All posts tagged Lambeth

The Alchemist by Ben Jonson (1610)

The Alchemist is a plague play. Not only was it written in 1610, when the London theatres were closed (yet again) for (yet another) outbreak of plague, but the plot itself derives from that fact. The master of the house, Lovewit, has (like everyone else who can afford it) fled London and is waiting at his country seat for the plague to abate (his retreat appears to be in Kent; he is said to be waiting in his ‘hop-yards’). In the meantime his housekeeper, Face, has invited a conman, Subtle, and a prostitute, Doll Common, to come and stay in the house in a kind of joint criminal enterprise, persuading a series of gullible victims that Subtle is a renowned alchemist who will supply each of them the Philosopher’s Stone and make their dreams come true… for a price.

The cast

The three crooks

SUBTLE, the alchemist
FACE, the Housekeeper
DOL COMMON, their Colleague

The gulls or dupes

DAPPER, a Lawyer’s Clerk
DRUGGER, a Tobacco Man
SIR EPICURE MAMMON, a Knight
PERTINAX SURLY, a Gamester
TRIBULATION WHOLESOME, a Pastor of Amsterdam
ANANIAS, a Deacon there
KASTRIL, the angry Boy
DAME PLIANT, his Sister, a Widow.

The absent master

LOVEWIT, Master of the House

The plot

Act 1

Scene 1 The play opens in media res, with typically Jonsonian energy, as the three crooks stumble onstage in the middle of a flaring row, Face and Subtle throwing insults at each other, Face claiming to have rescued Subtle from absolute desperation, having found him on the streets in rags looking like ‘the father of hunger’, Subtle claiming to have set up the successful con scheme and made Face a fortune – both of them being told by a frustrated Doll to calm down and that by arguing they risk provoking the neighbours to call the constables.

The verbal energy in the abuse is invigorating and reminds us that formal contests of abuse were a recognised genre in medieval and renaissance literature, called flyting. They argue until Doll eventually grabs Face’s sword and ‘breaks Subtle’s glass’, calling them an ‘abominable pair of stinkards’, and reminding them they are all equal partners in the ‘venture tripartite’ and when Subtle, once again claims he plays the lead role, as the fake alchemist, Doll is so infuriated she flies at him and starts to strangle her till he cries quits and

They eventually argue themselves to a standstill and listen to Doll telling them they have to work together when there’s a knock at the door!

Scene 2 Enter Dapper, a ‘quodling’ i.e. innocent young man who has got into conversation in a pub with Face who says he knows a man can conjure a spirit to help him (Dapper) at his gambling. (I thought the name Dapper rang a bell and it is the name of Sir Davy Dapper and his son Jack Dapper, in Middleton’s play The Roaring Girl). Face makes a great pretense of claiming Subtle is a learned man who is almost to particular in his alchemical practice and then introduces Dapper (with sly humour) as:

FACE:Good deeds, sir… ‘Slight, I bring you
No cheating Clim o’ the Cloughs or Claribels,
That look as big as five-and-fifty, and flush;
And spit out secrets like hot custard,
Nor any melancholic under-scribe,
Shall tell the vicar; but a special gentle,
That is the heir to forty marks a year,
Consorts with the small poets of the time,
Is the sole hope of his old grandmother;
That knows the law, and writes you six fair hands,
Is a fine clerk, and has his cyphering perfect.
Will take his oath o’ the Greek Testament,
If need be, in his pocket; and can court
His mistress out of Ovid.

The verbal vigour of the play, the exuberance of its characters, is infectious and compelling. Face and Subtle make a wonderful double act, persuading the gullible Dapper that he was born under a lucky star, that he is related to the Queen of Fairy no less. They extort four angels from him (Jacobean coins), making pretense that Face is having to force them on Subtle, who makes a big show of warning Face that, if they give Dapper this power, he will ruin every gambler in the city and win all his bets – before telling him to return at 1 to carry out the full and elaborate ceremony which will raise him a familiar or lucky spirit.

Scene 3 Next to arrive is Abel Drugger, the not-too-bright pharmacist who is about to set up a new shop and has come to ask advice from the alchemist on how to arrange it, where to put the doors and windows and shelves. Subtle invokes contemporary learning about faces and hands (each one with its own tutelary spirit) to bamboozle the simple man.

(This is all played for laughs but as Subtle quoted obscure terms from contemporary books of alchemy etc in order to tell Drugger how to arrange his shop, I realised we still do exactly this today – it is called feng shui and, once again, requires a supposedly special mystical knowledge, dressed up in a foreign language).

Subtle promises Drugger that if he follows his instructions it will become the most popular apothecary’s in London, and they then extract a gold coin (a ‘portague’) as a down-payment. He also asks if Subtle can look over his almanac to tell him which days he should and should not trade on.

When Drugger leaves, Face repeats the accusations the play opened with, namely that Subtle thinks of himself as the supremo of these scams and yet it takes a lot of time, effort and money to seek out and latch onto such stupid gulls and bring them to him, and therefore he (Face) deserves a larger share of the loot. This is the basis of the argument between them.

Scene 4 A short one in which Doll runs to tell Subtle that she’s spied Sir Epicure Mammon waddling towards them from the end of the lane, and gives Subtle the opportunity to explain that today is the day when Subtle is due to hand over The Philosopher’s Stone to Mammon, who is already fantasising about wandering round London offering miracle cures to lepers and beggars and infertile women.

Act 2

Scene 1 Sir Epicure Mammon rolls up in front of the house and delivers a wonderful monologue to his sceptical follower, Surly, about all the wonders he will perform once he has the Philosopher’s Stone and can turn any metal into gold and can restore men to their youth and then a fantastical tour of the ancient world proving how every legend from Jason to Pandora, are but refractions of the wonder of the stone. Surly doesn’t believe a word.

Scene 2 Enter Face, from the house, dressed as a man who pumps bellows to keep a fire alight, and pretending to be working hard to maintain the heat required to produce the stone. Mammon calls him ‘Puff’ and ‘Lungs’ and says he will set him free from his master in order to come and supervise his harem, for Mammon intends to establish a vast harem, and to give himself magical powers of stamina, and a strong back, so he can make love to 50 women a night! He will, of course, have to geld Face. Face nods wisely at all this. Mammon’s speech swells into a cornucopia of sensual pleasures.

We will be brave, Puffe, now we have the med’cine.
My meat shall all come in, in Indian shells,
Dishes of agat set in gold, and studded
With emeralds, sapphires, hyacinths, and rubies.
The tongues of carps, dormice, and camels’ heels,
Boil’d in the spirit of sol, and dissolv’d pearl,
Apicius’ diet, ‘gainst the epilepsy:
And I will eat these broths with spoons of amber,
Headed with diamond and carbuncle.
My foot-boy shall eat pheasants, calver’d salmons,
Knots, godwits, lampreys: I myself will have
The beards of barbels served, instead of sallads;
Oil’d mushrooms; and the swelling unctuous paps
Of a fat pregnant sow, newly cut off,
Drest with an exquisite, and poignant sauce;
For which, I’ll say unto my cook, “There’s gold,
Go forth, and be a knight.”

Surly points out that he who creates the Philosopher’s Stone must be pure and virginal. Yes, says Mammon cutting across the difficulty – but I’m not going to make it, I’m going to buy it. As the introduction points out, this is a play about money and greed and people’s readiness to do anything, and believe anything, to be rich.

Scene 3 Enter Subtle. The comedy in this scene is that Subtle pretends to be fantastically pure and high-minded and pretends to spot slips and hints in Mammon’s speech that the latter is covetous and greedy – at which Mammon furiously backtracks and emphasises he will use the stone purely to do good works.

