85 Major Barbara: Act III
George Bernard Shaw
Next day after lunch Lady Britomart is writing in the library in Wilton Crescent. Sarah is reading in the armchair near the window. Barbara, in ordinary dresss, pale and brooding, is on the settee. Charley Lomax enters. Coming forward between the settee and the writing table, he starts on seeing Barbara fashionably attired and in low spirits.
Lomax. You’ve left off your uniform!
Barbara says nothing; but an expression of pain passes over her face.
Lady Britomart [warning him in low tones to be careful] Charles!
Lomax [much concerned, sitting down sympathetically on the settee beside Barbara] I’m awfully sorry, Barbara. You know I helped you all I could with the concertina and so forth. [Momentously] Still, I have never shut my eyes to the fact that there is a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army. Now the claims of the Church of England —
Lady Britomart. That’s enough, Charles. Speak of something suited to your mental capacity.
Lomax. But surely the Church of England is suited to all our capacities.
Barbara [pressing his hand] Thank you for your sympathy, Cholly. Now go and spoon[1] with Sarah.
Lomax [rising and going to Sarah] How is my ownest today?
Sarah. I wish you wouldn’t tell Cholly to do things, Barbara. He always comes straight and does them. Cholly: we’re going to the works at Perivale St. Andrews this afternoon.
Lomax. What works?
Sarah. The cannon works.
Lomax. What! Your governor’s shop!
Sarah. Yes.
Lomax. Oh I say!
Cusins enters in poor condition. He also starts visibly when he sees Barbara without her uniform.
Barbara. I expected you this morning, Dolly. Didn’t you guess that?
Cusins [sitting down beside her] I’m sorry. I have only just breakfasted.
Sarah. But we’ve just finished lunch.
Barbara. Have you had one of your bad nights?
Cusins. No: I had rather a good night: in fact, one of the most remarkable nights I have ever passed.
Barbara. The meeting?
Cusins. No: after the meeting.
Lady Britomart. You should have gone to bed after the meeting. What were you doing?
Cusins. Drinking.
Lady Britomart. { Adolphus!
Sarah. { Dolly!
Barbara. { Dolly!
Lomax. { Oh I say!
Lady Britomart. What were you drinking, may I ask?
Cusins. A most devilish kind of Spanish burgundy, warranted free from added alcohol: a Temperance burgundy in fact. Its richness in natural alcohol made any addition superfluous.
Barbara. Are you joking, Dolly?
Cusins [patiently] No. I have been making a night of it with the nominal head of this household: that is all.
Lady Britomart. Andrew made you drunk!
Cusins. No: he only provided the wine. I think it was Dionysos who made me drunk. [To Barbara] I told you I was possessed.
Lady Britomart. You’re not sober yet. Go home to bed at once.
Cusins. I have never before ventured to reproach you, Lady Brit; but how could you marry the Prince of Darkness?
Lady Britomart. It was much more excusable to marry him than to get drunk with him. That is a new accomplishment of Andrew’s, by the way. He usen’t to drink.
Cusins. He doesn’t now. He only sat there and completed the wreck of my moral basis, the rout of my convictions, the purchase of my soul. He cares for you, Barbara. That is what makes him so dangerous to me.
Barbara. That has nothing to do with it, Dolly. There are larger loves and diviner dreams than the fireside ones. You know that, don’t you?
Cusins. Yes: that is our understanding. I know it. I hold to it. Unless he can win me on that holier ground he may amuse me for a while; but he can get no deeper hold, strong as he is.
Barbara. Keep to that; and the end will be right. Now tell me what happened at the meeting?
Cusins. It was an amazing meeting. Mrs Baines almost died of emotion. Jenny Hill went stark mad with hysteria. The Prince of Darkness played his trombone like a madman: its brazen roarings were like the laughter of the damned. 117 conversions took place then and there. They prayed with the most touching sincerity and gratitude for Bodger, and for the anonymous donor of the 5000 pounds. Your father would not let his name be given.
Lomax. That was rather fine of the old man, you know. Most chaps would have wanted the advertisement.
Cusins. He said all the charitable institutions would be down on him like kites on a battle field if he gave his name.
Lady Britomart. That’s Andrew all over. He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.
