by Oscar Wilde
LORD ILLINGWORTH: I adore simple pleasures. They are the last refuge of the complex. But, if you wish, let us stay here. Yes, let us stay here. The Book of Life begins with a man and a woman in a garden.
MRS. ALLONBY: It ends with Revelations.
LORD ILLINGWORTH: You fence divinely. But the button has come off your foil.
MRS. ALLONBY: I have still the mask.
LORD ILLINGWORTH: It makes your eyes lovelier.
MRS. ALLONBY: Thank you. Come.
LORD ILLINGWORTH (sees MRS. ARBUTHNOT’S letter on table, and takes it up and looks at envelope): What a curious handwriting! It reminds me of the handwriting of a woman I used to know years ago.
MRS. ALLONBY: Who?
LORD ILLINGWORTH: Oh! No one. No one in particular. A woman of no importance. (Throws letter down, and passes up the steps of the terrace with MRS. ALLONBY. They smile at each other.)
ACT DROP
ACT TWO
SCENE: Drawing-room at Hunstanton Chase, after dinner, lamps lit. Door L. C. Door R. C. Ladies seated on sofa.
MRS. ALLONBY: What a comfort it is to have got rid of the men for a little!
LADY STUTFIELD: Yes; men persecute us dreadfully, don’t they?
MRS. ALLONBY: Persecute us? I wish they did.
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear!
MRS. ALLONBY: The annoying thing is that the wretches can be perfectly happy without us. That is why I think it is every woman’s duty never to leave them alone for a single moment, except during this short breathing space after dinner; without which, I believe, we poor women would be absolutely worn to shadows.
Enter Servants with coffee.
LADY HUNSTANTON: Worn to shadows, dear?
MRS. ALLONBY: Yes, Lady Hunstanton. It is such a strain keeping men up to the mark. They are always trying to escape from us.
LADY STUTFIELD: It seems to me that it is we who are always trying to escape from them. Men are so very, very heartless. They know their power and use it.
LADY CAROLINE (takes coffee from Servant): What stuff and nonsense all this about men is! The thing to do is to keep men in their proper place.
MRS. ALLONBY: But what is their proper place, Lady Caroline.
LADY CAROLINE: Looking after their wives, Mrs. Allonby.
MRS. ALLONBY (takes coffee from Servant): Really? And if they’re not married?
LADY CAROLINE: If they are not married, they would be looking after a wife. It’s perfectly scandalous the amount of bachelors who are going about society. There should be a law passed to compel them all to marry within twelve months.
LADY STUTFIELD (refuses coffee): But if they’re in love with some one who, perhaps, is tied to another?
LADY CAROLINE: In that case, Lady Stutfield, they would be married off in a week to some plain respectable girl, in order to teach them not to meddle with other people’s property.
MRS. ALLONBY: I don’t think that we should ever be spoken of as other people’s property. All men are married women’s property. That is the only true definition of what married women’s property really is. But we don’t belong to any one.
LADY STUTFIELD: Oh, I am so very, very glad to hear you say so.
LADY HUNSTANTON: But do you really think, dear Caroline, that legislation would improve matters in any way? I am told that, nowadays, all the married men live like bachelors, and all the bachelors like married men.
MRS. ALLONBY: I certainly never know one from the other.
LADY STUTFIELD: Oh, I think one can always know at once whether a man has home claims upon his life or not. I have noticed a very, very sad expression in the eyes of so many married men.
MRS. ALLONBY: Ah, all that I have noticed is that they are horribly tedious when they are good husbands, and abominably conceited when they are not.
LADY HUNSTANTON: Well, I suppose the type of husband has completely changed since my young days, but I’m bound to state that poor dear Hunstanton was the most delightful of creatures, and as good as gold.
MRS. ALLONBY: Ah, my husband is a sort of promissory note; I’m tired of meeting him.
LADY CAROLINE: But you renew him from time to time, don’t you?
MRS. ALLONBY: Oh no, Lady Caroline. I have only had one husband as yet. I suppose you look upon me as quite an amateur.
LADY CAROLINE: With your views on life I wonder you married at all.
MRS. ALLONBY: So do I.
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear child, I believe you are really very happy in your married life, but that you like to hide your happiness from others.
MRS. ALLONBY: I assure you I was horribly deceived in Ernest.
LADY HUNSTANTON: Oh, I hope not, dear. I knew his mother quite well. She was a Stratton, Caroline, one of Lord Crowland’s daughters.
LADY CAROLINE: Victoria Stratton? I remember her perfectly. A silly, fair-haired woman with no chin.
MRS. ALLONBY: Ah, Ernest has a chin. He has a very strong chin, a square chin. Ernest’s chin is far too square.
LADY STUTFIELD: But do you really think a man’s chin can be too square? I think a man should look very, very strong, and that his chin should be quite, quite square.
MRS. ALLONBY: Then you should certainly know Ernest, Lady Stutfield. It is only fair to tell you beforehand he has got no conversation at all.
LADY STUTFIELD: I adore silent men.
MRS. ALLONBY: Oh, Ernest isn’t silent. He talks the whole time. But he has got no conversation. What he talks about I don’t know. I haven’t listened to him for years.
LADY STUTFIELD: Have you never forgiven him then? How sad that seems! But all life is very, very sad, is it not?
MRS. ALLONBY: Life, Lady Stutfield, is simply a mauvais quart d’heure made up of exquisite moments.
LADY STUTFIELD: Yes, there are moments, certainly. But was it something very, very wrong that Mr. Allonby did? Did he become angry with you, and say anything that was unkind or true?
MRS. ALLONBY: Oh, dear, no. Ernest is invariably calm. That is one of the reasons he always gets on my nerves. Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. There is something positively brutal about the good temper of most modern men. I wonder we women stand it as well as we do.
LADY STUTFIELD: Yes; men’s good temper shows they are not so sensitive as we are, not so finely strung. It makes a great barrier often between husband and wife, does it not? But I would so much like to know what was the wrong thing Mr. Allonby did.
MRS. ALLONBY: Well, I will tell you, if you solemnly promise to tell everybody else.
LADY STUTFIELD: Thank you, thank you. I will make a point of repeating it.
MRS. ALLONBY: When Ernest and I were engaged, he swore to me positively on his knees that he had never loved any one before in the whole course of his life. I was very young at the time, so I didn’t believe him, I needn’t tell you. Unfortunately, however, I made no inquires of any kind till after I had been actually married four or five months. I found out then that what he had told me was perfectly true. And that sort of thing makes a man so absolutely uninteresting.
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear!
MRS. ALLONBY: Men always want to be a woman’s first love. That is their clumsy vanity. We women have a more subtle instinct about things. What we like is to be a man’s last romance.
LADY STUTFIELD: I see what you mean. It’s very, very beautiful.
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear child, you don’t mean to tell me that you won’t forgive your husband because he never loved any one else? Did you ever hear such a thing, Caroline? I am quite surprised.
LADY CAROLINE: Oh, women have become so highly educated, Jane, that nothing should surprise us nowadays, except happy marriages. They apparently are getting remarkably rare.
MRS. ALLONBY: Oh, they’re quite out of date.
LADY STUTFIELD: Except amongst the middle classes, I have been told.
MRS. ALLONBY: How like the middle classes!
LADY STUTFIELD: Yes – is it not? – very, very like them.
LADY CAROLINE: If what you
tell us about the middle classes is true, Lady Stutfield, it redounds greatly to their credit. It is much to be regretted that in our rank of life the wife should be so persistently frivolous, under the impression apparently that it is the proper thing to be. It is to that I attribute the unhappiness of so many marriages we all know of in society.
MRS. ALLONBY: Do you know, Lady Caroline, I don’t think the frivolity of the wife has ever anything to do with it. More marriages are ruined nowadays by the common sense of the husband than by anything else. How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she was a perfectly rational being?
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear!
MRS. ALLONBY: Man, poor, awkward, reliable, necessary man belongs to a sex that has been rational for millions and millions of years. He can’t help himself. It is in his race. The History of Woman is very different. We have always been picturesque protests against the mere existence of common sense. We saw its dangers from the first.
LADY STUTFIELD: Yes, the common sense of husbands is certainly most, most trying. Do tell me your conception of the Ideal Husband. I think it would be so very, very helpful.
MRS. ALLONBY: The Ideal Husband? There couldn’t be such a thing. The institution is wrong.
LADY STUTFIELD: The Ideal Man, then, in his relations to us.
LADY CAROLINE: He would probably be extremely realistic.
MRS. ALLONBY: The Ideal Man! Oh, the Ideal Man should talk to us as if we were goddesses, and treat us as if we were children. He should refuse all our serious requests, and gratify every one of our whims. He should encourage us to have caprices, and forbid us to have missions. He should always say much more than he means, and always mean much more than he says.
LADY HUNSTANTON: But how could he do both, dear?
MRS. ALLONBY: He should never run down other pretty women. That would show he had no taste, or make one suspect that he had too much. No; he should be nice about them all, but say that somehow they don’t attract him.
LADY STUTFIELD: Yes, that is always very, very pleasant to hear about other women.
MRS. ALLONBY: If we ask him a question about anything, he should give us an answer all about ourselves. He should invariably praise us for whatever qualities he knows we haven’t got. But he should be pitiless, quite pitiless, in reproaching us for the virtues that we have never dreamed of possessing. He should never believe that we know the use of useful things. That would be unforgivable. But he should shower on us everything we don’t want.
LADY CAROLINE: As far as I can see, he is to do nothing but pay bills and compliments.
MRS. ALLONBY: He should persistently compromise us in public, and treat us with absolute respect when we are alone. And yet he should be always ready to have a perfectly terrible scene, whenever we want one, and to become miserable, absolutely miserable, at a moment’s notice, and to overwhelm us with just reproaches in less than twenty minutes, and to be positively violent at the end of half an hour, and to leave us for ever at a quarter to eight, when we have to go and dress for dinner. And when, after that, one has seen him for really the last time, and he has refused to take back the little things he has given one, and promised never to communicate with one again, or to write one any foolish letters, he should be perfectly broken-hearted, and telegraph to one all day long, and send one little notes every half-hour by a private hansom, and dine quite alone at the club, so that every one should know how unhappy he was. And after a whole dreadful week, during which one has gone about everywhere with one’s husband, just to show how absolutely lonely one was, he may be given a third last parting, in the evening, and then, if his conduct has been quite irreproachable, and one has behaved really badly to him, he should be allowed to admit that he has been entirely in the wrong, and when he has admitted that, it becomes a woman’s duty to forgive, and one can do it all over again from the beginning, with variations.
LADY HUNSTANTON: How clever you are, my dear! You never mean a single word you say.
LADY STUTFIELD: Thank you, thank you. It has been quite, quite entrancing. I must try and remember it all. There are such a number of details that are so very, very important.
LADY CAROLINE: But you have not told us yet what the reward of the Ideal Man is to be.
MRS. ALLONBY: His reward? Oh, infinite expectation. That is quite enough for him.
LADY STUTFIELD: But men are so terribly, terribly exacting, are they not?
MRS. ALLONBY: That makes no matter. One should never surrender.
LADY STUTFIELD: Not even to the Ideal Man?
MRS. ALLONBY: Certainly not to him. Unless, of course, one wants to grow tired of him.
LADY STUTFIELD: Oh!…Yes. I see that. It is very, very helpful. Do you think, Mrs. Allonby, I shall ever meet the Ideal Man? Or are there more than one?
MRS. ALLONBY: There are just four in London, Lady Stutfield.
LADY HUNSTANTON: Oh, my dear!
MRS. ALLONBY (going over to her): What has happened? Do tell me.
LADY HUNSTANTON (in a low voice): I had completely forgotten that the American young lady has been in the room all the time. I am afraid some of this clever talk may have shocked her a little.
MRS. ALLONBY: Ah, that will do her so much good!
LADY HUNSTANTON: Let us hope she didn’t understand much. I think I had better go over and talk to her. (Rises and goes across to HESTER WORSLEY.) Well, dear Miss Worsley. (Sitting down beside her.) How quiet you have been in your nice little corner all this time! I suppose you have been reading a book? There are so many books here in the library.
HESTER: No, I have been listening to the conversation.
LADY HUNSTANTON: You mustn’t believe everything that was said, you know, dear.
HESTER: I didn’t believe any of it.
LADY HUNSTANTON: That is quite right, dear.
HESTER (continuing): I couldn’t believe that any women could really hold such views of life as I have heard to-night from some of your guests. (An awkward pause.)
LADY HUNSTANTON: I hear you have such pleasant society in America. Quite like our own in places, my son wrote to me.
HESTER: There are cliques in America as elsewhere, Lady Hunstanton. But true American society consists simply of all the good women and good men we have in our country.
LADY HUNSTANTON: What a sensible system, and I dare say quite pleasant, too. I am afraid in England we have too many artificial social barriers. We don’t see as much as we should of the middle and lower classes.
HESTER: In America we have no lower classes.
LADY HUNSTANTON: Really? What a very strange arrangement!
MRS. ALLONBY: What is that dreadful girl talking about?
LADY STUTFIELD: She is painfully natural, is she not?
LADY CAROLINE: There are a great many things you haven’t got in America, I am told, Miss Worsley. They say you have no ruins, and no curiosities.
MRS. ALLONBY (to LADY STUTFIELD): What nonsense! They have their mothers and their manners.
HESTER: The English aristocracy supply us with our curiosities, Lady Caroline. They are sent over to us every summer, regularly, in the steamers, and propose to us the day after they land. As for ruins, we are trying to build up something that will last longer than brick or stone. (Gets up to take her fan from table.)
LADY HUNSTANTON: What is that, dear? Ah, yes, an iron Exhibition, is it not, at that place that has the curious name?
HESTER (standing by table): We are trying to build up life, Lady Hunstanton, on a better, truer, purer basis than life rests on here. This sounds strange to you all, no doubt. How could it sound other than strange? You rich people in England, you don’t know how you are living. How could you know? You shut out from your society the gentle and the good. You laugh at the simple and the pure. Living, as you all do, on others and by them, you sneer at self-sacrifice, and if you throw bread to the poor, it is merely to keep them quiet for a season. With all your pomp and wealth and art you don’t know how to live – you don
’t even know that. You love the beauty that you can see and touch and handle, the beauty that you can destroy, and do destroy, but of the unseen beauty of life, of the unseen beauty of a higher life, you know nothing. You have lost life’s secret. Oh, your English society seems to me shallow, selfish, foolish. It has blinded its eyes, and stopped its ears. It lies like a leper in purple. It sits like a dead thing smeared with gold. It is all wrong, all wrong.
LADY STUTFIELD: I don’t think one should know of these things. It is not very, very nice, is it?
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear Miss Worsley, I thought you liked English society so much. You were such a success in it. And you were so much admired by the best people. I quite forget what Lord Henry Weston said of you – but it was most complimentary, and you know what an authority he is on beauty.
HESTER: Lord Henry Weston! I remember him, Lady Hunstanton. A man with a hideous smile and a hideous past. He is asked everywhere. No dinner-party is complete without him. What of those whose ruin is due to him? They are outcasts. They are nameless. If you met them in the street you would turn your head away. I don’t complain of their punishment. Let all women who have sinned be punished.
MRS. ARBUTHNOT enters from terrace behind in a cloak with a lace veil over her head. She hears the last words and starts.
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear young lady!
HESTER: It is right that they should be punished, but don’t let them be the only ones to suffer. If a man and woman have sinned, let them both go forth into the desert to love or loathe each other there. Let them both be branded. Set a mark, if you wish, on each, but don’t punish the one and let the other go free. Don’t have one law for men and another for women. You are unjust to women in England. And till you count what is a shame in a woman to be infamy in a man, you will always be unjust, and Right, that pillar of fire, and Wrong, that pillar of cloud, will be made dim to your eyes, or be not seen at all, or if seen, not regarded.
LADY CAROLINE: Might I, dear Miss Worsley, as you are standing up, ask you for my cotton that is just behind you? Thank you.
LADY HUNSTANTON: My dear Mrs. Arbuthnot! I am so pleased you have come up. But I didn’t hear you announced.