MAMMON: No, I assure you,
I shall employ it all in pious uses,
Founding of colleges and grammar schools,
Marrying young virgins, building hospitals,
And now and then a church.

Surly looks on with profound scepticism which is exacerbated as he listens to Face and Subtle have an extended and jargon-ridden exchange about the umpteen pipes and retorts and alembics and burners (later they are listed as ‘Retorts, receivers, pelicans, bolt-heads,’) which are bubbling away in their laboratory from which it slowly emerges that something is not going right and they require more money.

‘You don’t say’, comments Surly, smelling a rat, whereas Mammon is desperately keen to hand over another nine or ten pounds of gold, and Subtle launches into a really massive theoretical justification of alchemy including an explanation of how gold comes about, naturally, in the bowels of the earth, but he knows the way to hasten this natural process, followed by a lengthy explanation of why the art requires such arcane terms, in order to protect it from the vulgar multitude.

They tell Mammon to bring everything iron in his house, his andirons and spit jacks, everything, so it can be turned to gold. Presumably the crooks intend to pawn it for cash.

In a further elaboration of their plotting against the gullible and self-deceiving Mammon, the pair cause Doll to briefly appear onstage before Subtle angrily tells Face to take her away. Mammon, the sensualist, is aroused at the sight of a nubile lady, even for only a minute and asks about her, whereupon Face spins an elaborate yarn that Doll is a noblewoman, a most rare scholar driven mad by studying the works of a famous alchemist, Hugh Broughton.

Hooked, Mammon gives Face money if he will mention him (Mammon) to her and praise him. (There is a deliberate disjuntion between Mammon’s verbal fantasies of being a second Solomon walking naked amid his harem, and the sordid reality of him paying Face to meet up with a prostitute.) This Doll episode convinces Surly that Subtle is a fake and this is a bawdy house.

In order to complexify the plot, Face takes Surly aside and asks him to meet Captain Face at a pub later that day (at which point we realise that Face is really meant to be utterly disguised as the bellows-man, ‘Lungs’).

Scene 4 Face explains to the others that his intention is to win the sceptical Surly round. They tell Doll she must play the part of a grand lady for Mammon, and she tells them not to worry, she knows all the tricks.

Scene 5 Enter another gull or mark or victim, a Puritan named Ananias in fact, to be precise, he is an Anabaptist, a heretical Protestant sect which arose in Germany in the 1530s but whose members were forced into exile. In a historical note, the area of Blackfriars (between St Paul’s cathedral and the river) a) was famous for its Puritans, b) it’s where Jonson himself lived for a while, and c) it was the location of the theatre where we think this play was first performed – so it was super-relevant to its first audience.

Subtle adopts a different, more religiose tone with him and, when Ananias recoils from his ‘heathenish’ use of alchemical terms, Subtle gets Face to trot through an impressive exposition of alchemical terms and concepts. Ananias is:

Please you, a servant of the exiled brethren,
That deal with widows’ and with orphans’ goods,
And make a just account unto the saints:
A deacon.

sent from the amusingly named Tribulation Wholesome. His congregation are hoping Subtle will make a philosopher’s stone for them, too, but when Subtle asks for more funds, complains that they’ve already given him thirty pounds of materials. Looking for a way to turn the situation, Subtle discovers the man’s name is Ananias and fakes outrage that the Elders have sent him a man named after the high priest who condemned Jesus in the gospel story.

Scene 6 Enter Drugger the pharmacist. Subtle concocts a sign for his new shop which plays on his name, and for which they extract more money. Drugger confesses he is in love with a young woman in his neighbourhood, a widow. He goes on to explain she has a brother, newly 21 and just inherited property worth 3,000 a year. Subtle and Face spy an opening and tell Drugger they’ll work to win him her favour. He gives them more money and leaves, at which they instantly insult him and say they will win the woman and her inheritance for one of them.

Act 3

Scene 1 A dialogue between Ananias and his superior in the Anabaptists, Tribulation Wholesome in which the latter explains that 1) Subtle may not be the heathen Ananias thinks him, maybe has has been soiled by his trade i.e. working with fire (later on Face refers to him as ‘black boy’ – presumably he has a sooty face), 2) explains their motivation, namely that many non-conforming ministers were excommunicated and forbidden from preaching by the Hampton Court Conference called soon after James’s accession, in 1604. The point being, they want to use the philosopher’s stone to produce gold to bribe secular magistrates into permitting their ‘silenced’ brethren to preach again.

Scene 2 Subtle joins them. He listens to Wholesome and makes him extravagant promises about what the philosopher’s stone will enable him to do, namely cure and heal people and so gain temporal power and influence (whenever Ananias chips in, Subtle turns on him and scolds him)

Subtle gives a long list of the odd and affected behaviours and secret hypocrisies which public opinion attributed to the Puritans, saying possession of the philosopher’s stone will mean they no longer have to practice them, with Wholesome and Ananias nodding in agreement and the audience laughing their heads off at the Puritans’ naked hypocrisy. Subtle manages to persuade them to contribute another 100 marks to buy alchemical equipment.

Scene 3 Face enters (in his disguise as a captain) to tell Subtle he’s irritated because Surly never showed up at their rendezvous at the Temple church. The good news is that ‘a noble Count, a Don of Spain’, laden with treasure, is on his way to court ‘our Dol’. How does he know? Someone handed him a message when he was waiting for Surly… Mmm.. I wonder if it’s Surly in disguise, planning to expose them as con-men.

Scene 4 Dapper arrives. He is expecting the Fairy Queen. Doll has to run off and get changed before Face opens the door to Dapper. Face is promising him the Fairy Queen will make him the most successful gambler in London when Drugger arrives, with Kastril, the brother of the widow he mentioned earlier.

Kastril is a recognisable type – a brash, crude young man, he’s come to town to learn how to swear and quarrel and smoke like the other roaring boys, and yet is touchingly naive and innocent – he won’t go to a pub because he has heard there is gambling there!

Anyway, Face bamboozles him with wild stories of how Subtle has made the poorest young men rich beyond their dreams and winds Kastril up to such a wild pitch he runs off to fetch his widowed sister. Then Face dispatched Drugger to get the length of damask cloth he’d promised them.

This leaves Face alone with Dapper. They told Dapper to wash with vinegar in preparation for his audience with the Fairy Queen, and he has, and has bought ‘six score Edward shillings’ and an old Harry’s sovereign and three James shillings and an Elizabeth groat. Would that our current money was so interesting!

Scene 5 Enter Subtle dressed as a priest of fairy who ensures Dapper has made the necessary preliminaries, they blindfold him and make him throw off all his valuables (purse, rings) then dance around him pretending to be fairies and insisting he throw off absolutely all his valuables.

They haven’t even got as far as introducing Doll dressed as the Fairy Queen, when she hisses through the window that Sir Epicure Mammon has arrived. Oops, that’s torn it! As he knocks at the door Face has to run over and speak through it saying he needs to get Subtle out of the way so Mammon can talk to Doll, so go for a few turns up & down the street… then he hurriedly changes into his outfit as ‘Lungs’.

Subtle and Face then persuade blindfolded Dapper that the Fairy Queen is eating and will see him presently. They furiously ad lib and decide he can be gagged with some gingerbread and stashed somewhere – where? the privy! They tell him it is all perfumed and ready for him, ‘Only the fumigation’s somewhat strong’. No sooner have they locked Dapper in the toilet, than Face runs over to the front door to let Mammon in.

