by Tom Stoppard
"The Maid of Turkey" in the Piccadilly Recreation, Did Septimus Hodge have any connection with the London periodicals? No. Did Byron?
56
Yes! He had reviewed Wordsworth two years earlier, he was to review Spencer 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 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?
Chloe: Letters get lost.
Bernard: Thank you! Exactly! There is a platonic 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, 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?
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.
57
(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 -
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?
58
(No mean performer, he is pleased with the effect of his peroration. There is a
significant silence.)
Hannah: Bollocks.
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. You'll end up with so much fame you won't leave the house
without a paper bag over your head.
Valentine: Actually, Bernard, 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.
Hannah: In my what?
Bernard: Oh, sorry - did you think it was a work of historical
59
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 Rationalist 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! - 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 -
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.
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
60
English say Newton, the Germans say Leibnitz. But it doesn't matter. Personalities.
What matters is the calculus. 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) Do 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 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 people con us out of all that status? All that money? And why are you so
pleased with yourselves?
Chloe: Are you against penicillin, Bernard?
Bernard: Don't feed the animals. (Back to Valentine) I'd push the lot of you over a
cliff myself. Except the one in the wheelchair, 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.' There
you are, he wrote it after coming home from a party. (With offensive
politeness.) What is it that you're doing with
61
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 noise!
(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 and is followed at a run by Gus.
Pause.)
Hannah: Well, I think that's everybody. You can leave now, give Lightning 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?
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 -
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. . .
62
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.
Hannah: 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 - sex and furniture.
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.
63
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. 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. 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 but 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 book 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, 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?
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.
64
(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: Right.
(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. 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. {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 Job 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.'
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.
65
Hannah: A coincidence, then?
Valentine: What is?