Cusins. He convinced me that I have all my life been doing improper things for proper reasons.
Lady Britomart. Adolphus: now that Barbara has left the Salvation Army, you had better leave it too. I will not have you playing that drum in the streets.
Cusins. Your orders are already obeyed, Lady Brit.
Barbara. Dolly: were you ever really in earnest about it? Would you have joined if you had never seen me?
Cusins [disingenuously] Well — er — well, possibly, as a collector of religions —
Lomax [cunningly] Not as a drummer, though, you know. You are a very clearheaded brainy chap, Cholly; and it must have been apparent to you that there is a certain amount of tosh about —
Lady Britomart. Charles: if you must drivel, drivel like a grown-up man and not like a schoolboy.
Lomax [out of countenance] Well, drivel is drivel, don’t you know, whatever a man’s age.
Lady Britomart. In good society in England, Charles, men drivel at all ages by repeating silly formulas with an air of wisdom. Schoolboys make their own formulas out of slang, like you. When they reach your age, and get political private secretaryships and things of that sort, they drop slang and get their formulas out of The Spectator[2] or The Times. You had better confine yourself to The Times. You will find that there is a certain amount of tosh about The Times; but at least its language is reputable.
Lomax [overwhelmed] You are so awfully strong-minded, Lady Brit —
Lady Britomart. Rubbish! [Morrison comes in]. What is it?
Morrison. If you please, my lady, Mr Undershaft has just drove up to the door.
Lady Britomart. Well, let him in. [Morrison hesitates]. What’s the matter with you?
Morrison. Shall I announce him, my lady; or is he at home here, so to speak, my lady?
Lady Britomart. Announce him.
Morrison. Thank you, my lady. You won’t mind my asking, I hope. The occasion is in a manner of speaking new to me.
Lady Britomart. Quite right. Go and let him in.
Morrison. Thank you, my lady. [He withdraws].
Lady Britomart. Children: go and get ready. [Sarah and Barbara go upstairs for their out-of-door wrap]. Charles: go and tell Stephen to come down here in five minutes: you will find him in the drawing room. [Charles goes]. Adolphus: tell them to send round the carriage in about fifteen minutes. [Adolphus goes].
Morrison [at the door] Mr Undershaft.
Undershaft comes in. Morrison goes out.
Undershaft. Alone! How fortunate!
Lady Britomart [rising] Don’t be sentimental, Andrew. Sit down. [She sits on the settee: he sits beside her, on her left. She comes to the point before he has time to breathe]. Sarah must have 800 pounds a year until Charles Lomax comes into his property. Barbara will need more, and need it permanently, because Adolphus hasn’t any property.
Undershaft [resignedly] Yes, my dear: I will see to it. Anything else? for yourself, for instance?
Lady Britomart. I want to talk to you about Stephen.
Undershaft [rather wearily] Don’t, my dear. Stephen doesn’t interest me.
Lady Britomart. He does interest me. He is our son.
Undershaft. Do you really think so? He has induced us to bring him into the world; but he chose his parents very incongruously, I think. I see nothing of myself in him, and less of you.
Lady Britomart. Andrew: Stephen is an excellent son, and a most steady, capable, highminded young man. YOU are simply trying to find an excuse for disinheriting him.
Undershaft. My dear Biddy: the Undershaft tradition disinherits him. It would be dishonest of me to leave the cannon foundry to my son.
Lady Britomart. It would be most unnatural and improper of you to leave it to anyone else, Andrew. Do you suppose this wicked and immoral tradition can be kept up for ever? Do you pretend that Stephen could not carry on the foundry just as well as all the other sons of the big business houses?
Undershaft. Yes: he could learn the office routine without understanding the business, like all the other sons; and the firm would go on by its own momentum until the real Undershaft — probably an Italian or a German — would invent a new method and cut him out.
Lady Britomart. There is nothing that any Italian or German could do that Stephen could not do. And Stephen at least has breeding.
Undershaft. The son of a foundling! nonsense!
Lady Britomart. My son, Andrew! And even you may have good blood in your veins for all you know.
Undershaft. True. Probably I have. That is another argument in favor of a foundling.
Lady Britomart. Andrew: don’t be aggravating. And don’t be wicked. At present you are both.