Act 4

Scene 1 A comic scene in which Mammon, the overblown sensualist, woos Doll, enumerating her virtues and beauties, while Face stands to one side commentating, knowing she is a common whore.  When she points out his power to create wealth will threaten the authorities, Mammon paints a fantastic image of them moving to some free, fantasy country where they will live on unheard-of luxuries, in a bravura speech speech:

We’ll therefore go withal, my girl, and live
In a free state, where we will eat our mullets,
Soused in high-country wines, sup pheasants’ eggs,
And have our cockles boil’d in silver shells;
Our shrimps to swim again, as when they liv’d,
In a rare butter made of dolphins’ milk,
Whose cream does look like opals; and with these
Delicate meats set ourselves high for pleasure,
And take us down again, and then renew
Our youth and strength with drinking the elixir,
And so enjoy a perpetuity
Of life and lust!

Face enters to tell Mammon he is getting very loud, please to be quieter and go within. Doll and Mammon exit.

Scene 2 To make way for Kastril, the country heir who would be a city gallant, and his bashful sister the widow, Dame Pliant. When Kastril begins to make objections, Subtle interrupts him to play the part of teacher and explains to him how to make an argument, and then turns to the widow and flatters her, saying she is made to be kissed, and kissing her. He reads the lines in her hand and tells her she is destined for a military man.

At that moment, enter Face dressed up in his Captain uniform and he praises both Kastril and Dame Pliant, impressing both, but gets to whisper to Subtle that the Spanish Don has arrived! Hastily they fabricate a plan – Subtle will take Kastril and Pliant to his rooms where he will show them the rules of quarrelling and a magic mirror, while Face deals with the Don.

Scene 3 Subtle has taken the pair to his room and returns for an argument with Face. The scene brings out how, amid the frantic juggling of their victims, the pair are jostlingly rivalrous, quick to spot if either is gaining an advantage over the other. The arrival of Dame Pliant adds flames to the mix, because both now want to win her and are jealous of the slightest advantage the other gains… But they agree their plan and jointly greet the Don.

This Spanish Don is, in fact, Mammon’s sceptical friend, Surly, disguised in a comically exaggerate Spanish costume with an enormous ruff: ‘He speaks out of a fortification’, as Face puts it. There is the familiar but still very funny comic device that, once the Don starts speaking Spanish, Face and Subtle, at first timidly, and then with mounting confidence, insult and abuse him to his face in English, confident that he cannot understand. But of course, he can

But then they realise they are facing a pressing problem: the Don has arrived to fulfil the promise of seeing the beautiful senorita (Doll) but Doll is busy inside with Mammon. And the Don is getting impatient. Face has a brainwave. What about the widow, Dame Pliant, who’s just arrived with Kastril? Why not serve up Dame Pliant to the Don, he gets his woman, she gets a glorious knight, both pay our crooks?

This leads to a furious row between Face and Subtle who had both wanted the widow for themselves, but  the Don is getting impatient so they are forced to make a hurried deal, and Face runs off to get the widow.

Scene 4 Enter Kastril and Dame Pliant, who they all set about persuading that she should let herself be wooed by he Don, with Face and Subtle competing to paint the most grandiloquent picture of her wealth and eminence if she marries him – a coach and horses and fine clothes – whereas if she doesn’t, she’ll be a street vendor in a year. Her brother joins in the bullying and so, reluctantly, she acquiesces and goes over to the Don, who continues to address her in Spanish. They exit into the garden, apparently, while Subtle tells Kastril they should now go to his room where he can commence his lessons on how to argue and quarrel like a well-bred Londoner.

Scene 5 Cut to Mammon with Doll. Now you might have thought she would be seducing him for his money but in fact she is playing out the part allotted her of intelligent, educated woman who has been driven mad by learning and Face enters the room (having quickly changed his disguise to ‘Lungs’) to find Doll obsessively monologuing about Egyptian history and the fifth monarchy while Mammon is at his wits end to get her to stop. Face and he talk at the same time as Doll’s monologue and then they hear Subtle coming and all flee.

All except Mammon who Subtle discovers, trying to hide from him. Subtle immediately plays the role of the chaste and spiritual alchemist who is disappointed to find his favourite son engaged in some hole-in-a-corner bawdry. No wonder, Subtle grandly proclaims, the alchemy in the laboratory is going badly, if Mammon has brought spiritual impurity into the house!

THE GREAT EXPLOSION – A loud crack is heard within, and Face comes running in to say everything has exploded – ‘Retorts, receivers, pelicans, bolt-heads’ – all destroyed as if a bolt has come from heaven! Subtle faints and when he comes round, claims the great destruction was due to Mammon’s infidelity and licentiousness and Mammon believes him!

MAMMON: O, my voluptuous mind! I am justly punish’d.
FACE. And so am I, sir.
MAMMON: Cast from all my hopes—
FACE. Nay, certainties, sir.
MAMMON: By mine own base affections.

Face tells him the distressed noblewoman (i.e. Doll)’s brother is arriving, he will be angry if he discovers Mammon is wooing his sister, he’d better leave in a hurry. Is there no recompense Mammon can make? Well, says Face boldly, give a hundred pounds to the charity box at Bedlam Hospital for the insane – Mammon agrees – Face says he’ll send someone round to collect it later that day. Exit Mammon.

Our crooked pair congratulate themselves on having got one problem out of the way. Now to the Spanish Don and his wooing of the widow Pliant.

Scene 6 Surly is with Dame Pliant. He has thrown off his Spanish disguise and is explaining to her what a pack of crooks Subtle and Face are. Subtle comes in, is complacently rude to the Don (thinking he understands no English) and begins to pick his pockets when Surly throws him to the floor and berates him in English. ‘Help! Murder!’ cries a horrified Subtle. Face enters and is horrified to discover the Spanish Don is in fact Surly, who now gives a long list of the ways Face scams his victims in pubs. Face slips out again but when Subtle tries to, Surly grabs him.

Scene 7 Then Face r-enters accompanied by Kastril, and tells him that Surly is an imposter, come here on false pretences to seduce his sister. Face tells Kastril to practice his new-found quarrelling skills on him. Now Surly finds himself facing a united front of Face, Subtle and Kastril, who all start shouting at him.

With perfect comic timing, this is when the Puritan Ananias enters proclaiming the standard Puritan greeting: ‘Peace to the household!’ Ananias instantly tells from Surley’s preposterous Spanish ruffs and sill hat (!) that he is a Catholic and therefore of the Anti-Christ. Confronted by this wall of opposition, Surly has to retreat and exits. Comically, Kastril asks Face and Subtle if he quarrelled and argued like a professional. They praise him while, in fact, all he did was throw abuse.

Anyway, Kastril exits and now Face turns to sort out Drugger. He tells Drugger that they had intended him to play the part of a Spanish nobleman in order to win Dame Pliant’s heart. Has he a Spanish outfit? They dispatch him to go and find one.

That leaves the crooked duo with Ananias. The joke here is that Ananias reports that the Elders and the Brethren of the Separation (i.e. their congregation) have determined that coining money is not unlawful (to them; it is, of course, illegal according to the laws of the land). In other words, that they have piously and hypocritically decided it is alright to break the law. Subtle is pleased to act for them, but says it can’t be at this house, the Brethren must suggest another location – and so Ananias exists and Face and Subtle are finally alone, well, except for the widow, Dame Pliant, who is inside somewhere being hosted by Doll in the guise of noblewoman.

But at that moment Doll enters to tell them… the master of the house is back! He is outside, surrounded by forty neighbours! Face as usual, is the man with a plan. Subtle shall shave him to restore him to (we now discover) the character of smooth-faced Jeremy, the house servant. Face/Jeremy will put the master off for as long as he can, while Subtle and Doll pack up all their goods into a couple of trunks which they’ll have taken to the river and conveyed downstream to Ratcliffe, where they can all rendezvous in a day or two.

