The Penguin Complete Novels of Nancy Mitford

home, lay on his bed, ageing. He lay alone because, so ungovernable was his temper, no human dared approach him. His dog, a famous mangler, lay snarling by the empty hearth. His only son had married a foreign Fascist woman; for this he had turned him out. The son had gone to the foreign Fascist woman’s land and there had died. The old man kept his savings in gold in a pot under his bed, and it came upon him that he would like to give this pot, before he died and before the Party got it, to his son’s son, and that he would like to see this child before his old eyes failed. The younker arrived. He was a manly little fellow, not at all awed by his grandfather’s ungovernable rages, or by his grandfather’s dog, the mangler. Indeed he went everywhere with his little hand resting on its head. He brought love into that house, and presently he brought his mother, the Fascist woman, and she made the bed, which had never been made before. And by degrees this child, this innocent, loving little creature, bridged even the great political gap between his mother and his grandfather. They joined a middle-of-the-road party and all ended in happiness.

The Captain began to see possibilities in this play if it could be altered and adapted according to an idea he had, and put on with Sigi in the name part. The great difficulty would be to get round the Crew; if only he could achieve that he foresaw a box-office success at last.

He called a conference on the stage after the Saturday matinée. The Crew sat about in high-necked sweaters, shorts, and bare, blue feet, their heads bowed and their faces entirely obscured by the curtain of hair. Though he did not know it, they were in a dangerous mood. They had hardly set eyes on the Captain of late, either at home or in his theatre; he had been, they knew, to many parties, in rich, bourgeois houses, with Grace. Rumour even had it that he had been seen in Sir Conrad’s box at the Ascot races. None of this had done him much good with his Crew.

The Captain began by saying that it was quite essential for the Royal George to have a monetary success. If it did not, he pointed out, they would no longer be able to satisfy their serious public with plays that they alone were brave enough to produce. They would, in fact, be obliged to shut their doors and put out their lights and close, leaving a very serious gap in the intellectual life of London. The Crew knew that all this was so. They sat quite still listening. The Captain went on to praise Fiona very highly for her translation of The Younker. He said he had been re-reading it, that it was very good, that he thought it would do. He then branched off into a disquisition on the psychology of audiences through the ages.

‘The two greatest dramatists of the modern world,’ he said, ‘are Shakespeare and Racine.’

There was no sign of life from the figures round him; faceless and dumb, bowed immovably over their bare, blue feet, they waited for him to go on. The Captain knew that had he said Sartre and Lorca there would have been some response, a tremor, perhaps, parting the silky blonde curtains, or a nodding of the veiled heads. No such tremor, no such nodding, occurred. He began to feel nervous, to wonder whether he was going to fail in what he was attempting. But he had never failed, as yet, to master his Crew, and he thought all would be well.

‘Now Shakespeare and Racine,’ he went on, nervously for him, ‘understood the psychology of the playgoer, and they both knew that there are two things that audiences cannot resist. The first (and if we are to take a lesson from these great men, as I think we should, this will give scope to Ulra when designing her set) is the appeal of the past. The second, I am afraid, discloses a weakness in human nature, a weakness which exists as strongly today as it did in the seventeenth century. Not to put too fine a point on it, audiences like a lord. Shakespeare knew what he was about, that can’t be denied. You’ll hardly find a single commoner in Shakespeare’s plays, and when they do occur he doesn’t even trouble to invent names for them. 1st gravedigger, 2nd soldier, and so on. You’d think he might have written some very penetrating studies of the burghers of Stratford, he must have had plenty of copy. Not a bit. Kings and lords, queens and ladies made up his dramatis personae. Webster the same. And who’s to say they’re wrong? “I am Duchess of Malfi still” makes us cry. “I am Mrs Robinson still” wouldn’t be at all the same thing.’

The Crew did not raise a titter at this joke, and the Captain had an uneasy feeling it had probably been made before. He hoped he was not losing his grip, and hurried on,

‘As for Racine, his heroes and heroines are usually Imperial.

‘Now I say that what was good enough for the Globe and the Théâtre Royal is good enough for the Royal George. Supposing, Fiona dear, that you were to rewrite The Younker, to set it in an English country house in the nineties, to change the violent old Communist into a violent old Earl? Write the part of the boy for our adorable little Sigismond – he should prove a tremendous attraction. If you do all this, as only you can, Fiona, if Ulra makes a really amusing set for it – a Victorian castle, Ulra, in the Gothic style, lace collar, velvet suit for the Younker – I think I can prophesy certain success. I think we could count on six months with the house packed. After that we shall be able to go on