by Tom Stoppard
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
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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.
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.) 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 book and gives it to
Hannah. The piano starts to be 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 dormer
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 back 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-
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Valentine: You do yours.
(Pause. 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
decanter and a glass, and his portfolio.)
Septimus: Hush! What is this? My lord! Order, order! (Thomasina and Augustus separate.) I am obliged.
(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.
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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
nutter living in a hovel in.Derbyshire.
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 this! Whatever he thought he was doing to
save the world with good English
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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: I 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 . ..'
Valentine: Your own?
Hannah: Byron.
(Pause. Two researchers again.)
Thomasina: Septimus, do you think that I will marry Lord Byron?
Augustus: Who is he?
Thomasina: He is the author of 'Childe Harold's Pilgrimage', the most poetical 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 y
ou, Thorn, for he was only lame and not blind.
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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 the
exaltation of knowledge whereby man may approach God. There will be a shilling
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 county?
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!
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Septimus: Let them have the waltz, they cannot have the calculus.
Thomasina: Mama has brought from town a whole book of waltzes for the Broad
wood, 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. But in doing so he has discovered heresy - a natural contradiction of Sir Isaac
Newton.
Thomasina: Oh! - he contradicts determinism?
Septimus: No!... Well, perhaps. He shows that the atoms do not go according to
Newton.
(Her interest has switched in the mercurial way characteristic of her-she has
crossed to take the book.)
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, 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,
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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
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Septimus.) Would you sulk? I will not have my daughter study sulking.
Thomasina: (Not listening) What, mama?
(Thomasina remains lost in her book, 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? (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. The Duchess was most satisfactorily put out 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. Meanwhi
le,
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
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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, 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.
Thomasina: Oh, pooh to Hobbes! Mountains are not pyramids and trees are not
cones. God must love gunnery and architecture if Euclid 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.
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 Royal 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. . .
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by the Professor of Painting ... Mr Fuseli.
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. 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!