JACK [Very seriously.] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a handbag?A somewhat large, black leather handbag, with handles to it?an ordinary handbag, in fact. LADY BRACKNELL
In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary handbag?
JACK
In the cloak room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own.5 LADY BRACKNELL The cloak room at Victoria Station?
3. Another fashionable residential area in the 5. In the four-act version of the play, Jack explains West End. further what happened to Mr. Cardew: 'He did not 4. A splinter group of members of the Liberal discover the error till he arrived at his own house. Party who in 1886, led by Joseph Chamberlain, All subsequent efforts to ascertain who I was were joined forces with the Conservative Party (the unavailing.' 'Tories') in opposing home rule for Ireland.
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1 1710 / OSCAR WILDE
JACK Yes. The Brighton line. LADY BRACKNELL The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate, bred in a handbag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that reminds one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the handbag was found, a cloak room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion?has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before now?but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognized position in good society. JACK
May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen's happiness.
LADY BRACKNELL
I would strongly advise you, Mr. Worthing, to try and
acquire some relations as soon as possible, and to make a definite effort to
produce at any rate one parent, of either sex, before the season is quite over.6
JACK
Well, I don't see how I could possibly manage to do that. I can produce
the handbag at any moment, it is in my dressing room at home. I really think
that should satisfy you, Lady Rracknell.
LADY BRACKNELL
Me, sir! What has it to do with me? You can hardly imagine
that I and Lord Rracknell would dream of allowing our only daughter?a
girl brought up with the utmost care?to marry into a cloak room, and form
an alliance with a parcel? Good morning, Mr. Worthing!
[LADY BRACKNELL sweeps out in majestic indignation.]
JACK Good morning! [ALGERNON, from the other room, strikes up the Wedding March, JACK looks perfectly furious, and goes to the door.] For goodness' sake don't play that ghastly tune, Algy! How idiotic you are! [The music stops, and ALGERNON enters cheerily.] ALGERNON Didn't it go off all right, old boy? You don't mean to say Gwendolen refused you? I know it is a way she has. She is always refusing people. I think it is most ill-natured of her. JACK
Oh, Gwendolen is as right as a trivet.7 As far as she is concerned, we
are engaged. Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgons
.. . I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady
Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which
is rather unfair .. . I beg your pardon, Algy, I suppose I shouldn't talk about
your own aunt in that way before you.
ALGERNON
My dear boy, I love hearing my relations abused. It is the only
thing that makes me put up with them at all. Relations are simply a tedious
pack of people who haven't got the remotest knowledge of how to live, nor
the smallest instinct about when to die.
JACK
Oh, that is nonsense!
6. In the four-act version of the play, Jack later are certainly not popular just at present. . . . They comments to Algernon about Lady Bracknell's are like these chaps, the minor poets. They are demands about locating parents: 'After all what never quoted.' does it matter whether a man has ever had a father 7. Proverbial expression meaning reliably steady, and mother or not? Mothers, of course, are all like a tripod ('trivet') used to support pots over a right. They pay a chap's bills and don't bother him. (ire. But fathers bother a chap and never pay his bills. 8. In classical mythology a snake-haired female I don't know a single chap at the club who speaks monster; at the sight of her, other creatures turned to his father.' And Algernon remarks: 'Yes. Fathers to stone.
