fortuitous wit. Thomasina, wait in your bedroom.
THOMASINA [Retiring.] Yes, mama. I did not intend to get you into trouble, Septimus. I am very sorry for it. It is plain that there are some things a girl is allowed to understand, and these include the whole of algebra, but there are others, such as embracing a side of beef, that must be kept from her until she is old enough to have a carcass of her own.
LADY CROOM One moment. BRICE What is she talking about? LADY CROOM Meat. BRICE Meat? LADY CROOM Thomasina, you had better remain. Your knowledge of the pic
turesque obviously exceeds anything the rest of us can offer. Mr Hodge, ignorance should be like an empty vessel waiting to be filled at the well of truth?not a cabinet of vulgar curios.5 Mr Noakes?now at last it is your turn?
NOAKES Thank you, your ladyship?
LADY CROOM Your drawing is a very wonderful transformation. I would not have recognized my own garden but for your ingenious book?is it not?? look! Here is the Park as it appears to us now, and here as it might be when Mr Noakes has done with it. Where there is the familiar pastoral refinement of an Englishman's garden, here is an eruption of gloomy forest and towering crag, of ruins where there was never a house, of water dashing against rocks where there was neither spring nor a stone I could not throw the length of a cricket pitch.6 My hyacinth dell is become a haunt for hobgoblins, my Chinese bridge, which I am assured is superior to the one at Kew,7 and for all I know at Peking, is usurped by a fallen obelisk overgrown with briars?
NOAKES [Bleating.] Lord Little has one very similar?
4. Salvator Rosa (1615?1673), Italian painter. ers' 'wickets.' 5. Strange objects. 7. Site of London's Royal Botanical Gardens. 6. Area, twenty-two yards long, between cricket
.
276 2 / TOM STOPPARD
LADY CROOM I cannot relieve Lord Little's misfortunes by adding to my own. Pray, what is this rustic hovel that presumes to superpose itself on my gazebo?
NOAKES That is the hermitage,8 madam.
LADY CROOM I am bewildered.
BRICE It is all irregular, Mr Noakes.
NOAKES It is, sir. Irregularity is one of the chiefest principles of the picturesque style?
LADY CROOM But Sidley Park is already a picture, and a most amiable picture too. The slopes are green and gentle. The trees are companionably grouped at intervals that show them to advantage. The rill9 is a serpentine ribbon unwound from the lake peaceably contained by meadows on which the right amount of sheep are tastefully arranged?in short, it is nature as God intended, and I can say with the painter, 'Et in Arcadia ego!'1 'Here I am in Arcadia,' Thomasina.
THOMASINA Yes, mama, if you would have it so.
LADY CROOM IS she correcting my taste or my translation?
THOMASINA Neither are beyond correction, mama, but it was your geography caused the doubt.
LADY CROOM Something has occurred with the girl since I saw her last, and surely that was yesterday. How old are you this morning? THOMASINA Thirteen years and ten months, mama. LADY CROOM Thirteen years and ten months. She is not due to be pert for six
months at the earliest, or to have notions of taste for much longer. Mr Hodge, I hold you accountable. Mr Noakes, back to you?
NOAKES Thank you, my?
LADY CROOM YOU have been reading too many novels by Mrs Radcliffe, that
is my opinion. This is a garden for The Castle ofOtranto or The Mysteries of
Udolpho?2
CHATER The Castle of Otranto, my lady, is by Horace Walpole.
NOAKES [Thrilled.] Mr Walpole the gardener?!
LADY CROOM Mr Chater, you are a welcome guest at Sidley Park but while you are one, The Castle of Otranto was written by whomsoever I say it was, otherwise what is the point of being a guest or having one?
[The distant popping of guns heard.]
Well, the guns have reached the brow3?I will speak to his lordship on the subject, and we will see by and by?[She stands looking out.] Ah!?your friend has got down a pigeon, Mr Hodge. [Calls out.] Bravo, sir!
SEPTIMUS The pigeon, I am sure, fell to your husband or to your son, your ladyship?my schoolfriend was never a sportsman.
BRICE [Looking out.] Yes, to Augustus!?bravo, lad!
LADY CROOM [Outside.] Well, come along! Where are my troops?
[BRICE, NOAKES and CHATER obediently follow her, CHATER making a detour to shake SEPTIMUS'S hand fervently.] CHATER My dear Mr Hodge! [CHATER leaves also. The guns are heard again, a little closer.]
8. Hermit's residence. 9. Stream. 1. Latin phrase, inscribed on a tomb in a painting by the French artist Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665). Lady Groom translates it literally, but the speaker is often taken?as Septimus does below?to be Death. 2. Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823) wrote Gothic novels, the most famous of which is The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). Horace Walpole (1717-1797), author of The Castle of Otranto (1764), also pioneered the Gothic style of picturesque landscaping. 3. Top of the hill.
