by T. S. Eliot
That some women have. Without her, it was vacancy.
When I thought she had left me, I began to dissolve,
To cease to exist. That was what she had done to me!
I cannot live with her — that is now intolerable;
I cannot live without her, for she has made me incapable
Of having any existence of my own.
That is what she has done to me in five years together!
She has made the world a place I cannot live in
Except on her terms. I must be alone,
But not in the same world. So I want you to put me
Into your sanatorium. I could be alone there?
[House-telephone rings]
REILLY [into telephone]. Yes.
[To EDWARD] Yes, you could be alone there.
EDWARD. I wonder
If you have understood a word of what I have been saying.
REILLY. You must have patience with me, Mr. Chamberlayne:
I learn a good deal by merely observing you,
And letting you talk as long as you please,
And taking note of what you do not say.
EDWARD. I once experienced the extreme of physical pain,
And now I know there is suffering worse than that.
It is surprising, if one had time to be surprised:
I am not afraid of the death of the body,
But this death is terrifying. The death of the spirit —
Can you understand what I suffer?
REILLY. I understand what you mean.
EDWARD. I can no longer act for myself.
Coming to see you — that’s the last decision
I was capable of making. I am in your hands.
I cannot take any further responsibility.
REILLY. Many patients come in that belief.
EDWARD. And now will you send me to the sanatorium?
REILLY. You have nothing else to tell me?
EDWARD. What else can I tell you?
You didn’t want to hear about my early history.
REILLY. No, I did not want to hear about your early history.
EDWARD. And so will you send me to the sanatorium?
I can’t go home again. And at my club
They won’t let you keep a room for more than seven days;
I haven’t the courage to go to a hotel,
And besides, I need more shirts — you can get my wife
To have my things sent on: whatever I shall need.
But of course you mustn’t tell her where I am.
Is it far to go?
REILLY. You might say, a long journey.
But before I treat a patient like yourself
I need to know a great deal more about him,
Than the patient himself can always tell me.
Indeed, it is often the case that my patients
Are only pieces of a total situation
Which I have to explore. The single patient
Who is ill by himself, is rather the exception.
I have recently had another patient
Whose situation is much the same as your own.
[Presses the bell on his desk three times]
You must accept a rather unusual procedure:
I propose to introduce you to the other patient.
EDWARD. What do you mean? Who is this other patient?
I consider this very unprofessional conduct —
I will not discuss my case before another patient.
REILLY. On the contrary. That is the only way
In which it can be discussed. You have told me nothing.
You have had the opportunity, and you have said enough
To convince me that you have been making up your case
So to speak, as you went along. A barrister
Ought to know his brief before he enters the court.
EDWARD. I am at least free to leave. And I propose to do so.
My mind is made up. I shall go to a hotel.
REILLY. It is just because you are not free, Mr. Chamberlayne,
That you have come to me. It is for me to give you that —
Your freedom. That is my affair.
[LAVINIA is shown in by the NURSE-SECRETARY]
But here is the other patient.
EDWARD. Lavinia!
LAVINIA. Well, Sir Henry!
I said I would come to talk about my husband:
I didn’t say I was prepared to meet him.
EDWARD. And I did not expect to meet you, Lavinia.
I call this a very dishonourable trick.
REILLY. Honesty before honour, Mr. Chamberlayne.
Sit down, please, both of you. Mrs. Chamberlayne,
Your husband wishes to enter a sanatorium,
And that is a question which naturally concerns you.
EDWARD. I am not going to any sanatorium.
I am going to a hotel. And I shall ask you, Lavinia,
To be so good as to send me on some clothes.
LAVINIA. Oh, to what hotel?
EDWARD. I don’t know — I mean to say,
That doesn’t concern you.
LAVINIA. In that case, Edward,
I don’t think your clothes concern me either.
[To REILLY] I presume you will send him to the same sanatorium
To which you sent me? Well, he needs it more than I did.
REILLY. I am glad that you have come to see it in that light —
At least, for the moment. But, Mrs. Chamberlayne,
You have never visited my sanatorium.
LAVINIA. What do you mean? I asked to be sent
And you took me there. If that was not a sanatorium
What was it?
REILLY. A kind of hotel. A retreat
For people who imagine that they need a respite
From everyday life. They return refreshed;
And if they believe it to be a sanatorium
That is good reason for not sending them to one.
The people who need my sort of sanatorium
Are not easily deceived.
LAVINIA. Are you a devil
Or merely a lunatic practical joker?
EDWARD. I incline to the second explanation
Without the qualification ‘lunatic’.
Why should you go to a sanatorium?
I have never known anyone in my life
With fewer mental complications than you;
You’re stronger than a … battleship. That’s what drove me mad.
I am the one who needs a sanatorium —
But I’m not going there.
REILLY. You are right, Mr. Chamberlayne.
You are no case for my sanatorium:
You are much too ill.
EDWARD. Much too ill?
Then I’ll go and be ill in a suburban boarding-house.
LAVINIA. That would never suit you, Edward. Now I know of a hotel
In the New Forest …
EDWARD. How like you, Lavinia.
You always know of something better.
LAVINIA. It’s only that I have a more practical mind
Than you have, Edward. You do know that.
EDWARD. Only because you’ve told me so often.
I’d like to see you filling up an income-tax form.
LAVINIA. Don’t be silly, Edward. When I say practical,
I mean practical in the things that really matter.
REILLY. May I interrupt this interesting discussion?
I say you are both too ill. There are several symptoms
Which must occur together, and to a marked degree,
To qualify a patient for my sanatorium:
And one of them is an honest mind.
That is one of the causes of their suffering.
LAVINIA. No one can say my husband has an honest mind.