Act 5

Scene 1 A crowd of neighbours buzz round the master of the house, Lovewit, telling him about all the strange comings and goings and how none of them have seen Jeremy the butler for a month or more. Lovewit knocks on his own front door.

Scene 2 To his surprise, Jeremy (Face) opens it and proceeds, straight-faced, to tell his master he has been absent from the house for a month or more, and acts astonished when the neighbours insist they’ve seen so many strange comings and goings. Jeremy/Face pretends to be astonished when Lovewit retails the neighbours’ stories of endless comings and goings, saying it is all news to him. And indeed, in a nice touch of satire, the neighbours themselves begin to doubt their own testimonies and to downplay them, and Lovewit impatiently calls them changelings who are so unreliable.

Scene 3 So things were looking up when suddenly Mammon and Surly appear. Face pushes Lovewit inside just as Mammon and Surly arrive at the front door. Surly has fully explained to Mammon the scale of the imposture played on him and Mammon is furious. They knock at the door and Face/Jeremy opens it bold as brass, claims to know nothing of any Captain or alchemist, suggests they have the wrong house and, as they become angry, produces Lovewit as the true master of the house who, of course, knows nothing about them.

Hardly have they been put off than arrives Kastril, the angry boy, who bangs loudly on the door and insists on seeing his sister. And then Ananias and Tribulation, the Anabaptists, who also knock angrily on the door. When Lovewit appears at the door to appease them, they decide to fetch the officers and exit.

Face is still trying to persuade Lovewit that these visitors must be mad, when they both hear the voice of Dapper crying out from inside the house. Oops, everyone had forgotten him. Remember how they’d promised him he would meet the Fairy Queen and Face and Subtle had blindfolded him and gagged him with gingerbread, while they sorted out all their other visitors. Well, clearly the gingerbread has melted/been eaten and now he’s shouting.

When Subtle starts shouting at Dapper to shut up, Face can’t help hissing at both of them to be quiet and Truewit finally realises something is really up, and demands Face tell him the truth. He emphasises that he is a tolerant and forgiving master, just tell. So Face admits that he has been entertaining guests, but focuses on the fact that there is a widow currently within the house (Dame Pliant), a rich widow, who Lovewit can woo and win if he dresses up as a Spaniard.

Scene 4 Surprisingly, the scene cuts to the room where Dapper is, where Subtle enters and asks what happened to his gag, and where Face joins them. They both promise Dapper he will see the Fairy Queen and lo and behold, enter Doll dressed as the Queen. Subtle bids Dapper kneel and abase himself and kiss her skirts.

Doll performs impressively as the Queen, blessing Dapper and giving him a fly-familiar (?) to wear around his neck. Subtle tells him to prick his wrist to draw blood to feed the fly, once a week, and the magic fly will make him win every game of chance he plays. Subtle suggests that in a week’s time he brings them the first thousand pounds of his winnings, as fee. In fact, why doesn’t he give away his wretched inheritance of forty marks a year? To him, Subtle? ‘I will, I will’ says Dapper, kisses the Queen’s hem as she departs, then himself runs off to get the legal documents to sign over his inheritance.

He has barely left before Drugger is at the door with the Spanish suit they asked him for earlier. Subtle gives it to Face who runs off (I think) to give it to Truewit to woo Dame Pliant in. With Face out the way, Subtle tells Doll of his plan. Once they have packed up all their treasures and shipped by boat, instead of going to Ratcliffe, they’ll head west to Brentford, and escape Face, who they are both sick of. Doll agrees. She’ll go now and tell Dame Pliant to hand over rings and treasures to please the Doctor (i.e. Subtle) then they’ll abandon her and quit the house. They seal the deal with a kiss.

Face enters at precisely that point, spots them kissing, tells them Drugger is back with the parson they told him to get, runs off to sort it out – Doll and Subtle think he (Face) is planning to marry Dame Pliant in haste, but moments later he is back. The trunks are packed and all three go through the inventory of all the treasure they have extracted from all the victims they have conned, Face locks them up and then – there is A BIG REVEAL:

Face reveals that he invited his master to return, that he has told his master everything, and his master has forgiven him in exchange for possession of the treasure i.e. all the loot which only a few seconds earlier the other two were gleefully counting. All Face can offer them is a hand over the wall as they’ll have to flee the officers of the law who have been summoned.

At which exact point there is a loud knocking on the door from the officers. With mock solicitude, Face offers Doll a reference if she needs a job in a brothel – she tells him to go hang himself – and tells Subtle to set up as a conman in a different setting, and he’ll send him a customer or two for old times sake – to which Subtle replies he will hang himself solely so he can haunt Face for the rest of his life. All three exit.

Scene 5 Leaving the stage to Truewit, master of the house who enters dressed as a Spaniard and the parson, followed by Face who asks him if he’s got married to Pliant? Yes, is the quick answer. At which point the knocking gets louder, as no less a crowd than the police officers, Mammon, Surly, Kastril, Ananias and Tribulation are all banging on the door. Truewit lets them in.

They all clamour to see Face and Subtle, Truewit eventually calms them and explains – his servant here, Jeremy, has told him he let out the house this past month or more to a Doctor and a Captain, who have now quit it and where they have gone, he has no idea! He admits them all and tells them to search the premises which he himself has found the worse for candlesoot and burns, but nothing else.

All except for the widow who, he now declares, was waiting for a Spanish don to return but in whose absence, he has now married. Surly exclaims his disappointment and Truewit is comically surprised that he should have waited and delayed and so lost his bird.

Mammon has been searching the house and now returns to say it’s true, it’s empty, all except for his metal goods which the crooks have stashed in the basement and he’ll have back. ‘Will he, though?’ asks Truewit. Is Mammon prepared to go to court and broadcast to all and sundry how he was richly cozened out of his goods. ‘Oh, in that case you can keep them’, says Mammon.

Bitterly disappointed, Mammon says he will hire a farmer’s turnip cart and go preach the end of the world. Surly says he’ll join him, but if he ever finds that Captain Face… And Face – obviously transformed by having a shave and different clothes – says he will gladly tip him off if ever he sees him.

Ananias and Tribulation step forward and say they will reclaim their goods, but Truewit says no. When they launch into their biblical cant, Truewit says he will refute them with a cudgel and they flee. Drugger enters very briefly and doesn’t even have time to make a claim before Truewit scares him off.

It is clear that Truewit is, in his own gentrified way, just as much of a crook as his man, Jeremy. Editor of the New Mermaid edition, Elizabeth Cook, describes him as ‘amorally magnanimous’.

A vibe which comes over even more in the last moments of the play when Kastril enters, pushing his sister boorishly in front of him. He insults and vilifies her for marrying a poor man and not a knight as he’d planned, but Truewit interjects, says he is a true knight and when Kastril starts to practice his insulting, Truewit easily outdoes him and, in fact, talks him round to being quite friendly. Indeed the pair agree to take a pipe of tobacco together, and Kastril takes Dame Pliant inside (how many words does she get to speak in the entire play? she is just a kind of package passed from hand to hand).

It is The End. Truewit steps forward and addresses the audience, saying what master would not be delighted in a servant who procured him a rich widow as wife and trunks full of treasure, even if it is a little beyond the bounds of decorum. And the last word goes to Face who directly addresses the audience and asks their indulgence.

Thoughts

This is a brilliant play from the very start, driven by Jonson’s phenomenally energetic language, by the extraordinary range and breadth of his vocabulary – especially the specialised jargon of alchemy – and the sheer energy with which the three crooks carry out their scams.

It starts off at a gallop, throwing us into the middle of a violent argument between the crooks, and from that point the pace never lets up, with an endless stream of new victims arriving then returning in an ever-increasing frenzy of comic delusions, scheming and pomposity.

