall I call him?
DONNER: Where are we, Banjo? Do you know?
MARTELLO: More or less.
DONNER: Well?
MARTELLO: There’s a discrepancy between the map and the last signpost.
DONNER: There hasn’t been a signpost since this morning. Perhaps they’re uprooting them.
(More lorries.)
BEAUCHAMP: Steady, steady …
DONNER: For God’s sake, Beauchamp, will you get rid of that coconut!
BEAUCHAMP: Coconut!—not a bad name. And yet it lacks a certain something. Would Napoleon have called his horse Coconut? … Napoleon … not a bad name.
DONNER: Apart from anything else, it’s becoming increasingly clear that we should have stayed at home because of the international situation.
MARTELLO: What international situation?
DONNER: The war.
MARTELLO: What war? You don’t believe any of that rot. Why should there be a war? Those Middle Europeans are always assassinating each other.
DONNER: That’s the fourth lot of troop lorries we’ve met today, and we haven’t seen a newspaper all week.