EDWARD. And I could not honestly say that of you, Lavinia.
REILLY. I congratulate you both on your perspicacity.
Your sy
mpathetic understanding of each other
Will prepare you to appreciate what I have to say to you.
I do not trouble myself with the common cheat,
Or with the insuperably, innocently dull:
My patients such as you are the self-deceivers
Taking infinite pains, exhausting their energy,
Yet never quite successful. You have both of you pretended
To be consulting me; both, tried to impose upon me
Your own diagnosis, and prescribe your own cure.
But when you put yourselves into hands like mine
You surrender a great deal more than you meant to.
This is the consequence of trying to lie to me.
LAVINIA. I did not come here to be insulted.
REILLY. You have come where the word ‘insult’ has no meaning;
And you must put up with that. All that you have told me —
Both of you — was true enough: you described your feelings —
Or some of them — omitting the important facts.
Let me take your husband first.
[To EDWARD] You were lying to me
By concealing your relations with Miss Coplestone.
EDWARD. This is monstrous! My wife knew nothing about it.
LAVINIA. Really, Edward! Even if I’d been blind
There were plenty of people to let me know about it.
I wonder if there was anyone who didn’t know.
REILLY. There was one, in fact. But you, Mrs. Chamberlayne,
Tried to make me believe that it was this discovery
Precipitated what you called your nervous breakdown.
LAVINIA. But it’s true! I was completely prostrated;
Even if I have made a partial recovery.
REILLY. Certainly, you were completely prostrated,
And certainly, you have somewhat recovered.
But you failed to mention that the cause of your distress
Was the defection of your lover — who suddenly
For the first time in his life, fell in love with someone,
And with someone of whom you had reason to be jealous.
EDWARD. Really, Lavinia! This is very interesting.
You seem to have been much more successful at concealment
Than I was. Now I wonder who it could have been.
LAVINIA. Well, tell him if you like.
REILLY. A young man named Peter.
EDWARD. Peter? Peter who?
REILLY. Mr. Peter Quilpe
Was a frequent guest.
EDWARD. Peter Quilpe.
Peter Quilpe! Really Lavinia!
I congratulate you. You could not have chosen
Anyone I was less likely to suspect.
And then he came to me to confide about Celia!
I have never heard anything so utterly ludicrous:
This is the best joke that ever happened.
LAVINIA. I never knew you had such a sense of humour.
REILLY. It is the first more hopeful symptom.
LAVINIA. How did you know all this?
REILLY. That I cannot disclose.
I have my own method of collecting information
About my patients. You must not ask me to reveal it —
That is a matter of professional etiquette.
LAVINIA. I have not noticed much professional etiquette
About your behaviour to-day.
REILLY. A point well taken.
But permit me to remark that my revelations
About each of you, to one another,
Have not been of anything that you confided to me.
The information I have exchanged between you
Was all obtained from outside sources.
Mrs. Chamberlayne, when you came to me two months ago
I was dissatisfied with your explanation
Of your obvious symptoms of emotional strain
And so I made enquiries.
EDWARD. It was two months ago
That your breakdown began! and I never noticed it.
LAVINIA. You wouldn’t notice anything. You never noticed me.
REILLY. Now, I want to point out to both of you
How much you have in common. Indeed, I consider
That you are exceptionally well-suited to each other.
Mr. Chamberlayne, when you thought your wife had left you,
You discovered, to your surprise and consternation,
That you were not really in love with Miss Coplestone …
LAVINIA. My husband has never been in love with anybody.
REILLY. And were not prepared to make the least sacrifice
On her account. This injured your vanity.
You liked to think of yourself as a passionate lover.
Then you realised, what your wife has justly remarked,
That you had never been in love with anybody;
Which made you suspect that you were incapable
Of loving. To men of a certain type
The suspicion that they are incapable of loving
Is as disturbing to their self-esteem
As, in cruder men, the fear of impotence.
LAVINIA. You are cold-hearted, Edward.
REILLY. So you say, Mrs. Chamberlayne.
And now, let us turn to your side of the problem.
When you discovered that your young friend
(Though you knew, in your heart, that he was not in love with you,
And were always humiliated by the awareness
That you had forced him into this position) —
When, I say, you discovered that your young friend
Had actually fallen in love with Miss Coplestone,
It took you some time, I have no doubt,
Before you would admit it. Though perhaps you knew it
Before he did. You pretended to yourself,
I suspect, and for as long as you could,
That he was aiming at a higher social distinction
Than the honour conferred by being your lover.
When you had to face the fact that his feelings towards her
Were different from any you had aroused in him —
It was a shock. You had wanted to be loved;
You had come to see that no one had ever loved you.
Then you began to fear that no one could love you.
EDWARD. I’m beginning to feel very sorry for you, Lavinia.
You know, you really are exceptionally unlovable,
And I never quite knew why. I thought it was my fault.
REILLY. And now you begin to see, I hope,
How much you have in common. The same isolation.
A man who finds himself incapable of loving
And a woman who finds that no man can love her.
LAVINIA. It seems to me that what we have in common
Might be just enough to make us loathe one another.
REILLY. See it rather as the bond which holds you together.
While still in a state of unenlightenment,
You could always say: ‘he could not love any woman;’
You could always say: ‘no man could love her.’
You could accuse each other of your own faults,
And so could avoid understanding each other.
Now, you have only to reverse the propositions
And put them together.
LAVINIA. Is that possible?
REILLY. If I had sent either of you to the sanatorium
In the state in which you came to me — I tell you this:
It would have been a horror beyond your imagining,
For you would have been left with what you brought with you:
The shadow of desires of desires. A prey
To the devils who arrive at their plenitude of power
When they have you to themselves.
LAVINIA. Then what can we do