This latter quality is the speciality of the wonderful Sir Epicure Mammon – ‘I will be puissant and mighty in my talk’ – whose speeches are almost worth memorising for their elaborate and eloquent decadence.

More even than Volpone this play makes you realise Jonson was in love with the very crimes he purports to satirise and castigate.

Social history

One of the pleasures of reading older works of literature is the feast of social history they contain. The Alchemist makes reference to the following notable contemporary events:

  • Queen Elizabeth I imprisoned Alexander de Lannoy when he failed to produce the philosopher’s stone for her
  • quintessence simply means ‘fifth’ essence, superior to the four earthly elements, thought to be what heavenly bodies were made of
  • colliers were associated with hell and the devil (because of coal and its fires)
  • the act 33 Henry VIII c.8 forbade the use if magic invocations to find gold or silver
  • ‘laundering’ meant putting coins in acid to dissolve off some of the gold or silver surface; ‘barbing’ meant snipping slips off the edge of coins – both were illegal
  • the Elizabethan magician John Dee’s assistant, Edward Kelley, had both ears cut off as punishment for coining
  • Southwark doctor Simon Read was pardoned, in 1607, for invoking three spirits to discover a thief
  • Chaush – in 1607 a Turk named Mustafa arrived in England declaring himself an ambassador from the Sultan using the title ‘Chiaush’ and was grandly entertained until the fraud was discovered
  • Lambeth was ‘noted for prostitutes and thieves’, which amuses me as I live in Lambeth
  • Peru – synonymous with great wealth because of the Spanish silver mines there
  • The Hampton Court Conference of 1604 banned numerous non-conformist ministers from preaching
  • In the winter of 1607 to 16088 the Thames froze over
  • Lions were kept in the Tower of London as tourist attractions
  • It was a common punishment for prostitutes to be attached by rope to the back of a cart which was slowly pulled through the streets of London while the prostitute was whipped
  • Barbers used stale urine as a ‘lye’ to loosen their customers’ hair
  • One of the talks of the town was the little boy of six with a large penis (mentioned act 5 scene i and in Act 3 of The Knight of the Burning Pestle)
  • In 1609 the case came to court of Thomas Rogers, a Dorset man, who was robbed of £6 by two brothers who promised they would introduce him to the Fairy Queen who would be his bride

Related links

Jacobean comedies

Cavalier poetry

17th century history

Restoration comedies

Leave a comment
by Simon on September 28, 2020  •  Permalink
Posted in Comedy, Play, Theatre
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on September 28, 2020

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2020/09/28/the-alchemist-ben-jonson/

Liza of Lambeth by Somerset Maugham (1897)

This is Somerset Maugham’s first novel, the first publication in a writing career which went on to last over 60 years.

Maugham trained as a doctor for five year at St Thomas’s Hospital in Lambeth and saw at first hand the terrible poverty in the slums of the area, the drunkenness and the narrowness of working lives and expectations.

But this novel also tapped into a popular movement among the cultural elite, because the 1890s saw a wave of novels and factual books about working class poverty and the slums of London, such as the notoriously brutal and pessimistic A Child of the Jago by Arthur Morrison.

This is the cultural context for Maugham’s relatively brief (120 pages) tale of bright, vivacious Liza Kemp from the Lambeth slums and how she falls in love with another woman’s husband.

The plot

Liza is 18, a lively working class girl who lives with her widowed mother in Vere Street, Lambeth, off Westminster Bridge Road.

Everyone liked her, and was glad to have her company.

Liza works in a local factory. She dresses colourfully and is always the first to make a joke or start a sing-song. For all that she is, in reality, an underdeveloped teenager from the slums.

She looked at her own thin arms, just two pieces of bone with not a muscle on them, but very white and showing distinctly the interlacement of blue veins: she did not notice that her hands were rough, and red and dirty with the nails broken, and bitten to the quick.

Chapter one The opening scene establishes her as ‘the pride of her alley’, the most confident, best-dressed young woman in the street, who all the men want to dance with. The scene where the young women dance to the music of an organ grinder and Liza finds herself by accident running into the arms of a tall dark stranger could be from a musical, could almost be from West Side Story (though with Victorian bustles and corsets).

Chapter two This man is Jim Blakeston, tall, bearded and virile, who’s just moved into the street along with his fat wife and five kids.

‘E’s got a big family – five kids. Ain’t yer seen ‘is wife abaht the street? She’s a big, fat woman, as does ‘er ‘air funny.’

Meanwhile Liza has been pursued for some time by earnest young Tom, who works in another factory, earning a respectable 23 shillings (95p) a week.

It was a young man with light yellow hair and a little fair moustache, which made him appear almost boyish; he was light-complexioned and blue-eyed, and had a frank and pleasant look mingled with a curious bashfulness that made him blush when people spoke to him.

The pair had walked out together earlier in the year, but then Liza lost interest. Which doesn’t stop Tom pestering her.

Chapter three Liza’s home life, i.e. her mother is an alcoholic who steals Liza’s wages and moans about her hard lot in life. Liza steps outside and is confronted by pale, shy Tom who invites her to come on a street outing to Chingford, but she says she can’t cos she doesn’t want to lead him on.

Liza walks over to her friend Sally’s house, and they banter, walk down to the bridge where Sally meets her young man and Liza walks back to the street alone, then comes across the new man, big strong tall bearded Tom, playing with two little kiddies on his knee, who cheekily asks her for another kiss. She gives him what for and strolls on only to be playfully attacked by some of the young boys, wrestling free and finally making it home in time to cook Sunday dinner.

Chapter four Bank Holiday and the day of the big outing to Chingford leaving from the Red Lion pub. Liza initially says no but allows herself to be persuaded to go by the wheedling of her would-be lover, Tom when, possibly, it’s the fact that big Jim is also going on the outing which decides her.

Chapter five The Bank Holiday outing to Chingford aboard a horse-drawn carriage, with a riotous crew of proles dressed up the nines and bantering fit to bust. Frequent stops at pubs, much drinking and then, at Chingford, a vast picnic.

Then they all set to. Pork-pies, saveloys, sausages, cold potatoes, hard-boiled eggs, cold bacon, veal, ham, crabs and shrimps, cheese, butter, cold suet-puddings and treacle, gooseberry-tarts, cherry-tarts, butter, bread, more sausages, and yet again pork-pies! They devoured the provisions like ravening beasts, stolidly, silently, earnestly, in large mouthfuls which they shoved down their throats unmasticated.

At one point couples paired off but Liza didn’t want to get caught with Tom, and preferred walking through the woods with Jim and his wife, so that Tom, after some arguing, went off in a huff. More beer, a hilarious donkey ride, a coconut shy, more beer and then the concertinas come out for a sing-song. Tom is too shy to take part, whereas Jim is a big confident singer. You can see where this is all heading.

The long ride home starts out with drunken singing but soon the couples sink into silence, many falling asleep. Liza is sitting between Tom and Jim and isn’t surprised that Tom sheepishly slips his arm round her waist, but is surprised when Jim slips his hand along her thigh to hold her hand. Torn between two lovers.

Back in Westminster Bridge Road the men peel off to the pub to have a last drink, Liza setting off with Sally and then finally walking by herself, when Jim comes running up the empty street behind her, and insists on having a good night kiss which she at first resists, and then acquiesces in.

Chapter six Next day at the factor everyone’s nursing a hangover (Maugham doesn’t tell us what is produced in this factory). On the way home Liza and her friend Sally admire the poster for a play. Further on she passes Jim’s house, he strolls out and then along with her for a bit and asks her to the theatre.