Undershaft. This conversation is part of the Undershaft tradition, Biddy. Every Undershaft’s wife has treated him to it ever since the house was founded. It is mere waste of breath. If the tradition be ever broken it will be for an abler man than Stephen.
Lady Britomart [pouting] Then go away.
Undershaft [deprecatory] Go away!
Lady Britomart. Yes: go away. If you will do nothing for Stephen, you are not wanted here. Go to your foundling, whoever he is; and look after him.
Undershaft. The fact is, Biddy —
Lady Britomart. Don’t call me Biddy. I don’t call you Andy.
Undershaft. I will not call my wife Britomart: it is not good sense. Seriously, my love, the Undershaft tradition has landed me in a difficulty. I am getting on in years; and my partner Lazarus has at last made a stand and insisted that the succession must be settled one way or the other; and of course he is quite right. You see, I haven’t found a fit successor yet.
Lady Britomart [obstinately] There is Stephen.
Undershaft. That’s just it: all the foundlings I can find are exactly like Stephen.
Lady Britomart. Andrew!!
Undershaft. I want a man with no relations and no schooling: that is, a man who would be out of the running altogether if he were not a strong man. And I can’t find him. Every blessed foundling nowadays is snapped up in his infancy by Barnardo homes[3], or School Board officers, or Boards of Guardians; and if he shows the least ability, he is fastened on by schoolmasters; trained to win scholarships like a racehorse; crammed with secondhand ideas; drilled and disciplined in docility and what they call good taste; and lamed for life so that he is fit for nothing but teaching. If you want to keep the foundry in the family, you had better find an eligible foundling and marry him to Barbara.
Lady Britomart. Ah! Barbara! Your pet! You would sacrifice Stephen to Barbara.
Undershaft. Cheerfully. And you, my dear, would boil Barbara to make soup for Stephen.
Lady Britomart. Andrew: this is not a question of our likings and dislikings: it is a question of duty. It is your duty to make Stephen your successor.
Undershaft. Just as much as it is your duty to submit to your husband. Come, Biddy! these tricks of the governing class are of no use with me. I am one of the governing class myself; and it is waste of time giving tracts to a missionary. I have the power in this matter; and I am not to be humbugged into using it for your purposes.
Lady Britomart. Andrew: you can talk my head off; but you can’t change wrong into right. And your tie is all on one side. Put it straight.
Undershaft [disconcerted] It won’t stay unless it’s pinned [he fumbles at it with childish grimaces]—
Stephen comes in.
Stephen [at the door] I beg your pardon [about to retire].
Lady Britomart. No: come in, Stephen. [Stephen comes forward to his mother’s writing table.]
Undershaft [not very cordially] Good afternoon.
Stephen [coldly] Good afternoon.
Undershaft [to Lady Britomart] He knows all about the tradition, I suppose?
Lady Britomart. Yes. [To Stephen] It is what I told you last night, Stephen.
Undershaft [sulkily] I understand you want to come into the cannon business.
Stephen. I go into trade! Certainly not.
Undershaft [opening his eyes, greatly eased in mind and manner] Oh! in that case —!
Lady Britomart. Cannons are not trade, Stephen. They are enterprise.
Stephen. I have no intention of becoming a man of business in any sense. I have no capacity for business and no taste for it. I intend to devote myself to politics.
Undershaft [rising] My dear boy: this is an immense relief to me. And I trust it may prove an equally good thing for the country. I was afraid you would consider yourself disparaged and slighted. [He moves towards Stephen as if to shake hands with him].
Lady Britomart [rising and interposing] Stephen: I cannot allow you to throw away an enormous property like this.
Stephen [stiffly] Mother: there must be an end of treating me as a child, if you please. [Lady Britomart recoils, deeply wounded by his tone]. Until last night I did not take your attitude seriously, because I did not think you meant it seriously. But I find now that you left me in the dark as to matters which you should have explained to me years ago. I am extremely hurt and offended. Any further discussion of my intentions had better take place with my father, as between one man and another.
Lady Britomart. Stephen! [She sits down again; and her eyes fill with tears].
Undershaft [with grave compassion] You see, my dear, it is only the big men who can be treated as children.
