Tanqueray

“ They had only betrayed the fact that they had tried. Had they? And which of them? Tanqueray in the matter of obliteration would at any rate have been aware of the utter inadequacy of india-rubber. To dash at a thing like india-rubber was more the sudden, futile inspiration of a woman made frantic by her terror of detection.
It was clear that Jane had not wanted him to know that Tanqueray was at Chagford. She had not told him. Why had she not told him? She knew of the plight they were in at the office, of the hue and cry after the unappearing manuscript. ”

“ She paused. "On the other hand, she wouldn't have cared for you as I do. That sort of woman only cares for her children."
"Won't you care for them, Jinny?"
"Not as I care for you," said Jinny.
And to his uttermost amazement she bowed her head over his hands and cried.
XXXVI
Tanqueray's book was out. Times and seasons mattered little in a case so hopeless. There was no rivalry between George Tanqueray and his contemporaries; therefore, his publishers had not scrupled to produce him in the same month as Jane Holland. They handled any work of his with the apathy of despair. ”

“ An ordinary man would have said of Mrs. Eldred that she was rather a large woman. To Tanqueray, in his malady, she appeared immense. The appeal of her immensity was not merely to the eye. It fascinated and demoralized the imagination. Tanqueray's imagination was sane when it was at work, handling the stuff of life ”

“ Then Tanqueray spoke.
"Yes. A precious hash we've all made of it. You and I and Brodrick and poor Nina. Could anything be more fatuous, more perverse?"
"Not all of us. Not Owen. He didn't go far wrong when he married Laura."
"Because the beast's clairvoyant. And love only made him more so; while it makes us poor devils blind as bats." ”

“ Tanqueray looked at her, not without admiration.
"Jinny, you're ten times cleverer than I."
"In some things, Tanks, I am. And so is that wife of yours."
"She's—very sensible. I suppose it's sensible to be in love with a carpet-sweeper."
She shook her head at him.
"Much more sensible than being in love with you."
His eyes evaded her. She rose.
"Oh, Tanks, you goose. Can't you see that it's you she's in love with—and that's why she must have a carpet-sweeper?" ”

“ He and Henry had discussed it. Henry had his own theory of it. He offered it as one more instance of the physiological disabilities of genius. It was an extreme and curious instance, if you liked, Tanqueray himself being curious and extreme. But it had not occurred to Brodrick that Henry's theory of Tanqueray might be applied to Jane.
"What on earth do you know about George Tanqueray?" he said. "How could you know a thing like that?"
"I know because I'm like him."
"No, Jinny, it's not the same thing. You're a woman." ”

“ It's a crime against nature for a man like Tanqueray to have taken that poor little woman—who is nature pure and simple—and condemn her to——"
She drew back visibly. "I know. He doesn't see it," she said.
"He doesn't see anything. He doesn't even know she's there. How can he? His genius runs to flesh and blood, and he hasn't room for any more of it outside his own imagination. That's where you are with your great realists."
She gazed at him, astonished, admiring. This visionary, this poet so estranged from flesh and blood, had put his finger on the fact. ”

“ At this moment Tanqueray said, "How's Hambleby?"
"He's not quite so well as he was," said Jane.
"I'm sorry to hear that," said Tanqueray.
"Is anybody ill?" said Rose. She was always interested in anybody who was ill.
"Only Hambleby," said Tanqueray.
"Who's he?" said Rose.
"The man Jinny's in love with."
Rose was shocked at this violation of the holy privacies. She looked reprovingly at Tanqueray.
"Is your tea as you like it?" she inquired, with tact, to make it more comfortable for Jane.
"I'm going to smoke," said Tanqueray. "Will you come to my den, Jinny, and talk about Hambleby?" ”

“ Tanqueray's brows crumpled as he surveyed the scene.
"Before I can write a line of Hambleby," said Jinny—"one little line—I've got to send answers to all that."
"You don't mean to tell me," he said sternly, "that you dream of answering?"
"If it could only end in dreaming."
He groaned. "Here have I been away from you, how long? Six months, is it? Only six months, Jinny, just long enough to get married in, and you go and do the very things I told you not to. You're not to be trusted by yourself for a single minute. I told you what it would be like." ”