Back at her house Liza sits on the stoop with Mrs Stanley whose husband was drunk the night before and battered her so badly she had to go to hospital. Still, he’s a sweetie when he’s sober (how many times have we heard that?) Liza finds her mind drifting off, at work and while chatting to Mrs Stanley, over and again to thoughts of big strong Jim.

Chapter seven A few days later Sally is late for work and explains she was up late going to the play with her man, ‘Arry, and how Liza ought to get Tom to take her. Liza boils over with contradictory emotions, despising Tom, massively attracted to Jim but also angry with Jim because he hasn’t mentioned going to the theatre again, because he didn’t stroll round to her house the other night as he’d mentioned doing.

On the last night of the play’s run, the night Jim originally suggested taking her, she dolls herself up and goes along and finds Jim waiting for her outside the theatre, but determines to act affronted and offended. In they go to see the play and there’s a full description of the night’s complicated entertainment, with singers while they queue, the melodramatic play itself, which has an interval with a comic turn before returning to the climax.

Then they go for a drink near the theatre, walk back towards the river and sit on a bench between trees under the stars. Maugham describes Liza’s feelings of breathless helplessness, swooning against the big man. He puts his arm round her and they go for another drink at a more local pub, where Liza’s petrified they’ll be seen. Lastly they loiter at the side alley which leads into Vere Street, Jim kissing and her and then – I think – asking to have sex with her.

‘Liza,’ he said in a whisper, ‘will yer?’
‘Will I wot?’ she said, looking down.
‘You know, Liza. Sy, will yer?’
‘Na,’ she said.
He bent over her and repeated –
‘Will yer?’
She did not speak, but kept beating down on his hand.
‘Liza,’ he said again, his voice growing hoarse and thick – ‘Liza, will yer?’

To my astonishment Jim then punches her in the stomach?????

Suddenly he shook himself, and closing his fist gave her a violent, swinging blow in the belly.
‘Come on,’ he said.
And together they slid down into the darkness of the passage.

‘Whaaaaat?’ as my kids, mimicking American TV, like to say, ‘was that all about?’ Is it meant to be an accurate representation of working class playfulness? A violent blow? And she just accepts it??

Chapter eight Liza awakes yawning and stretching luxuriously on Sunday morning. It seems they did have sex – ‘the delicious sensation of love came over her’ – in which case a) where, in the street? b) wasn’t she a virgin? Wouldn’t there have been some amount of pain and discomfort involved? And fear of pregnancy? And sexually transmitted disease?

Not in this story. Liza wakes, stretches, surveys her sordid little room littered with cheap knick-knacks with pleasure and pride, dresses and goes out into the street where she joins in with a gang of boys playing cricket, even includes Tom, passing by, in her spirit of wellbeing. Then she spies Jim’s daughter Polly emerging from his house, further down the street, and runs over to introduce herself, and then strolls along arm in arm with Polly on the family errand (which is to buy some ice cream).

‘I was just goin’ dahn into the road ter get some ice-cream for dinner. Father ‘ad a bit of luck last night, ‘e says, and ‘e’d stand the lot of us ice-cream for dinner ter-day.’
‘I’ll come with yer if yer like.’

That evening, after dark, Jim taps lightly at her window and she sneaks out of the house to meet him in the dark and kiss passionately.

Chapter nine There follow weeks of happiness as the couple meet at various locations along Westminster Bridge Road where they stroll hand in hand, or in the park where they lie in the summer sunshine in one another’s arms, or, when September rains comes, she sits on his knee on benches on the Embankment, wrapped in his coat, safe in his enfolding arms, saying nothing, exchanging long passionate kisses.

But they are spotted, a few times that they’re aware of and probably plenty of others, with a predictable response from ‘the community’. Polly stops talking to her. Mrs Blakeston regards her with anger in her eyes. Jim reports that his wife has stopped talking to him. Clumps of women gossip about her, then go silent and frigid as she walks by. Even the boys she used to play cricket with start mocking her and her ‘husband’. Everyone knows about the affair.

Sally gets married to her ‘Arry. (I wonder if this is where they got the names for the movie from. I doubt it.) Their comic marriage service (with a few pints in the pub beforehand to stoke up courage and much sniggering and poking in the ribs by ‘Arry’s mates at the most suggestive parts of the service) brings the community together and is obviously designed – in its innocence and community – to provide a comparison with the bad feeling generated by Liza and Jim’s affair.

Chapter ten November comes. It’s cold and foggy. Liza and Jim take to meeting in the warm waiting rooms of railway stations at Waterloo and Charing Cross, but they’re smelly and packed with people. One day Liza says she can’t go on like this. Jim asks her to move in with him. She says she can’t leave her mother. Anyway, they’d have to get married and live together decent-like, and they can’t do that while Jim’s married to his missus. And so on. They’re both miserable.

One day she bumps into Tom, who is nowadays embarrassed to talk to her. She reflects how simple and innocent life with him would have been and wishes he’d make a first move and they could be friends again, but he blanks her.

Sally is disgustingly happy with her married state for the first few weeks, but ‘Arry is a traditionalist who insists his missus stops working in the factory and stays in the kitchen and gets ready for baby care. He’s backed up by Sally’s mother who points out that she herself:

‘ad twelve, ter sy nothin’ of two stills an’ one miss.’

But quite soon ‘Arry starts beating Sally. Only when he’s had a few drops, mind. Otherwise he’s a sweetie, Sally tells Liza through her sobs.

Liza spends so long comforting Sally that she’s late for that night’s rendezvous with Jim. He emerges from a local pub, quite drunk and irritated that she’s late. For the first time they argue, she tries to restrain him from going back into the pub, he lashes out and, not really meaning to, catches her face with his arm. He is instantly full of contrition and apologies and they make up.

But next morning she has a black eye and passersby and loafers in the street call out all kinds of hilarious banter about her and her big-fisted lover. Mortified, LIza runs home sobbing tears of shame.

Chapter eleven ‘Arry’s behaviour gets worse.

”E ain’t wot I thought ‘e wos,’ she said. ‘I don’t mind sayin’ thet; but ‘e ‘as a lot ter put up with; I expect I’m rather tryin’ sometimes, an’ ‘e means well. P’raps ‘e’ll be kinder like when the biby’s born.’

Sally warns Liza that Mrs Blakeston (Jim’s wife) is gunning for her and, sure enough, Mrs B finally confronts Liza outside the Vere Street pub. Quite a crowd gathers to cheer her on as she accuses Liza of stealing her husband, breaking up a happy home, taking his money, and being nothing more than a common prostitute. She slaps Liza, then spits in her face, at which point it becomes a cat fight.

This is bitter fighting with teeth and claws and blows rained everywhere. The watching men ironically shout ‘Time’ and start to organise it as a proper fight, with seconds to refresh each of the fighters and time out between rounds. The women without exception back Mrs Blakeston, calling Liza a homebreaker and whore.

Suddenly Jim pushes through the crowd and forces the two women apart. Then another man pushes through. It is mild-mannered long-suffering Tom and he takes Liza home, up to her room and gently dabs away the blood and sweat with a wetted towel. She bursts into tears, says what a bad woman she is, how she is not worthy of him, apologises for snubbing him. Tom accepts it all and asks her if she will marry him. But she says no, she is not worthy, and then clinches it by telling him she thinks she’s in the family way. Taken aback for a moment, Tom girds his loins and still offers to marry her. But Liza still says no. He leaves. She sinks on her bed in utter misery.

Cut to Jim dragging his wife home (her nagging all the way) upstairs to their room where she refuses to shut up, bating him till he snaps and really violently attacks her. Daughter Polly tries to drag him off but Jim slaps her hard and sends her reeling across the room, so she runs downstairs to the two men and a woman having tea in the flat below. One man refuses to interfere between man and wife on principle and the other is scared of being hit, so it is the exasperated woman who runs upstairs to find Jim kneeling on his wife’s chest and beating and beating and beating her in the face.