Stephen. I am sorry, mother, that you have forced me —
Undershaft [stopping him] Yes, yes, yes, yes: that’s all right, Stephen. She wont interfere with you any more: your independence is achieved: you have won your latchkey. Don’t rub it in; and above all, don’t apologize. [He resumes his seat]. Now what about your future, as between one man and another — I beg your pardon, Biddy: as between two men and a woman.
Lady Britomart [who has pulled herself together strongly] I quite understand, Stephen. By all means go your own way if you feel strong enough. [Stephen sits down magisterially in the chair at the writing table with an air of affirming his majority].
Undershaft. It is settled that you do not ask for the succession to the cannon business.
Stephen. I hope it is settled that I repudiate the cannon business.
Undershaft. Come, come! Don’t be so devilishly sulky: it’s boyish. Freedom should be generous. Besides, I owe you a fair start in life in exchange for disinheriting you. You can’t become prime minister all at once. Haven’t you a turn for something? What about literature, art and so forth?
Stephen. I have nothing of the artist about me, either in faculty or character, thank Heaven!
Undershaft. A philosopher, perhaps? Eh?
Stephen. I make no such ridiculous pretension.
Undershaft. Just so. Well, there is the army, the navy, the Church, the Bar. The Bar requires some ability. What about the Bar?
Stephen. I have not studied law. And I am afraid I have not the necessary push — I believe that is the name barristers give to their vulgarity — for success in pleading.
Undershaft. Rather a difficult case, Stephen. Hardly anything left but the stage, is there? [Stephen makes an impatient movement]. Well, come! is there anything you know or care for?
Stephen [rising and looking at him steadily] I know the difference between right and wrong.
Undershaft [hugely tickled] You don’t say so! What! no capacity for business, no knowledge of law, no sympathy with art, no pretension to philosophy; only a simple knowledge of the secret that has puzzled all the philosophers, baffled all the lawyers, muddled all the men of business, and ruined most of the artists: the secret of right and wrong. Why, man, you’re a genius, master of masters, a god! At twenty-four, too!
Stephen [keeping his temper with difficulty] You are pleased to be facetious. I pretend to nothing more than any honorable English gentleman claims as his birthright [he sits down angrily].
Undershaft. Oh, that’s everybody’s birthright. Look at poor little Jenny Hill, the Salvation lassie! she would think you were laughing at her if you asked her to stand up in the street and teach grammar or geography or mathematics or even drawing room dancing; but it never occurs to her to doubt that she can teach morals and religion. You are all alike, you respectable people. You can’t tell me the bursting strain of a ten-inch gun, which is a very simple matter; but you all think you can tell me the bursting strain of a man under temptation. You daren’t handle high explosives; but you’re all ready to handle honesty and truth and justice and the whole duty of man, and kill one another at that game. What a country! what a world!
Lady Britomart [uneasily] What do you think he had better do, Andrew?
Undershaft. Oh, just what he wants to do. He knows nothing; and he thinks he knows everything. That points clearly to a political career. Get him a private secretaryship to someone who can get him an Under Secretaryship; and then leave him alone. He will find his natural and proper place in the end on the Treasury bench.
Stephen [springing up again] I am sorry, sir, that you force me to forget the respect due to you as my father. I am an Englishman; and I will not hear the Government of my country insulted. [He thrusts his hands in his pockets, and walks angrily across to the window].
Undershaft [with a touch of brutality] The government of your country! I am the government of your country: I, and Lazarus. Do you suppose that you and half a dozen amateurs like you, sitting in a row in that foolish gabble shop, can govern Undershaft and Lazarus? No, my friend: you will do what pays US. You will make war when it suits us, and keep peace when it doesn’t. You will find out that trade requires certain measures when we have decided on those measures. When I want anything to keep my dividends up, you will discover that my want is a national need. When other people want something to keep my dividends down, you will call out the police and military. And in return you shall have the support and applause of my newspapers, and the delight of imagining that you are a great statesman. Government of your country! Be off with you, my boy, and play with your caucuses and leading articles and historic parties and great leaders and burning questions and the rest of your toys. I am going back to my counting house to pay the piper and call the tune.
