HANNAH stays, thoughtful. After a moment, she turns to the tahle and picks up the Cornhill Magazine. She looks into it briefly, then closes it, and leaves the room, taking the magazine with her.
The empty room.
The light changes to early morning. From a long way off , there is a pistol shot. A moment later there is the cr)> of dozens of crows disturbed from the unseen trees.]
Act Two
scene five
BERNARD is pacing around, reading aloud from a handfid of typed sheets, VALENTINE and CHLOE are his audience, VALENTINE has his tortoise and is eating a sandwich from which he extracts shreds of lettuce to offer the tortoise.
BERNARD 'Did it happen? Could it happen?
Undoubtedly it could. Only three years earlier the Irish poet Tom Moore appeared on the field of combat to avenge a review by Jeffrey of the Edinburgh. These affairs were seldom fatal and sometimes farcical but, potentially, the duellist stood in respect to the law no differently from a murderer. As for the murderee, a minor poet like Ezra Chater could go to his death in a Derbyshire glade as unmissed and unremembered as his contemporary and namesake, the minor botanist who died in the forests of the West Indies, lost to history like the monkey that bit him. On April 16th 1809, a few days after he left Sidley Park, Byron wrote to his solicitor John Hanson: 'If the consequences of my leaving England were ten times as ruinous as you describe, I have no alternative; there are circumstances which render it absolutely indispensable, and quit the country I must immediately.' To which, the editor's note in the Collected Letters reads as follows: 'What Byron's urgent reasons for leaving England were at this time has never been revealed.' The letter was written from the family seat, Newstead Abbey, Nottinghamshire. A long day's ride to the north-west lay Sidley Park, the estate of the Coverlys?a far grander family, raised by Charles II to the Earldom of Croom . . . '
[HANNAH enters briskly, a piece of paper in her hand.]
HANNAH Bernard . . . ! Val . . . BERNARD Do you mind? [HANNAH puts her piece of paper down in front of VALENTINE.] CHLOE [Angrily.] Hannah!
HANNAH What? CHLO E She's so rude! HANNAH [Taken aback.] What? Am I?
VALENTINE Bernard's reading us his lecture. HANNAH Yes, I know. [Then recollecting herself] Yes?yes?that ivas rude.
I'm sorry, Bernard. VALENTINE [With the piece of paper.] What is this? HANNAH [To BERNARD.] Spot on?the India Office Library. [To VALENTINE.]
Peacock's letter in holograph,7 I got a copy sent?
7. Handwriting.
.
279 0 / TOM STOPPARD
CHLOE Hannah! Shut up! HANNAH [Sitting down.] Yes, sorry. BERNARD It's all right, I'll read it to myself.
CHLOE NO. [HANNAH reaches for the Peacock letter and takes it hack.]
HANNAH Go on, Bernard. Have I missed anything? Sorry.
[BERNARD stares at her halefully hut then continues to read.]
BERNARD 'The Byrons of Newstead in 1809 comprised an eccentric widow and her undistinguished son, the 'lame brat', who until the age of ten when he came into the title, had been carted about the country from lodging to lodging by his vulgar hectoring monster of a mother?' [HANNAH S hand has gone up.]?overruled?'and who four months past his twenty-first birthday was master of nothing but his debts and his genius. Between the Byrons and the Coverlys there was no social equality and none to be expected. The connection, undisclosed to posterity until now, was with Septimus Hodge, Byron's friend at Harrow and Trinity College?' [HANNAH'S hand goes up again.] ?sustained?[He makes an instant correction with a silver pencil.] 'Byron's contemporary at Harrow and Trinity College, and now tutor in residence to the Croom daughter, Thomasina Coverly. Byron's letters tell us where he was on April 8th and on April 12th. He was at Newstead. But on the 10th he was at Sidley Park, as attested by the game book preserved there: 'April 10th 1809?forenoon. High cloud, dry, and sun between times, wind southeasterly. Self?Augustus?Lord Byron. Fourteen pigeon, one hare (Lord B.).' But, as we know now, the drama of life and death at Sidley Park was not about pigeons but about sex and literature.'
VALENTINE Unless you were the pigeon. BERNARD I don't have to do this. I'm paying you a compliment. CHLOE Ignore him, Bernard?go on, get to the duel. BERNARD Hannah's not even paying attention. HANNAH Yes I am, it's all going in. I often work with the radio on. BERNARD Oh thanks! HANNAH Is there much more? CHLOE Hannah!
HANNAH No, it's fascinating. I just wondered how much more there was. I need to ask Valentine about this [letter.]?sorry, Bernard, go on, this will keep.
VALENTINE Yes?sorry, Bernard. CHLOE Please, Bernard! BERNARD Where was I? VALENTINE Pigeons. CHLOE Sex. HANNAH Literature. BERNARD Life and death. Right. 'Nothing could be more eloquent of that
than the three documents I have quoted: the terse demand to settle a matter in private; the desperate scribble of 'my husband has sent for pistols'; and on April 11 th, the gauntlet thrown down by the aggrieved and cuckolded author Ezra Chater. The covers8 have not survived. What is certain is that all three letters were in Ryron's possession when his books were sold in
8. Envelopelike wrappers of letters. 'Cuckolded': whose wife is adulterous.
.
ARCADIA II.5 / 2791
1816?preserved in the pages of 'The Couch of Eros' which seven years
earlier at Sidley Park Byron had borrowed from Septimus Hodge.' HANNAH Borrowed? BERNARD I will be