The woman drags Jim off and shames him into stopping so, with one last vicious kick of his bleeding wife, Jim slams the door and goes to the pub.

Liza’s mum comes home to find her daughter bedraggled from the fight outside the pub, with a blood-stained face and one eye swollen up. She offers Liza a nip of spirits. In a long scene the two women get slowly drunk, Liza realising, for the first time, how spirits (previously she was a beer girl) make you feel just fine. I think we are witnessing the birth of an alcoholic – like mother, like daughter.

Chapter twelve For a day and two nights Liza lies sweating and in increasing agony. Her mum thinks it’s her first whiskey hangover, but in facts it’s fever leading to a miscarriage. Mrs Kemp runs upstairs to fetch Mrs Hodges, who turns out to be a sort of nurse who helps with confinements. Only then do they fetch the doctor, who makes an examination and predicts that Liza is going to die. A crowd gather in the hallway outside. Tom pushes through into the room, and tries to make Liza hear him but she is unconscious. Later Jim comes, seizes her face in her hands and tries to apologise. She hears nothing as her life ebbs away.

What makes this chapter a tour de force is the fact that, amid Liza’s slowl decline and death, Maugham depicts the friendship that quickly grows between whining, complaining Mrs Kemp (Liza’s mum) and the tidy, discreet, nodding Mrs Hodges from upstairs. They discuss which liquor is best and swap stories about coffins and undertakers, all the while sipping brandy – purely for medicinal purposes – as Liza slowly dies.

The cackling camaraderie of the two old ladies is brilliantly done, and much more vivid and eerie than all the love scenes which preceded it. They are like two alcoholic Norns, prattling inconsequentially while life drains out of the young girl on the bed.

Eventually, there is a dry rattle from Liza’s emaciated body and everyone in the room feels the cold, blanking presence of Death.

It’s a genuinely macabre and spooky ending, and it strongly anticipates Maugham’s gift for creating powerful scenes and prattling characters, which he would turn out to be able to express better in the stream of plays he wrote in the Edwardian era, than in his less-successful novels.

Social history

Well, they’re not as poor as the Jagos depicted in Arthur Morrison’s brutal novel, A Child of the Jago. In the Jago (an East End slum) nobody has a job so they literally starve unless they can steal something every day.

Whereas all the characters in Vere Street appear to have a job, and enough wages to splash around on drinking and eating at pubs. Nobody seems to think twice about going to the theatre, or splashing out on the Bank Holiday outing to Chingford. These are all things the inhabitants of Morrison’s novels could only dream of.

The women are baby factories. Jim’s wife has borne him nine children – of whom only five are still living – plus the miscarriage, and she’s pregnant again. Sally’s mum had twelve live births, two still-births and a  miscarriage. Liza’s mum had 13 children. Obviously, only free birth control and sex education could begin to tackle this plague of babies.

Alcohol is the only escape (none of the mass-produced drugs of our era, or the addictive medicines e.g. opioids).

Men beat their wives, sometimes unconscious. Everyone accepts this, even the wives.

Maugham’s style

There’s something very flat and mechanical and literal about Maugham’s descriptions. He doesn’t jump to the interesting bit of an action, as a narrator he doesn’t make any sudden moves, but describes every event flatly and factually like an instructions manual.

The organ-man was an Italian, with a shock of black hair and a ferocious moustache. Drawing his organ to a favourable spot, he stopped, released his shoulder from the leather straps by which he dragged it, and cocking his large soft hat on the side of his head, began turning the handle. It was a lively tune, and in less than no time a little crowd had gathered round to listen, chiefly the young men and the maidens, for the married ladies were never in a fit state to dance, and therefore disinclined to trouble themselves to stand round the organ.

The text is marked by the heaviness of phrasing which was never really to leave him, as well as the occasional odd infelicity of word order.

The dancers stopped to see the sight, and the organ-grinder, having come to the end of his tune, ceased turning the handle and looked to see what was the excitement.

Wouldn’t that be better as ‘what the excitement was’ – or the more flowing ‘what was causing all the excitement’? ‘Stilted’ might describe the relationship between young William and his readers.

‘Look at ‘er stockin’s!’ shouted another; and indeed they were remarkable, for Liza had chosen them of the same brilliant hue as her dress, and was herself most proud of the harmony.

He was sitting on a stool at the door of one of the houses, playing with two young children, to whom he was giving rides on his knee.

On every pages there are sentences which make you stumble and choke a bit. Compare and contrast with the bounding fluency of the writer I’ve just been reading, E.W. Hornung and his high-spirited Raffles stories.

Raffles had been leaning back in the saddle-bag chair, watching me with keen eyes sheathed by languid lids; now he started forward, and his eyes leapt to mine like cold steel from the scabbard.

Exciting and melodramatic, Hornung is always zeroing in on the vivid look and gesture. Maugham is the exact opposite, describing mundane details in a very mundane style.

It really seemed an age since the previous night, and all that had happened seemed very long ago. She had not spoken to Jim all day, and she had so much to say to him. Then, wondering whether he was about, she went to the window and looked out; but there was nobody there. She closed the window again and sat just beside it; the time went on, and she wondered whether he would come, asking herself whether he had been thinking of her as she of him; gradually her thoughts grew vague, and a kind of mist came over them. She nodded. (Chapter 8)

On the plus side, Maugham’s prose is remarkably free of the facetiousness and irony of a writer like Arthur Morrison who, in his stories of slum life, is addicted to sometimes archaic and ponderous phraseology.

Scarce was it dark when the Dove-Laners, in a succession of hilarious groups – but withal a trifle suspicious – began to push through Mother Gapp’s doors. (A Child of the Jago chapter 22)

By contrast Maugham’s prose is – for its period – surprisingly clean and streamlined.

Bank Holiday was a beautiful day: the cloudless sky threatened a stifling heat for noontide, but early in the morning, when Liza got out of bed and threw open the window, it was fresh and cool. She dressed herself, wondering how she should spend her day; she thought of Sally going off to Chingford with her lover, and of herself remaining alone in the dull street with half the people away. She almost wished it were an ordinary work-day, and that there were no such things as bank holidays. (Chapter 4)

Compared to the elaborate facetiousness and sprinkling of archaisms in Morrison or Wells, this is the streamlined prose of the future. In her brilliant biography of Maugham, Selina Hastings points out that he deliberately chose the style of the French realists, of Zola and especially Maupassant:

I had at that time a great admiration for Guy de Maupassant… who had so great a gift for telling a story clearly, straightforwardly and effectively.

(The novel’s composition, publication and reception are discussed on pages 53-57 of Hastings’s biography, including the accusation that he had plagiarised some of it from A Child of the Jago.)

Censorship

When I read A Child of the Jago I was very struck by the remark of Robert Blatchford, a contemporary socialist activist and reviewer, whose review is included in the appendices and who said A Child of the Jago was hopelessly unrealistic for two glaring reason:

  1. it omitted the fierce swearing which the underclass used incessantly
  2. it omitted sex

Maugham addresses the issue of swearing in the text, calmly explaining that due to the censorship he cannot reproduce working class speech:

That is not precisely what she said, but it is impossible always to give the exact unexpurgated words of Liza and the other personages of the story, the reader is therefore entreated with his thoughts to piece out the necessary imperfections of the dialogue. (Chapter 1)

‘Oh, you ——!’ she said. Her expression was quite unprintable; nor can it be euphemized. (Chapter 1)

‘I know wot yer mean, you —— you!’ Her language was emphatic, her epithets picturesque, but too forcible for reproduction. (Chapter 2)

‘Bli’me if I speak to ‘im again, the ——.’ (Chapter 7)

‘Well, I think you’re a —— brute!’ She felt very much inclined to cry. (Chapter 7)

‘You’ve come in at last, you ——, you!’ snarled Mrs. Kemp, as Liza entered the room. (Chapter 8)

‘I tell yer I shan’t shut up. I don’t care ‘oo knows it, you’re a ——, you are!’ (Chapter 11)

‘Be quiet!’ he said, and, closing his hand, gave her a heavy blow in the chest that made her stagger.
‘Oh, you ——!’ she screamed.

