manners.
SEPTIMUS We are drawing today. [LADY CROOM negligently examines what THOMASINA had started to draw. ]
LADY CROOM Geometry. I approve of geometry. SEPTIMUS Your ladyship's approval is my constant object. LADY CROOM Well, do not despair of it. [Returning to the window impatiently. ]
Where is 'Culpability' Noakes?2 [She looks out and is annoyed.] Oh!?he has gone for his hat so that he may remove it.
[She returns to the table and touches the bowl of dahlias.
HANNAH sits back in her chair, caught by what she is reading.] For the widow's dowry of dahlias I can almost forgive my brother's marriage. We must be thankful the monkey bit the husband. If it had bit the wife the monkey would be dead and we would not be first in the kingdom to show a dahlia, [HANNAH, still reading the garden book, stands up. ] I sent one potted to Chatsworth.3 The Duchess was most satisfactorily put out4 by it when I called at Devonshire House. Your friend was there lording it as a poet.
[HANNAH leaves through the door, following VALENTINE and CHLOE.
Meanwhile, THOMASINA thumps the book down on the table.]
THOMASINA Well! Just as I said! Newton's machine which would knock our atoms from cradle to grave by the laws of motion is incomplete! Determinism leaves the road at every corner, as I knew all along, and the cause is very likely hidden in this gentleman's observation.
LADY CROOM Of what? THOMASINA The action of bodies in heat. LADY CROOM IS this geometry? THOMASINA This? No, I despise geometry!
[Touching the dahlias she adds, almost to herself] The Chater would overthrow the Newtonian system in a weekend. SEPTIMUS Geometry, Hobbes assures us in the Leviathan,5 is the only science
God has been pleased to bestow on mankind. LADY CROOM And what does he mean by it? SEPTIMUS Mr Hobbes or God? LADY CROOM I am sure I do not know what either means by it.
2. Noakes is called 'culpable' (deserving of duchess of Devonshire, whose London residence blame) for ruining the landscape designed by the is Devonshire House. 'capable' Brown (so called because of his habit of 4. Jealously annoyed. saying a landscape had 'capabilities,' or potential). 5. Philosophic treatise, published in 1651, by See p. 2771, n. 6. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679). 3. Derbyshire 'stately home' of the duke and
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ARCADIA II.7 / 2811
THOMASINA Oh, pooh to Hobbes! Mountains are not pyramids and trees are not cones. God must love gunnery and architecture if Euclid6 is his only geometry. There is another geometry which I am engaged in discovering by trial and error, am I not, Septimus?
SEPTIMUS Trial and error perfectly describes your enthusiasm, my lady. LADY CROOM How old are you today? THOMASINA Sixteen years and eleven months, mama, and three weeks. LADY CROOM Sixteen years and eleven months. We must have you married
before you are educated beyond eligibility.7 THOMASINA I am going to marry Lord Byron. LADY CROOM Are you? He did not have the manners to mention it. THOMASINA You have spoken to him?! LADY CROOM Certainly not. THOMASINA Where did you see him? LADY CROOM [With some bitterness.] Everywhere. THOMASINA Did you, Septimus? SEPTIMUS At the Boyal Academy where I had the honour to accompany your
mother and Count Zelinsky. THOMASINA What was Lord Byron doing? LADY CROOM Posing. SEPTIMUS [Tactfully.] He was being sketched during his visit .. . by the Pro
fessor of Painting . . . Mr Fuseli.8
LADY CROOM There was more posing at the pictures than in them. His companion likewise reversed the custom of the Academy that the ladies viewing wear more than the ladies viewed?well, enough! Let him be hanged there for a Lamb.9 I have enough with Mr Noakes, who is to a garden what a bull is to a china shop.
[This as NOAKES enters.]
THOMASINA The Emperor of Irregularity! [Sfoe settles down to drawing the diagram which is to be the third item in the surviving portfolio.]
LADY CROOM Mr Noakes! NOAKES Your ladyship? LADY CROOM What have you done to me! NOAKES Everything is satisfactory, I assure you. A little behind, to be sure,
but my dam will be repaired within the month? LADY CROOM [Banging the table.] Hush! [In the silence, the steam engine thumps in the distance.]
Can you hear, Mr Noakes? NOAKES [Pleased and proud.] The Improved Newcomen steam pump1?the only one in England!
LADY CROOM That is what I object to. If everybody had his own I would bear my portion of the agony without complaint. But to have been singled out by the only Improved Newcomen steam pump in England, this is hard, sir, this is not to be borne.
NOAKES Your lady?
6. Greek mathematician (flourished ca. 300 8. See p. 2795, n. 4. B.C.E.), famous for his Elements, a presentation of 9. Cf. the old proverb 'One might as well be hung the geometry and other mathematics known in his for a sheep as a lamb.' day. 1. Thomas Newcomen had produced his first, very 7. Suitability (as a partner in marriage). inefficient, steam pump in 1712.
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281 2 / TOM STOPPARD
LADY CROOM And for what? My lake is drained to a ditch for no purpose I can understand, unless it be that snipe and curlew2 have deserted three counties so that they may be shot in our swamp. What you painted as forest is a mean plantation, your greenery is mud, your waterfall is wet mud, and your mount is an opencast mine for the
