Miles Malleson

“ Gwen: Jacko! It is important to live what you believe, isn’t it?
John: I think so; tremendously; I think, if this generation misses its opportunity, which it may, it’s because we’ve lost the old beliefs and haven’t taken the trouble to get a new one for ourselves.
Gwen: Yes. Oh, there are such heaps of people “lost and discontented”; I know such heaps of girls like that. They just don’t know where they are; they make an awful mess of things sometimes.
John: You do, if you don’t know where you are. You know, if we’re not careful, there’ll be a period of aimless licence, and then reaction. ”

“ John: Why?
Colin: You’ve got the artistic temperament, God help you. Most people haven’t. The majority of ordinary respectable human beings just want quiet, uneventful, peaceful lives.
Frankie: Yes.
Colin: You can just as easily wreck people’s happiness by persuading them to go experimenting all over the place, as by denying them the right to do it.
Gwen: Don’t just say “Don’t, don’t, don’t.” That’s negative ... a denial of things. We can’t live by that.
Colin: My dear—Miss Freeman, I’m not denying the years of adventure, as John calls them. ”

“ Frankie: No, I don’t.
John: I could make you.
Gwen: Try—go on.
John: Well—to start with ... the obvious things. (He talks without difficulty, speaking what he has thought about.) Hundreds of thousands of girls on the streets; and an incredible amount of sex disease. One in every five infected! A million or so girls more than men doomed to a life without love. Some millions of separated people living without love and not allowed to marry again. Thousands of marriages where only distaste, and hate, remain. ”

“ John: For five years the men under forty worked together, sacrificed everything they had in life, every hope, prospect, comfort; they underwent suffering, physical suffering and moral suffering, absolutely inconceivable to those who stayed at home, so that to give their lives at the end of it was often a relief ... and they won! By God, Gwen, if the men over forty with the money and the power would get together and work one-twentieth as well, and sacrifice one-hundredth of their personal comfort, what mightn’t they make of the victory—but they won’t! ”

“ Frankie: That’s it. That’s where you’re so wrong, John. You don’t save girls from trouble, you make it for them.
Gwen: Quite a lot aren’t tranquil. It’s wicked to keep people from love, when you needn’t.
John: Surely you have to deal with every case on its merits. When I have a daughter——
Frankie: When you have a daughter, you won’t be talking like this.
John: I shall want my daughter to be happily married; and this is the real answer to you, Frankie. If you want a happy, lasting marriage, the love-making part of it has got to be successful.
Margaret: Yes. ”

“ Colin, I don’t make love to Frankie; not at all; she doesn’t seem to want it.
Colin: Are you sure?
[29]
John: Yes, I think so; that’s the trouble. I never get any response from her. It makes me rather uncomfortable with her, and shy! She doesn’t seem to miss anything ... but, unless, in my marriage, that part of it is as perfect, and as beautiful as ... as Toby has taught me it can be, my marriage will be a failure. I’m getting afraid it isn’t in Frankie.
Colin: It may be. You never can tell.
John: And it may not be ... a mistaken marriage messes up two lives at least. ”

“ John: But it’s just because as many permanent happy marriages as possible seems the best way it’s so damned important for people to make a good choice ... with full knowledge ... and so, with a real hope of being lasting and happy; and to help them out when they’ve made a mistake ... it wouldn’t be so difficult if people would be open-minded and sane about it ... people just point out difficulties and dangers, and think they’ve smashed our case ... of course there’d be difficulties and unhappiness; love’s not simple ... ”

“ Frankie: If it’s all as bad as you say, surely if people lived as Religion tells them, all these terrible things wouldn’t happen?
John: That’s exactly what the Church says. “Society must be purified. Men and women must be taught not to sin.” But what they mean by purifying society is simply forcing it back under the old rules; what they mean by Sin is any infringement of those rules. What we say is: it’s the very narrowness of their rules that has made the mess, it’s the reverse side of their mistakenness ... ”

“ Gwen: ... It doesn’t frighten me ... really ... not if you stop to think ... you needn’t have a baby, need you?
John: Nearly everybody, in our class, limits their families.
Gwen: If you make up your mind it’s not wrong to love without having children, it’s awfully weak to change your mind just because someone else has one by mistake, isn’t it?
John: That’s true.
Gwen: But, Jacko ... you know ... all the same ... the people who are against you would pick on Rosie; they’d say, there’s a girl with her life ruined, and her baby’s life ruined ”

