2774 / TOM STOPPARD
BERNARD The thing is, there's a Byron connection too.
[HANNAH stops and faces him.] HANNAH I don't care. BERNARD You should. The Byron gang are going to get their dicks caught in
their zip. HANNAH [Pause.] Oh really? BERNARD If we collaborate. HANNAH On what? BERNARD Sit down, I'll tell you. HANNAH I'll stand for the moment. BERNARD This copy of 'The Couch of Eros' belonged to Lord Byron. HANNAH It belonged to Septimus Hodge. BERNARD Originally, yes. But it was in Byron's library which was sold to pay
his debts when he left England for good in 1816. The sales catalogue is in the British Library. 'Eros' was lot 74A and was bought by the bookseller and publisher John Nightingale of Opera Court, Pall Mall . . . whose name survives in the firm of Nightingale and Matlock, the present Nightingale being my cousin.
[He pauses, HANNAH hesitates and then sits down at the table.]
I'll just give you the headlines. 1939, stock removed to Nightingale country house in Kent. 1945, stock returned to bookshop. Meanwhile, overlooked box of early nineteenth-century books languish in country house cellar until house sold to make way for the Channel Tunnel rail-link.9 'Eros' discovered with sales slip from 1816 attached?photocopy available for inspection.
[He brings this from his bag and gives it to ELANNAH who inspects it.]
HANNAH All right. It was in Byron's library. BERNARD A number of passages have been underlined.
[HANNAH picks up the book and leafs through it.] All of them, and only them?no, no, look at me, not at the book?all the underlined passages, word for word, were used as quotations in the review of 'The Couch of Eros' in the Piccadilly Recreation of April 30th 1809. The reviewer begins by drawing attention to his previous notice in the same periodical of 'The Maid of Turkey'.
HANNAH The reviewer is obviously Hodge. 'My friend Septimus Hodge who
stood up and gave his best on behalf of the Author.' BERNARD That's the point. The Piccadilly ridiculed both books. HANNAH [Pause.] Do the reviews read like Byron? BERNARD [Producing two photocopies from his case.] They read a damn sight
more like Byron than Byron's review of Wordsworth the previous year.
[HANNAH glances over the photocopies.]
HANNAH I see. Well, congratulations. Possibly. Two previously unknown book reviews by the young Byron. Is that it? BERNARD No. Because of the tapes, three documents survived undisturbed in the book.
[He has been carefully opening a package produced from his bag. He has the originals. He holds them carefully one by one.]
'Sir?we have a matter to settle. I wait on you in the gun room. E. Chater, Esq.'
9. High-speed railway line linking London with the tunnel that crosses the English Channel.
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ARCADIA II.5 / 2775
'My husband has sent to town for pistols. Deny what cannot be proven? for Charity's sake?I keep my room this day.' Unsigned.
'Sidley Park, April 11th 1809. Sir?I call you a liar, a lecher, a slanderer in the press and a thief of my honour. I wait upon your arrangements for giving me satisfaction as a man and a poet. E. Chater, Esq.'
[Pause.]
HANNAH Superb. But inconclusive. The book had seven years to find its way into Byron's possession. It doesn't connect Byron with Chater, or with Sidley Park. Or with Hodge for that matter. Furthermore, there isn't a hint in Byron's letters and this kind of scrape is the last thing he would have kept quiet about.
BERNARD Scrape?
HANNAH He would have made a comic turn out of it. BERNARD Comic turn, fiddlesticks! [He pauses for effect.] He killed Chater! HANNAH [A raspberry.} Oh, really! RERNARD Chater was thirty-one years old. The author of two books. Nothing
more is heard from him after 'Eros'. He disappears completely after April 1809. And Byron?Byron had just published his satire, English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, in March. He was just getting a name. Yet he sailed for Lisbon1 as soon as he could find a ship, and stayed abroad for two years. Hannah, this is fame. Somewhere in the Croom papers there will be something?
HANNAH There isn't, I've looked. BERNARD But you were looking for something else! It's not going to jump out at you like 'Lord Byron remarked wittily at breakfast!'
HANNAH Nevertheless his presence would be unlikely to have gone unremarked. But there is nothing to suggest that Byron was here, and I don't believe he ever was.
BERNARD All right, but let me have a look. HANNAH You'll queer my pitch.2 BERNARD Dear girl, I know how to handle myself? HANNAH And don't call me dear girl. If I find anything on Byron, or Chater,
or Hodge, I'll pass it on. Nightingale, Sussex.
[Pause. She stands up.]
BERNARD Thank you. I'm sorry about that business with my name. HANNAH Don't mention it . . . BERNARD What was Hodge's college,3 by the way? HANNAH Trinity. BERNARD Trinity? HANNAH Yes. [She hesitates.] Yes. Byron's old college. BERNARD How old was Hodge? HANNAH I'd have to look it up but a year or two older than Byron. Twenty-
two . . . BERNARD Contemporaries at Trinity? HANNAH [Wearily.] Yes, Bernard, and no doubt they were