“ She had the effrontery to hold the baby up, with his little naked legs kicking in Tanqueray's face. At ten months old he was a really charming baby, and very like Brodrick.
"Do you like him?" she said.
He stepped back and considered her. She had put her little son down on the floor, where, by an absurd rising and falling motion of his rosy hips, he contrived to travel across the room towards the fireplace.
Tanqueray said that he liked the effect of him.
"The general effect? It is heartrending."
"I mean his effect on you, Jinny. He makes you look like some nice, furry animal in a wood." ”

“ He's caught. He's trapped. He can't get away from you."
"I won't," she said. "It's dishonourable."
He laughed and they went in.
The poet was sitting in Tanqueray's low chair, facing them. He rose at some length as they entered, and she discerned in his eyes the instinct of savage flight. She herself would have turned and fled, but for the singularity of such precipitance. She was afraid before this shyness of the unlicked Celt, of the wild creature trapped and caught unaware, by the guile she judged dishonourable. ”

“ Rose interjected. She was generally admitted to Tanqueray's conferences with Laura. She sat by the fire with her knees very wide apart, nursing Minny.
"He isn't, indeed," said Tanqueray. "He thinks you a marvellous Kiddy; and he bows his knee before your popularity. How you contrive to turn anything so horrible into anything so adorable he doesn't know and never will know." ”

“ There was nothing amazing about Hambleby or a whole population of Hamblebys, given a heavenly silence, a virgin solitude, and a creator possessed by no power except the impulse to create. Within the four walls of her room, and in the quiet Square, nothing moved, nothing breathed but Hambleby. His presence destroyed those poignant, almost tangible memories of Tanqueray, those fragments of Tanqueray that adhered to the things that he had looked upon and touched. ”

“ Tanqueray requires an unusual amount of preliminary retrospect. We have to learn the history of Aubrey Tanqueray's first marriage, with the mother of Ellean, as well as the history of Paula Ray's past life. The mechanism employed to this end has been much criticized, but seems to me admirable. Aubrey gives a farewell dinner-party to his intimate friends, Misquith and Jayne. Cayley Drummle, too, is expected, but has not arrived when the play opens. Without naming the lady, Aubrey announces to his guests his approaching marriage. ”

“ Pinero followed up Mrs Tanqueray with a remarkable series of plays—The Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, The Benefit of the Doubt, The Princess and the Butterfly, Trelawny of the “Wells,” The Gay Lord Quex, Iris, Letty, His House in Order and The Thunderbolt—all of which show marked originality of conception and intellectual force. In January 1893 Charles Wyndham initiated a new policy at the Criterion theatre, and produced an original play, The Bauble-Shop, by Henry Arthur Jones. It belonged very distinctly to the pre-Tanqueray order of things ”

“ Before that, it had been Laura's birthday, and Tanqueray had taken them all to the play. But on Jane's birthday (and on other days, their days) it was their custom to take the train into the country, to tramp the great white roads, to loiter in the fields, to climb the hillsides and lie there, prone, with slackened limbs, utterly content with the world, with each other and themselves. As he thought of those days, their days, he had a sudden vision of his marriage-day as a dividing line, sundering him from them, their interests and their activities. ”

“ It is obvious that people, even people with strongly marked characteristics, can live for years in juxtaposition without their relation to one another resulting in anything dramatic, or even theatrical. Paula Tanqueray and her husband might have lived and died unhappily together without offering any materials to the playwright, and so indeed might any of the characters in any of the plays by the brilliant author. Only when facts exterior to them begin to play upon the characters dramatically is there room for drama. There is an enormous amount of plot, psychological or physical, in every play. ”

“ Tanqueray was talking to Jane. He had said he supposed she had seen the way "they had been going for him," and she had asked him was it possible he minded?
"Minded? After your letter? When a big full-fledged arch-angel gets up on the tips of its toes, and spreads its gorgeous wings in front of me, and sings a hymn of praise out loud in my face, do you think I hear the little beasts snarling at my feet and snapping at the calves of my legs?"
Rose at Nicky's right was saying, "It's over small for a dinin'-room. But you should see 'is study." ”

