library of Alexandria without so much as a fine for all that is overdue. Oh, Septimus! - can you bear it? All the lost plays of the Athenians! Two hundred at least by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides - thousands of poems - Aristotle's own library brought to Egypt by the noodle's ancestors! How can we sleep for grief?
Septimus: By counting our stock. Seven plays from Aeschylus, seven from Sopocles, nineteen from Euripides, my lady! You should no more grieve for the rest than for a buckle lost from your first shoe, or for your lesson book which will be lost when you are old. We shed as we pick up, Uke travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew? I have no doubt that the improved steam-driven heat-engine which puts Mr Noakes into an ecstasy that he and it and the modern age should all coincide,
38
was described on papyrus. Steam and brass were not invented
in Glasgow. Now, where are we? Let me see if I can attempt a
free translation for you. At Harrow I was better at this than
Lord Byron.
(He takes the piece of paper from her and scrutinizes it, testing one
or two Latin phrases speculatively before committing himself.)
Yes - 'The barge she sat in, like a burnished throne...
burned on the water... the - something - the poop was
beaten gold, purple the sails, and - what's this? - oh yes, - so
perfumed that -thomasina: (Catching on and furious) Cheat! Septimus: (Imperturbably)'- the winds were lovesick with
them. ..' thomasina: Cheat! Septimus: '... the oars were silver which to the tune of flutes kept
stroke...' thomasina: (Jumping to her/eel)Cheat! Cheat! Cheat! SEPTIMUS: (As though it were too easy to make the effort worthwhile)
'... and made the water which they beat to follow faster, as
amorous of their strokes. For her own person, it beggared all
description - she did lie in her pavilion -'
(thomasina, in tears of rage, is hurrying out through the
garden.) thomasina: I hope you die!
(She nearly bumps into brice who is entering. She runs out of
sight, brice enters.) brice: Good God, man, what have you told her? Septimus: Told her? Told her what? brice: Hodge!
(SEPTIMUS looks outside the door, slightly contrite about
thomasina, and sees that chater is skulking out of view.) SEPTIMUS: Chater! My dearfellow! Don't hang back-come in,
sir!
(chater allows himself to be drawn sheepishly into the room,
where BRICE stands on his dignity.) chater: Captain Brice does me the honour-1 mean to say, sir,
whatever you have to say to me, sir, address yourself to
Captain Brice.
39
Septimus: How unusual. (To brice) Your wife did not appear
yesterday, sir. I trust she is not sick? brice: My wife? I have no wife. What the devil do you mean, sir?
(SEPTIMUS makes to reply, but hesitates, puzzled. He turns back
to CHATER.)
SEPTIMUS: I do not understand the scheme, Chater. Whom do I address when I want to speak to Captain Brice?
brice: Oh, slippery, Hodge - slippery!
Septimus: (To chater) By the way, Chater - (he interrupts
himself and turns back to BRICE, and continues as before) by the way, Chater, I have amazing news to tell you. Someone has taken to writing wild and whirling letters in your name. I received one not half an hour ago.
brice: (Angrily) Mr Hodge! Look to your honour, sir! If you cannot attend to me without this foolery, nominate your second who might settle the business as between gentlemen. No doubt your friend Byron would do you the service. (Septimus gives up the game.)
Septimus: Oh yes, he would do me the service. (His mood
changes, he turns to chater.) Sir -1 repent your injury. You are an honest fellow with no more malice in you than poetry.
chater: (Happily) Ah well! - that is more like the thing! (Overtaken by doubt.) Is he apologizing?
brice: There is still the injury to his conjugal property, Mrs Chater's-
chater: Tush, sir!
brice: As you will - her tush. Nevertheless -
(But they are interrupted by lady croom, also entering from the garden.)
lady croom: Oh - excellently found! Mr Chater, this will please you very much. Lord Byron begs a copy of your new book. He dies to read it and intends to include your name in the second edition of his English Bards and Scotch Reviewers.
CHATER: English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, your ladyship, is a doggerel aimed at Lord Byron's seniors and betters. If he intends to include me, he intends to insult me.
lady croom: Well, of course he does, Mr Chater. Would you rather be thought not worth insulting? You should be proud
40
to be in the company of Rogers and Moore and Wordsworth -ah! The Couch of Eros!' (For she has spotted Septimus's copy of the book on the table.)
Septimus: That is my copy, madam.
lady croom: So much the better - what are a friend's books for if not to be borrowed?
(Note: 'The Couch of Eros' now contains the three letters, and it must do so without advertising the fact. This is why the volume has been described as a substantial quarto.) Mr Hodge, you must speak to your friend and put him out of his affectation of pretending to quit us. I will not have it. He says he is determined on the Malta packet sailing out of Falmouth! His head is full of Lisbon and Lesbos, and his portmanteau of pistols, and I have told him it is not to be thought of. The whole of Europe is in a Napoleonic fit, all the best ruins will be closed, the roads entirely occupied with the movement of armies, the lodgings turned to billets and the fashion for godless republicanism not yet arrived at its natural reversion. He says his aim is poetry. One does not aim at poetry with pistols. At poets, perhaps. I charge you to take command of his pistols, Mr Hodge! He is not safe with them. His lameness, he confessed to me, is entirely the result of his habit from boyhood of shooting himself in the foot. What is that noise}
(The noise is a badly played piano in the next room. It has been going on for some time since thomasina left.)
Septimus: The new Broadwood pianoforte, madam. Our music lessons are at an early stage.
lady croom: Well, restrict your lessons to the piano side of the instrument and let her loose on the forte when she has learned something. (lady CROOM, holding the book, sails out back into the garden.)
brice: Now! If that was not God speaking through Lady Croom, he never spoke through anyone!
chater: (Awed) Take command of Lord Byron's pistols!
brice: You hear Mr Chater, sir - how will you answer him?
(SEPTIMUS has been watching lady c room's progress up the garden. He turns back.)
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SEPTIMUS: By killing him. I am tired of him.