“ Gwen: Now let’s be personal.
John: Go ahead.
Margaret: Must we!
Frankie: You needn’t talk.
Margaret: Needn’t! But I did.
[78]
Gwen: I know I’m sick of living at home; I know I’m sick of living alone. The obvious way out is to get married. But I don’t see how I can ever be certain of wanting to live all alone with the same person for the rest of my life.
Colin: When you’re in love, you’ll know all right.
John: That’s easy to say when you’re forty.
Colin: You’re being very unpleasant to me to-night.
John: I agree with Gwen. Nobody can know until they’ve tried. ”

“ John: For various reasons.
Gwen: What?
John: Religion doesn’t do anything because it thinks Birth Control wicked. Big Business doesn’t do anything, because it wants cheap Labour; the Governments don’t do anything because they want soldiers for the next war.
Gwen: The next war!
John: The next war.
Gwen: Jacko, do you think there is going to be a next war?
John: Who’s going to stop it? We’re all arming again as fast as we can go. Submarines and aeroplanes; blockade and starvation; bombs and poison gas from the air that’ll exterminate whole cities at a go! ”

“ John: Take any average collection of people—take any ordinary audience at a theatre! How many men do you suppose have loved only their wives?
Colin: One or two, with luck.
John: How many women do you suppose have loved only their husbands?
Frankie: All of them. There may be just one or two who haven’t.
[76]
Margaret: You’re an optimist.
John: Anyhow, there are more of them every day; it’s a matter of mathematics.
Gwen: What do you mean?
John: Decent men don’t pick up girls off the streets. They love decent women. But if decent men love decent women—where are the decent women? ”

“ Gwen: There’s her baby....
John: Gwen; an epileptic woman in a slum can have twelve children by a confirmed drunkard. Which is worse? That; or this baby of Rosie’s? But as long as it’s in “holy matrimony,” people can have dozens of children with no earthly chance of looking after them—and your moralists make no objection; but they’ll torture young Rosie till she thinks of suicide.... The whole question of children—I’m sure it’s a matter of clear thinking. It’s so damned important we should think clearly.... Love between two people is a personal relationship. ”

“ Gwen: Why?
[70]
Margaret: They’re married to men who don’t know how to make love. You see, without gentleness and sensitiveness and consideration—and much that comes from knowledge, what ought to be complete harmony can be very disharmonious, what ought to be utterly satisfying to body and soul can be utterly nerve-racking and unsatisfactory.... Somebody said that a man who can’t make love is like an Orang-Utang playing the fiddle.... It wants learning—the fiddle.
Frankie: It seems so horrid to make that part of it so important. ”

“ Colin: What?
John: Go to Frankie and either break off our engagement, or else ask her to come away with me somewhere.... I’m perfectly serious; you may say “There it is ... it’s the way Civilisation has always managed it.” Civilisation made millions of young people kill and maim and torture one another for five bloody years—there’s something wrong with Civilisation. I don’t mean that because a thing was there before the war it must be wrong—but it may be ... a good many things have got to be thought out again from the beginning—this business of marriage is one of them. ”

“ But there are some fine people among ’em; they’ll do the devil of a lot to make a better world.
Gwen: I hope that’s true.
Margaret: They’re claiming a good deal more out of life.
John: Why shouldn’t they?
Gwen: Hear, hear!
Colin: You’re a dangerous influence, young man.
John: To you old men; I hope so; you’ve been damned dangerous to us!
Frankie: If Religion’s going to have nothing to do with your new world, what is?
John: You’re mixing up religion and the Church. There’s got to be a religious spirit; that’s essential; I mean the spirit that makes you strive to do the best with your life. ”

“ Gwen: Answer, John.
John: If we parted it would mean it wasn’t successful. It would be a very good thing for both of us that we weren’t tied up for life.
Frankie: Anyhow, you’d see a good deal of the world, John!
John: What do you mean?
Frankie: You’d always be going away with different people all over the place.
John: This is becoming too personal.
Frankie: You began it.
John: Somebody asked me to rearrange the world; and I’m doing it. I certainly wouldn’t sweep away all existing marriage laws all at once——
Colin: When are we coming to what you would do? ”

“ I’d be a parson if that was religion, teaching that common purpose—just to clear up the mess a bit; so that the generation that’s waiting just outside the doors of existence, should come in and find it a happier place; it ’ud be a dam’ sight happier place for those in it now, anyhow! and we’d soon do away with any fear of another war; that ’ud be something.
Gwen: John, do you think there’s a hope?
John: There’s always hope—in the young people.
Gwen: Do you believe that?
John: What other hope is there? There are millions and millions waiting to be born ”

“ Colin: I’m not denying the right of the ordinary person to experiment, but it ought to be for the definite object of discovering a true lover, and making a lasting marriage.
John: And if you help people to find their real mates, and when they’ve made a mistake, help them out of it quietly and decently, you’ll have many more happy marriages and much less beastliness.
Colin: Yes, I agree.
Margaret (rising) : Well, I’m glad we’ve settled that!! Now I’m going home. Good night, Gwen.
Gwen: Good night.
Margaret (to Frankie) : Good night ... don’t think me an abandoned woman——
Frankie: I don’t. ”

“ Rosie tell you?
Mrs. Freeman: I’ve noticed.
Mr. Freeman: What John does in his spare time is nothing to do with me. It’s not his spare time I’m bothered about ... it’s his working life.
Mrs. Freeman: He is engaged to Frankie ... suppose there should be anything serious with this other girl.
Mr. Freeman: What other girl?
Mrs. Freeman: Somebody writes those letters.
[13]
Mr. Freeman: ... Um.... I shouldn’t worry ... he’s not quite a fool.... Leave it to me. I’ll give him this.
Mrs. Freeman: He’s not happy.
Mr. Freeman: If a man neglects his work as John’s doing, he can’t expect to be happy. ”

“ Mr. Freeman gets up and blows in the speaking-tube like an amateur trombonist or an irritated typhoon—and listens ... evidently no answer ... another blow ... and another ... then another listen ... still no answer ... he hangs back the tube and flings from the room ... slamming the door after him ... he returns to pick up the offending letter from the table and bear it with him from the room.... Rosie remains, sniffing pathetically ... she creeps from the room. ”

“ Frankie: ... It’s difficult to say.
Colin: Good heavens! Somebody’s found something they can’t say. It must be awful.
[80]
Gwen: Go on, Frankie.
Frankie: Well—if you go away with somebody—and it’s a failure, and you part, for the girl it’s not just as you were, is it?
John: No. I see what you mean ... it seems to me, chastity is a thing nobody has any right to inflict upon anybody else.
Gwen: Hear hear.
John: It may be fine when it’s undertaken from real personal belief, but it’s not worth tuppence when it’s meant a tremendous effort of starvation that achieves nothing but starvation. ”

“ It’s no good writing anything unconsidered these days. One must read, and think, and meet people, and be quiet.... You can’t serve God and Mammon. There are some jolly good things in that book; Colin, it’s dreadful to spend one’s best energies doing something, when you feel you ought to be doing something else. ”

“ Often she could have “got off” with middle-aged business men with money, or with young men with well-brushed hair and incomes; but such were of “no use” to her. Through a curious quality in her she attracts, and is attracted by artists; her life has been mostly in studios and cafés, and from her surroundings, and from the artists that have been in her life, she has acquired her sense and taste.
[44]
Rosie: This is what we call Mr. John’s attic ... you’ve got to wait here. I’ll tell him. (She is going; as she reaches the door.)
Toby: I say! ”

“ Mr. Freeman goes.
John (at once) : Come upstairs.
Colin: I can’t stay. I want to borrow your score of the new ballet. At least Margaret does. I’m taking her to hear it.
John: It’s upstairs.
Colin: They’re doing it last. I needn’t go for a few minutes.
John: Then you’d better have a drink.
Colin: Right.
John: Whiskey?
Colin: Thanks.
John: Have a good holiday?
Colin: Yes.
John: It’s nearly three months since I’ve seen you. How’s life?
Colin: Very good. (He gets his drink.) Thanks. And with you?
John: Rotten.
Colin: Why? ”