“ And, in truth, a man must look about him and within him a good deal in order to be able to pass, like Mr. Pinero, from the formless efforts of his youth, or even from such pieces as The Squire and Lord and Commons, to a work like The Second Mrs. Tanqueray. His career as an author has been a long-continued ascent, delayed by many incidents and accidents, but from which the horizon of art has seemed larger at every stage. To-day he is in the heights, almost at the summit.
In his early youth he had felt his vocation and had written a play, but he knew nothing of the theatre. ”

“ Do you mean the inhabitants of Europe, which is a forest not yet cleared; or the inhabitants of Asia, which is a ruin about to tumble?'
'The railroads will clear the forest,' said Besso. 'And what is to become of the ruin?' asked Tancred.
'God will not forget His land.' 'That is the truth; the government of this globe must be divine, and the impulse can only come from Asia.'
'If your government only understood the Eastern question!' said Mr. Consul-General Laurella, pricking up his ears at some half phrase that he had caught, and addressing Tancred across the table. ”

“ Tancred, shrouded in his Bedouin cloak, and accompanied by Baroni, visited the circle of black tents, which they found almost empty, the whole band, with the exception of the scouts, who are always on duty in an Arab encampment, being assembled in the ruins of the amphitheatre, in whose arena, opposite to the pavilion of the great Sheikh, a celebrated poet was reciting the visit of Antar to the temple of the fire-worshippers, and the adventures of that greatest of Arabian heroes among the effeminate and astonished courtiers of the generous and magnificent Nushirvan. ”

“ I shudder at the sight of it.'
'Heigho!' said Tancred, stretching his arm, and half-speaking to himself, 'I wish the battle of Gindarics had never ceased, but that, like some hero of enchantment, I had gone on for ever fighting.'
'Ah! there is nothing like action,' said Baroni, unscrewing his pistols.
'But what action is there in this world?' said Tancred. 'The most energetic men in Europe are mere busybodies. Empires are now governed like parishes, and a great statesman is only a select vestryman. ”

“ In the meantime Tancred was launched, almost unconsciously, into the great world. The name of the Marquess of Montacute was foremost in those delicate lists by which an eager and admiring public is apprised who, among their aristocracy, eat, drink, dance, and sometimes pray. From the saloons of Bel-grave and Grosvenor Square to the sacred recesses of the Chapel Royal, the movements of Lord Montacute were tracked and registered, and were devoured every morning, oftener with a keener relish than the matin meal of which they formed a regular portion. ”

“ Roby; and the servants were to be placed entirely under the control of some trusty foreigner accustomed to the East, and who was to be chosen by Lord Eskdale. In the meantime, Tancred had acceded to the wish of his parents, that until his departure he should mix much in society. The duchess calculated that, under any circumstances, three months must elapse before all the arrangements were concluded; and she felt persuaded that, during that period, Tancred must become enamoured of his cousin Katherine, and that the only use of the yacht would be to take them all to Ireland. ”

“ It is impossible to argue against the customs of a country with which you are not acquainted, but coming home one day from a hawking party, a large assembly of the most influential chieftains, Fakredeen himself bounding on a Kochlani steed, and arrayed in a dress that would have become Solyman the Magnificent, Tancred about to dismount, the Lord of Canobia pushed forward, and, springing from his saddle, insisted on holding the stirrup of Lord Montacute. ”

“ There is more movement in Tangier than I have ever noticed in a place of its size. Every one is either looking on cross-legged from the bazars and coffee-shops, or rushing, pushing, and screaming in the street. It is most bewildering; if you turn to look after a particularly magnificent Moor, or a half-naked holy man from the desert with wild eyes and hair as long as a horse's mane, you are trodden upon by a string of donkeys carrying kegs of water, or pushed to one side by a soldier with a gun eight feet long. ”