5. Thomas Chippendale (1718?1779), famous 6. Secretly (Latin). English cabinetmaker.
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ARCADIA II.5 / 2797
In the end I gave in. That reminds me?I spotted something between her legs that made me think of you.
[He instantly receives a sharp stinging slap on the face hut manages to remain completely unperturbed by it. He is already producing from his pocket a small book. His voice has hardly hesitated.]
The Peaks Traveller and Gazetteer?James Godolphin 1832?unillustrated, I'm afraid. [He has opened the hook to a marked place.] Sidley Park in Derbyshire, property of the Earl of Croom . . . '
HANNAH [Numbly.] The world is going to hell in a handcart.
BERNARD 'Five hundred acres including forty of lake?the Park by Brown and Noakes has pleasing features in the horrid style?viaduct, grotto,7 etc? a hermitage occupied by a lunatic since twenty years without discourse or companion save for a pet tortoise, Plautus by name, which he suffers children to touch on request.' [He holds out the book for her.] A tortoise. They must be a feature. [After a moment HANNAH takes the book.]
HANNAH Thank you. [VALENTINE comes to the door. ]
VALENTINE The station taxi is at the front . . . BERNARD Yes . . . thanks . . . Oh?did Peacock come up trumps?8
HANNAH For some. BERNARD Hermit's name and cv? [He picks up and glances at the Peacock letter. ] 'My dear Thackeray ... ' God, I'm good. [He puts the letter down.] Well, wish me luck? [Vaguely to VALENTINE] Sorry about . . . you know . . . [and to HANNAH] and about your . . .
VALENTINE Piss off, Bernard. BERNARD Bight. [BERNARD goes.] HANNAH Don't let Bernard get to you. It's only performance art, you know. Rhetoric, they used to teach it in ancient times, like PT.9 It's not about being right, they had philosophy for that. Rhetoric was their chat show. Bernard's indignation is a sort of aerobics for when he gets on television. VALENTINE I don't care to be rubbished by the dustbin man.1 [He has been looking at the letter. ] The what of the lunatic? [HANNAH reclaims the letter and reads it for him.] HANNAH 'The testament of the lunatic serves as a caution against French fashion . . . for it was Frenchified mathematick that brought him to the melancholy certitude of a world without light or life .. . as a wooden stove that must consume itself until ash and stove are as one, and heat is gone from the earth.' VALENTINE [Amused, surprised.] Huh! HANNAH 'He died aged two score years and seven, hoary as Job2 and meagre as a cabbage-stalk, the proof of his prediction even yet unyielding to his labours for the restitution of hope through good English algebra.'
7. Artificial cave or cavern. 'Horrid': Gothic. 'Via-audience and sometimes involves acting. duct': bridgelike structure designed to carry a road 1. Garbage collector. over a valley, river, etc. 2. As old as Job, who, according to the Bible, lived 8. Give you what you wanted. to be 140. 'Two score years and seven': forty9. Physical training. 'Performance art': nontradi-seven. tional art form that involves presentation to an
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279 8 / TOM STOPPARD
VALENTINE That's it? HANNAH [Nods.] Is there anything in it? VALENTINE In what? We are all doomed? [Casually.] Oh yes, sure?it's called
the second law of thermodynamics. HANNAH Was it known about? VALENTINE By poets and lunatics from time immemorial. HANNAH Seriously.
VALENTINE NO.
HANNAH Is it anything to do with . . . you know, Thomasina's discovery? VALENTINE She didn't discover anything. HANNAH Her lesson book.
VALENTINE NO.
HANNAH A coincidence, then? VALENTINE What is? HANNAH [Reading.] 'He died aged two score years and seven.' That was in
1834. So he was born in 1787. So was the tutor. He says so in his letter to Lord Croom when he recommended himself for the job: 'Date of birth? 1787.' The hermit was born in the same year as Septimus Hodge.
VALENTINE [Pause.] Did Bernard bite you in the leg?3
HANNAH Don't you see? I thought my hermit was a perfect symbol. An idiot in the landscape. But this is better. The Age of Enlightenment banished into the Romantic wilderness! The genius of Sidley Park living on in a hermit's hut!
VALENTINE You don't know that. HANNAH Oh, but I do. I do. Somewhere there will be something ... if only I can find it.
SCENE SIX
The room is empty. A reprise: early morning?a distant pistol shot?the sound of the crows. JELLABY enters the dawn-dark room with a lamp. He goes to the windows and
looks out. He sees something. He returns to put the lamp on the table, and then opens one of the french windows and steps outside.
JELLABY [Otitside.] Mr Hodge! [SEPTIMUS comes in, followed by JELLABY, who closes the garden door. SEPTIMUS is wearing a greatcoat. ]
SEPTIMUS Thank you, Jellaby. I was expecting to be locked out. What time is
it? JELLABY Half past five. SEPTIMUS That is what I have. Well!?what a bracing experience!
[He produces two pistols from inside his coat and places them on the table.]
The dawn, you know. Unexpectedly lively. Fishes, birds, frogs . . . rabbits . . . [he produces a dead rabbit from