Fill in the blanks. Are they just ‘damn’, ‘bastard’ and ‘bitch’? Or something much worse? (In fact these blanks cant be concealing the word ‘bitch’ because ‘bitch’, to my surprise, is actually spelled out in chapter 11.)

As to the sex, because Maugham’s subject is several love affairs, there are numerous momewnts of at least chaste physical contact between the sexes, with strong hints of something more. On the Chingford outing ‘Arry boldly puts his arm round Sally’s waist, Tom tries to put his arm round Liza’s waist (‘Keep off the grass’, she banters).

On the tense night when I think she loses her virginity, there is a heavily symbolic moment when Liza puts her hand on a bollard and Jim puts his big strong one on top and refuses to move it, despite her pleas.

And this bollard scene is full of feverish descriptions of Liza’s feelings as she alternately rebelling against Jim, and then swoons against him overcome by the sex urge, eventually looking up into his face to be kissed.

So there is much more treatment of the sex instinct in Maugham than in Morrison, although the cultural censorship of the time still meant he can’t possibly describe anything like actual love making. The couple go off into the night and then… Liza awakes luxuriously in bed, thinks of Jim and ‘the delicious sensation of love came over her’. The reader is left to draw their own conclusion.

Dialogue

A lot of the book is in dialogue form. Is this a good depiction of working class London speech from 1897?

Leaning against the wall of the opposite house was Tom; he came towards her.
”Ulloa!’ she said, as she saw him. ‘Wot are you doin’ ‘ere?’
‘I was waitin’ for you ter come aht, Liza,’ he answered.
She looked at him quickly.
‘I ain’t comin’ aht with yer ter-day, if thet’s wot yer mean,’ she said.
‘I never thought of arskin’ yer, Liza—after wot you said ter me last night.’
His voice was a little sad, and she felt so sorry for him.
‘But yer did want ter speak ter me, didn’t yer, Tom?’ she said, more gently.
‘You’ve got a day off ter-morrow, ain’t yer?’
‘Bank ‘Oliday. Yus! Why?’
‘Why, ’cause they’ve got a drag startin’ from the “Red Lion” that’s goin’ down ter Chingford for the day—an’ I’m goin’.’
‘Yus!’ she said.
He looked at her doubtfully. (Chapter 3)

Whether it is quite accurate or not, there’s certainly a lot of it, I’d estimate that more of the book is dialogue than descriptive prose.

This clearly prefigures Maugham’s success as a playwright in the years ahead, particularly the sombre final scene where Liza lies dying and the two old biddies drink together and swap inanities. It feels like it is on stage, a simple but very effective scene.

And the turns of phrase

Maugham uses one or two Cockney turns of phrase which seem to have disappeared without trace, but deserve to be remembered.

‘Two pints of bitter, please, miss,’ ordered Jim.
‘I say, ‘old ‘ard. I can’t drink more than ‘alf a pint,’ said Liza.
‘Cheese it,’ answered Jim. ‘You can do with all you can get, I know.’

Me an’ ‘Arry, we set together, ‘im with ‘is arm round my wiste and me oldin’ ‘is ‘and. It was jam, I can tell yer!’

‘Swop me bob, ‘e’s gone and lorst it!’

You ‘it ‘er back. Give ‘er one on the boko.’

‘When a man’s givin’ ‘is wife socks it’s best not ter interfere.’

Related links

Somerset Maugham’s books

1897 Liza of Lambeth
1915 Of Human Bondage
1919 The Moon and Sixpence

1921 The Trembling of a Leaf: Little Stories of the South Sea Islands (short story collection)
1921 The Circle (play)
1922 On a Chinese Screen (travel book)
1923 Our Betters (play)
1925 The Painted Veil (novel)
1926 The Casuarina Tree: Six Stories
1927 The Constant Wife (play)
1928 Ashenden: Or the British Agent (short story collection)
1929 The Sacred Flame (play)

1930 Cakes and Ale: or, the Skeleton in the Cupboard
1930 The Gentleman in the Parlour: A Record of a Journey From Rangoon to Haiphong
1931 Six Stories Written in the First Person Singular (short story collection)
1932 The Narrow Corner
1933 Ah King (short story collection)
1933 Sheppey (play)
1935 Don Fernando (travel book)
1936 Cosmopolitans (29 x two-page-long short stories)
1937 Theatre (romantic novel)
1938 The Summing Up (autobiography)
1939 Christmas Holiday (novel)

1940 The Mixture as Before (short story collection)
1941 Up at the Villa (crime novella)
1942 The Hour Before The Dawn (novel)
1944 The Razor’s Edge (novel)
1946 Then and Now (historical novel)
1947 Creatures of Circumstance (short story collection)
1948 Catalina (historical novel)
1949 A Writer’s Notebook

1963 Collected short stories volume one (30 stories: Rain, The Fall of Edward Barnard, Honolulu, The Luncheon, The Ant and the Grasshopper, Home, The Pool, Mackintosh, Appearance and Reality, The Three Fat Women of Antibes, The Facts of Life, Gigolo and Gigolette, The Happy Couple, The Voice of the Turtle, The Lion’s Skin, The Unconquered, The Escape, The Judgement Seat, Mr. Know-All, The Happy Man, The Romantic Young Lady, The Point of Honour, The Poet, The Mother, A Man from Glasgow, Before the Party, Louise, The Promise, A String of Beads, The Yellow Streak)
1963 Collected short stories volume two (24 stories: The Vessel of Wrath, The Force of Circumstance, Flotsam and Jetsam, The Alien Corn, The Creative Impulse, The Man with the Scar, Virtue, The Closed Shop, The Bum, The Dream, The Treasure, The Colonel’s Lady, Lord Mountdrago, The Social Sense, The Verger, In A Strange Land, The Taipan, The Consul, A Friend in Need, The Round Dozen, The Human Element, Jane, Footprints in the Jungle, The Door of Opportunity)
1963 Collected short stories volume three (17 stories: A Domiciliary Visit, Miss King, The Hairless Mexican, The Dark Woman, The Greek, A Trip to Paris, Giulia Lazzari, The Traitor, Gustav, His Excellency, Behind the Scenes, Mr Harrington’s Washing, A Chance Acquaintance, Love and Russian Literature, Sanatorium)
1963 Collected short stories volume four (30 stories: The Book-Bag, French Joe, German Harry, The Four Dutchmen, The Back Of Beyond, P. & O., Episode, The Kite, A Woman Of Fifty, Mayhew, The Lotus Eater, Salvatore, The Wash-Tub, A Man With A Conscience, An Official Position, Winter Cruise, Mabel, Masterson, Princess September, A Marriage Of Convenience, Mirage, The Letter, The Outstation, The Portrait Of A Gentleman, Raw Material, Straight Flush, The End Of The Flight, A Casual Affair, Red, Neil Macadam)

2009 The Secret Lives of Somerset Maugham by Selina Hastings

Leave a comment
by Simon on October 5, 2018  •  Permalink
Posted in Novel
Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Posted by Simon on October 5, 2018

https://astrofella.wordpress.com/2018/10/05/liza-of-lambeth-somerset-maugham/

%d bloggers like this: