Plays Unpleasant (32 page)

I then made a tour of the picture houses to see what the Film Censor considers allowable. Of the films duly licensed by him two were so nakedly pornographic that their exhibition could hardly have been risked without the Censor's certificate of purity. One of them presented the allurements of a supposedly French brothel so shamelessly that I rose and fled in disgust long before the end, though I am as hardened to vulgar salacity in the theatre as a surgeon is to a dissecting room.

The only logical conclusion apparent is that the White Slave traffickers are in complete control of our picture theatres, and can close them to our Rescue workers as effectively as they can reserve them for advertisements of their own trade. I spare the Film Censor that conclusion. The conclusion I press upon him and on the public is my old one of twenty-eight years ago: that all the evil effects of such corrupt control are inevitably produced gratuitously by Censors with the best intentions.

P
OSTSCRIPT
1933. In spite of the suppression of my play for so many years by the censorship the subject broke out into a campaign for the abolition of the White Slave Traffic which still occupies the League of Nations at Geneva. But my demonstration that the root of the evil is economic was ruthlessly ignored by the profiteering Press (that is, by the entire Press); and when at last parliament proceeded to legislate, its contribution to the question was to ordain that Mrs Warren's male competitors should be flogged instead of fined. This had the double effect of stimulating the perverted sexuality which delights in flogging, and driving the traffic into female hands, leaving Mrs Warren triumphant.

The ban on performances of the play has long since been withdrawn; and when it is performed the critics hasten to declare that the scandal of underpaid virtue and overpaid vice is a thing of the past. Yet when the war created an urgent demand for women's labor in 1914 the Government proceeded to employ women for twelve hours a day at a wage of five ha'pence an hour. It is amazing how the grossest abuses thrive on their reputation for being old unhappy far-off things in an age of imaginary progress.

Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on the eastern slope of a hill a little south of Haslemere in Surrey. Looking up the hill, the cottage is seen in the left hand corner of the garden, with its thatched roof and porch, and a large latticed window to the left of the porch. A paling completely shuts in the garden, except for a gate on the right. The common rises uphill beyond the paling to the sky line. Some folded canvas garden chairs are leaning against the side bench in the porch. A lady's bicycle is propped against the wall, under the window. A little to the right of the porch a hammock is slung from two posts. A big canvas umbrella, stuck in the ground, keeps the sun off the hammock, in which a young lady lies reading and making notes, her head towards the cottage and her feet towards the gate. In front of the hammock, and within reach of her hand, is a common kitchen chair, with a pile of serious-looking books and a supply of writing paper on it
.

A gentleman walking on the common comes into sight from behind the cottage. He is hardly past middle age, with something of the artist about him, unconventionally but carefully dressed, and clean-shaven except for a moustache, with an eager susceptible face and very amiable and considerate manners. He has silky black hair, with waves of grey and white in it. His eyebrows are white, his moustache black. He seems not certain of his way. He looks over the paling; takes stock of the place; and sees the young lady
.

THE GENTLEMAN
[
taking off his hat
] I beg your pardon. Can you direct me to Hindhead View – Mrs Alison's?

THE YOUNG LADY
[
glancing up from her book
] This is Mrs Alison's. [
She resumes her work
].

THE GENTLEMAN
. Indeed! Perhaps – may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?

THE YOUNG LADY
[
sharply, as she turns on her elbow to get a good look at him
] Yes.

THE GENTLEMAN
[
daunted and conciliatory
] I'm afraid I
appear intrusive. My name is Praed. [
Vivie at once throws her books upon the chair, and gets out of the hammock
]. Oh, pray dont let me disturb you.

VIVIE
[
striding to the gate and opening it for him
] Come in, Mr Praed. [
He comes in
]. Glad to see you. [
She proffers her hand and takes his with a resolute and hearty grip. She is an attractive specimen of the sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman. Age 22. Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed. Plain business-like dress, but not dowdy. She wears a chatelaine at her belt, with a fountain pen and a paper knife among its pendants
].

PRAED
. Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. [
She shuts the gate with a vigorous slam. He passes in to the middle of the garden, exercising his fingers, which are slightly numbed by her greeting
]. Has your mother arrived?

VIVIE
[
quickly, evidently scenting aggression
] Is she coming?

PRAED
[
surprised
] Didnt you expect us?

VIVIE
. No.

PRAED
. Now, goodness me, I hope Ive not mistaken the day. That would be just like me, you know. Your mother arranged that she was to come down from London and that I was to come over from Horsham to be introduced to you.

VIVIE
[
not at all pleased
] Did she? Hm! My mother has rather a trick of taking me by surprise – to see how I behave myself when she's away, I suppose. I fancy I shall take my mother very much by surprise one of these days, if she makes arrangements that concern me without consulting me beforehand. She hasnt come.

PRAED
[
embarrassed
] I'm really very sorry.

VIVIE
[
throwing off her displeasure
] It's not your fault, Mr Praed, is it? And I'm very glad youve come. You are the only one of my mother's friends I have ever asked her to bring to see me.

PRAED
[
relieved and delighted
] Oh, now this is really very good of you, Miss Warren!

VIVIE
. Will you come indoors; or would you rather sit out here and talk?

PRAED
. It will be nicer out here, dont you think?

VIVIE
. Then I'll go and get you a chair. [
She goes to the porch for a garden chair
].

PRAED
[
following her
] Oh, pray, pray! Allow me. [
He lays hands on the chair
].

VIVIE
[
letting him take it
] Take care of your fingers: theyre rather dodgy things, those chairs. [
She goes across to the chair with the books on it; pitches them into the hammock; and brings the chair forward with one swing
].

PRAED
[
who has just unfolded his chair
] Oh, now do let me take that hard chair. I like hard chairs.

VIVIE
. So do I. Sit down, Mr Praed. [
This invitation she gives with genial peremptoriness, his anxiety to please her clearly striking her as a sign of weakness of character on his part. But he does not immediately obey
].

PRAED
. By the way, though, hadnt we better go to the station to meet your mother?

VIVIE
[
coolly
] Why? She knows the way.

PRAED
[
disconcerted
] Er – I suppose she does [
he sits down
].

VIVIE
. Do you know, you are just like what I expected. I hope you are disposed to be friends with me.

PRAED
[
again beaming
] Thank you, my dear Miss Warren: thank you. Dear me! I'm so glad your mother hasnt spoilt you!

VIVIE
. How?

PRAED
. Well, in making you too conventional. You know, my dear Miss Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations between parent and child: even between mother and daughter. Now I was always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you very conventional. It's such a relief to find that she hasnt.

VIVIE
. Oh! have I been behaving unconventionally?

PRAED
. Oh no: oh dear no. At least not conventionally unconventionally, you understand. [
She nods and sits down. He goes on, with a cordial outburst
] But it was so charming of
you to say that you were disposed to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid: perfectly splendid!

VIVIE
[
dubiously
] Eh? [
watching him with dawning disappointment as to the quality of his brains and character
].

PRAED
. When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve! gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no when you meant yes! simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.

VIVIE
. Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time. Especially women's time.

PRAED
. Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving. Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing unheard of in my day. It was perfectly splendid, your tieing with the third wrangler. Just the right place, you know. The first wrangler is always a dreamy, morbid fellow, in whom the thing is pushed to the length of a disease.

VIVIE
. It doesnt pay. I wouldnt do it again for the same money!

PRAED
[
aghast
] The same money!

VIVIE
. I did it for £50.

PRAED
. Fifty pounds!

VIVIE
. Yes. Fifty pounds. Perhaps you dont know how it was. Mrs Latham, my tutor at Newnham, told my mother that I could distinguish myself in the mathematical tripos if I went in for it in earnest. The papers were full just then of Phillipa Summers beating the senior wrangler. You remember about it, of course.

PRAED
[
shakes his head energetically
] ! ! !

VIVIE
. Well anyhow she did: and nothing would please my mother but that I should do the same thing. I said flatly it was not worth my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I offered to try for fourth
wrangler or thereabouts for £50. She closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than my bargain. But I wouldnt do it again for that. £200 would have been nearer the mark.

PRAED
[
much damped
] Lord bless me! Thats a very practical way of looking at it.

VIVIE
. Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?

PRAED
. But surely it's practical to consider not only the work these honors cost, but also the culture they bring.

VIVIE
. Culture! My dear Mr Praed: do you know what the mathematical tripos means? It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics. I'm supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except the mathematics it involves. I can make calculations for engineers, electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to nothing about engineering or electricity or insurance. I dont even know arithmetic well. Outside mathematics, lawn-tennis, eating, sleeping, cycling, and walking, I'm a more ignorant barbarian than any woman could possibly be who hadnt gone in for the tripos.

PRAED
[
revolted
] What a monstrous, wicked, rascally system! I knew it! I felt at once that it meant destroying all that makes womanhood beautiful.

VIVIE
. I dont object to it on that score in the least. I shall turn it to very good account, I assure you.

PRAED
. Pooh! in what way?

VIVIE
. I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law, with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. Ive come down here by myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate holidays.

PRAED
. You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty in your life?

VIVIE
. I dont care for either, I assure you.

PRAED
. You cant mean that.

VIVIE
. Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky, and a novel with a good detective story in it.

PRAED
[
rising in a frenzy of repudiation
] I dont believe it. I am an artist; and I cant believe it: I refuse to believe it. It's only that you havnt discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.

VIVIE
. Yes I have. Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria Fraser. Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but I was really at Honoria's chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a greenhorn could. In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt of going out except for exercise. And I never enjoyed myself more in my life. I cleared all my expenses, and got initiated into the business without a fee into the bargain.

PRAED
. But bless my heart and soul, Miss Warren, do you call that discovering art?

VIVIE
. Wait a bit. That wasnt the beginning. I went up to town on an invitation from some artistic people in Fitz-john's Avenue: one of the girls was a Newnham chum. They took me to the National Gallery –