Stephen [actually smiling, and putting his hand on his father’s shoulder with indulgent patronage] Really, my dear father, it is impossible to be angry with you. You don’t know how absurd all this sounds to ME. You are very properly proud of having been industrious enough to make money; and it is greatly to your credit that you have made so much of it. But it has kept you in circles where you are valued for your money and deferred to for it, instead of in the doubtless very oldfashioned and behind-the-times public school and university where I formed my habits of mind. It is natural for you to think that money governs England; but you must allow me to think I know better.
Undershaft. And what does govern England, pray?
Stephen. Character, father, character.
Undershaft. Whose character? Yours or mine?
Stephen. Neither yours nor mine, father, but the best elements in the English national character.
Undershaft. Stephen: I’ve found your profession for you. You’re a born journalist. I’ll start you with a hightoned weekly review. There!
Stephen goes to the smaller writing table and busies himself with his letters.
Sarah, Barbara, Lomax, and Cusins come in ready for walking. Barbara crosses the room to the window and looks out. Cusins drifts amiably to the armchair, and Lomax remains near the door, whilst Sarah comes to her mother.
Sarah. Go and get ready, mamma: the carriage is waiting. [Lady Britomart leaves the room.]
Undershaft [to Sarah] Good day, my dear. Good afternoon, Mr. Lomax.
Lomax [vaguely] Ahdedoo.
Undershaft [to Cusins] Quite well after last night, Euripides, eh?
Cusins. As well as can be expected.
Undershaft. That’s right. [To Barbara] So you are coming to see my death and devastation factory, Barbara?
Barbara [at the window] You came yesterday to see my salvation factory. I promised you a return visit.
Lomax [coming forward between Sarah and Undershaft] You’ll find it awfully interesting. I’ve been through the Woolwich Arsenal; and it gives you a ripping feeling of security, you know, to think of the lot of beggars we could kill if it came to fighting. [To Undershaft, with sudden solemnity] Still, it must be rather an awful reflection for you, from the religious point of view as it were. You’re getting on, you know, and all that.
Sarah. You don’t mind Cholly’s imbecility, papa, do you?
Lomax [much taken aback] Oh I say!
Undershaft. Mr Lomax looks at the matter in a very proper spirit, my dear.
Lomax. Just so. That’s all I meant, I assure you.
Sarah. Are you coming, Stephen?
Stephen. Well, I am rather busy — er — [Magnanimously] Oh well, yes: I’ll come. That is, if there is room for me.
Undershaft. I can take two with me in a little motor I am experimenting with for field use. You won’t mind its being rather unfashionable. It’s not painted yet; but it’s bullet proof.
Lomax [appalled at the prospect of confronting Wilton Crescent in an unpainted motor] Oh I say!
Sarah. The carriage for me, thank you. Barbara doesn’t mind what she’s seen in.
Lomax. I say, Dolly old chap: do you really mind the car being a guy[4]? Because of course if you do I’ll go in it. Still —
Cusins. I prefer it.
Lomax. Thanks awfully, old man. Come, Sarah. [He hurries out to secure his seat in the carriage. Sarah follows him].
Cusins. [moodily walking across to Lady Britomart’s writing table] Why are we two coming to this Works Department of Hell? that is what I ask myself.
Barbara. I have always thought of it as a sort of pit where lost creatures with blackened faces stirred up smoky fires and were driven and tormented by my father? Is it like that, dad?
Undershaft [scandalized] My dear! It is a spotlessly clean and beautiful hillside town.
Cusins. With a Methodist chapel? Oh do say there’s a Methodist chapel.
Undershaft. There are two: a primitive one and a sophisticated one. There is even an Ethical Society[5]; but it is not much patronized, as my men are all strongly religious. In the High Explosives Sheds they object to the presence of Agnostics[6] as unsafe.
Cusins. And yet they don’t object to you!
Barbara. Do they obey all your orders?
Undershaft. I never give them any orders. When I speak to one of them it is “Well, Jones, is the baby doing well? and has Mrs Jones made a good recovery?” “Nicely, thank you, sir.” And that’s all.
Cusins. But Jones has to be kept in order. How do you maintain discipline among your men?
Undershaft. I don’t. They do. You see, the one thing Jones won’t stand is any rebellion from the man under him, or any assertion of social equality between the wife of the man with 4 shillings a week less than himself and Mrs Jones! Of course they all rebel against me, theoretically. Practically, every man of them keeps the man just below him in his place. I never meddle with them. I never bully them. I don’t even bully Lazarus. I say that certain things are to be done; but I don’t order anybody to do them. I don’t say, mind you, that there is no ordering about and snubbing and even bullying. The men snub the boys and order them about; the carmen snub the sweepers; the artisans snub the unskilled laborers; the foremen drive and bully both the laborers and artisans; the assistant engineers find fault with the foremen; the chief engineers drop on the assistants; the departmental managers worry the chiefs; and the clerks have tall hats and hymnbooks and keep up the social tone by refusing to associate on equal terms with anybody. The result is a colossal profit, which comes to me.
Cusins [revolted] You really are a — well, what I was saying yesterday.
Barbara. What was he saying yesterday?
Undershaft. Never mind, my dear. He thinks I have made you unhappy. Have I?
Barbara. Do you think I can be happy in this vulgar silly dress? I! who have worn the uniform. Do you understand what you have done to me? Yesterday I had a man’s soul in my hand. I set him in the way of life with his face to salvation. But when we took your money he turned back to drunkenness and derision. [With intense conviction] I will never forgive you that. If I had a child, and you destroyed its body with your explosives — if you murdered Dolly with your horrible guns — I could forgive you if my forgiveness would open the gates of heaven to you. But to take a human soul from me, and turn it into the soul of a wolf! that is worse than any murder.
Undershaft. Does my daughter despair so easily? Can you strike a man to the heart and leave no mark on him?
Barbara [her face lighting up] Oh, you are right: he can never be lost now: where was my faith?
Cusins. Oh, clever clever devil!
Barbara. You may be a devil; but God speaks through you sometimes. [She takes her father’s hands and kisses them]. You have given me back my happiness: I feel it deep down now, though my spirit is troubled.
Undershaft. You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
Barbara. Well, take me to the factory of death, and let me learn something more. There must be some truth or other behind all this frightful irony. Come, Dolly. [She goes out].
Cusins. My guardian angel! [To Undershaft] Avaunt[7]! [He follows Barbara].
Stephen [quietly, at the writing table] You must not mind Cusins, father. He is a very amiable good fellow; but he is a Greek scholar and naturally a little eccentric.
Undershaft. Ah, quite so. Thank you, Stephen. Thank you. [He goes out].
Stephen smiles patronizingly; buttons his coat responsibly; and crosses the room to the door. Lady Britomart, dressed for out-of-doors, opens it before he reaches it. She looks round far the others; looks at Stephen; and turns to go without a word.
Stephen [embarrassed] Mother —
Lady Britomart. Don’t be apologetic, Stephen. And don’t forget that you have outgrown your mother. [She goes out].
Perivale St Andrews lies between two Middlesex hills, half climbing the northern one. It is an almost smokeless town of white walls, roofs of narrow green slates or red tiles, tall trees, domes, campaniles, and slender chimney shafts, beautifully situated and beautiful in itself. The best view of it is obtained from the crest of a slope about half a mile to the east, where the high explosives are dealt with. The foundry lies hidden in the depths between, the tops of its chimneys sprouting like huge skittles[8] into the middle distance. Across the crest runs a platform of concrete, with a parapet which suggests a fortification, because there is a huge cannon of the obsolete Woolwich Infant pattern peering across it at the town. The cannon is mounted on an experimental gun carriage: possibly the original model of the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun alluded to by Stephen. The parapet has a high step inside which serves as a seat.
Barbara is leaning over the parapet, looking towards the town. On her right is the cannon; on her left the end of a shed raised on piles, with a ladder of three or four steps up to the door, which opens outwards and has a little wooden landing at the threshold, with a fire bucket in the corner of the landing. The parapet stops short of the shed, leaving a gap which is the beginning of the path down the hill through the foundry to the town. Behind the cannon is a trolley carrying a huge conical bombshell, with a red band painted on it. Further from the parapet, on the same side, is a deck chair, near the door of an office, which, like the sheds, is of the lightest possible construction.
Cusins arrives by the path from the town.
Barbara. Well?
Cusins. Not a ray of hope. Everything perfect, wonderful, real. It only needs a cathedral to be a heavenly city instead of a hellish one.
Barbara. Have you found out whether they have done anything for old Peter Shirley.
Cusins. They have found him a job as gatekeeper and timekeeper. He’s frightfully miserable. He calls the timekeeping brainwork, and says he isn’t used to it; and his gate lodge is so splendid that he’s ashamed to use the rooms, and skulks in the scullery.
Barbara. Poor Peter!
Stephen arrives from the town. He carries a fieldglass.
Stephen [enthusiastically] Have you two seen the place? Why did you leave us?
Cusins. I wanted to see everything I was not intended to see; and Barbara wanted to make the men talk.
Stephen. Have you found anything discreditable?
Cusins. No. They call him Dandy Andy and are proud of his being a cunning old rascal; but it’s all horribly, frightfully, immorally, unanswerably perfect.
Sarah arrives.
Sarah. Heavens! what a place! [She crosses to the trolley]. Did you see the nursing home!? [She sits down on the shell].
Stephen. Did you see the libraries and schools!?
Sarah. Did you see the ballroom and the banqueting chamber in the Town Hall!?
Stephen. Have you gone into the insurance fund, the pension fund, the building society, the various applications of co-operation[9]!?
Undershaft comes from the office, with a sheaf of telegrams in his hands.
Undershaft. Well, have you seen everything? I’m sorry I was called away. [Indicating the telegrams] News from Manchuria[10].
Stephen. Good news, I hope.
Undershaft. Very.
Stephen. Another Japanese victory?
Undershaft. Oh, I don’t know. Which side wins does not concern us here. No: the good news is that the aerial battleship is a tremendous success. At the first trial it has wiped out a fort with three hundred soldiers in it.
Cusins [from the platform] Dummy soldiers?
Undershaft. No: the real thing. [Cusins and Barbara exchange glances. Then Cusins sits on the step and buries his face in his hands. Barbara gravely lays her hand on his shoulder, and he looks up at her in a sort of whimsical desperation]. Well, Stephen, what do you think of the place?
Stephen. Oh, magnificent. A perfect triumph of organization. Frankly, my dear father, I have been a fool: I had no idea of what it all meant — of the wonderful forethought, the power of organization, the administrative capacity, the financial genius, the colossal capital it represents. I have been repeating to myself as I came through your streets “Peace hath her victories no less renowned than War.[11]” I have only one misgiving about it all.
Undershaft. Out with it.
Stephen. Well, I cannot help thinking that all this provision for every want of your workmen may sap their independence and weaken their sense of responsibility. And greatly as we enjoyed our tea at that splendid restaurant — how they gave us all that luxury and cake and jam and cream for threepence I really cannot imagine!— still you must remember that restaurants break up home life. Look at the continent, for instance! Are you sure so much pampering is really good for the men’s characters?
Undershaft. Well you see, my dear boy, when you are organizing civilization you have to make up your mind whether trouble and anxiety are good things or not. If you decide that they are, then, I take it, you simply don’t organize civilization; and there you are, with trouble and anxiety enough to make us all angels! But if you decide the other way, you may as well go through with it. However, Stephen, our characters are safe here. A sufficient dose of anxiety is always provided by the fact that we may be blown to smithereens at any moment.
Sarah. By the way, papa, where do you make the explosives?
Undershaft. In separate little sheds, like that one. When one of them blows up, it costs very little; and only the people quite close to it are killed.
Stephen, who is quite close to it, looks at it rather scaredly, and moves away quickly to the cannon. At the same moment the door of the shed is thrown abruptly open; and a foreman in overalls and list slippers comes out on the little landing and holds the door open for Lomax, who appears in the doorway.
Lomax [with studied coolness] My good fellow: you needn’t get into a state of nerves. Nothing’s going to happen to you; and I suppose it wouldn’t be the end of the world if anything did. A little bit of British pluck is what you want, old chap. [He descends and strolls across to Sarah].
Undershaft [to the foreman] Anything wrong, Bilton?
Bilton [with ironic calm] Gentleman walked into the high explosives shed and lit a cigaret, sir: that’s all.
Undershaft. Ah, quite so. [To Lomax] Do you happen to remember what you did with the match?
Lomax. Oh come! I’m not a fool. I took jolly good care to blow it out before I chucked it away.
Bilton. The top of it was red hot inside, sir.
Lomax. Well, suppose it was! I didn’t chuck it into any of your messes.
Undershaft. Think no more of it, Mr Lomax. By the way, would you mind lending me your matches?
Lomax [offering his box] Certainly.
Undershaft. Thanks. [He pockets the matches].
Lomax [lecturing to the company generally] You know, these high explosives don’t go off like gunpowder, except when they’re in a gun. When they’re spread loose, you can put a match to them without the least risk: they just burn quietly like a bit of paper. [Warming to the scientific interest of the subject] Did you know that Undershaft? Have you ever tried?
Undershaft. Not on a large scale, Mr Lomax. Bilton will give you a sample of gun cotton when you are leaving if you ask him. You can experiment with it at home. [Bilton looks puzzled].
Sarah. Bilton will do nothing of the sort, papa. I suppose it’s your business to blow up the Russians and Japs; but you might really stop short of blowing up poor Cholly. [Bilton gives it up and retires into the shed].
Lomax. My ownest, there is no danger. [He sits beside her on the shell].
Lady Britomart arrives from the town with a bouquet.
Lady Britomart [coming impetuously between Undershaft and the deck chair] Andrew: you shouldn’t have let me see this place.
Undershaft. Why, my dear?
Lady Britomart. Never mind why: you shouldn’t have: that’s all. To think of all that [indicating the town] being yours! and that you have kept it to yourself all these years!
Undershaft. It does not belong to me. I belong to it. It is the Undershaft inheritance.
Lady Britomart. It is not. Your ridiculous cannons and that noisy banging foundry may be the Undershaft inheritance; but all that plate and linen, all that furniture and those houses and orchards and gardens belong to us. They belong to me: they are not a man’s business. I won’t give them up. You must be out of your senses to throw them all away; and if you persist in such folly, I will call in a doctor.
Undershaft [stooping to smell the bouquet] Where did you get the flowers, my dear?
Lady Britomart. Your men presented them to me in your William Morris[12] Labor Church.
Cusins [springing up] Oh! It needed only that. A Labor Church!
Lady Britomart. Yes, with Morris’s words in mosaic letters ten feet high round the dome. NO MAN IS GOOD ENOUGH TO BE ANOTHER MAN’S MASTER. The cynicism of it!
Undershaft. It shocked the men at first, I am afraid. But now they take no more notice of it than of the ten commandments in church.
Lady Britomart. Andrew: you are trying to put me off the subject of the inheritance by profane jokes. Well, you shan’t. I don’t ask it any longer for Stephen: he has inherited far too much of your perversity to be fit for it. But Barbara has rights as well as Stephen. Why should not Adolphus succeed to the inheritance? I could manage the town for him; and he can look after the cannons, if they are really necessary.
Undershaft. I should ask nothing better if Adolphus were a foundling. He is exactly the sort of new blood that is wanted in English business. But he’s not a foundling; and there’s an end of it.
Cusins [diplomatically] Not quite. [They all turn and stare at him. He comes from the platform past the shed to Undershaft]. I think — Mind! I am not committing myself in any way as to my future course — but I think the foundling difficulty can be got over.
Undershaft. What do you mean?
Cusins. Well, I have something to say which is in the nature of a confession.
Sarah. {
Lady Britomart. { Confession!
Barbara. {
Stephen. {
Lomax. Oh I say!
Cusins. Yes, a confession. Listen, all. Until I met Barbara I thought myself in the main an honorable, truthful man, because I wanted the approval of my conscience more than I wanted anything else. But the moment I saw Barbara, I wanted her far more than the approval of my conscience.
Lady Britomart. Adolphus!
Cusins. It is true. You accused me yourself, Lady Brit, of joining the Army to worship Barbara; and so I did. She bought my soul like a flower at a street corner; but she bought it for herself.
Undershaft. What! Not for Dionysos or another?
Cusins. Dionysos and all the others are in herself. I adored what was divine in her, and was therefore a true worshipper. But I was romantic about her too. I thought she was a woman of the people, and that a marriage with a professor of Greek would be far beyond the wildest social ambitions of her rank.
Lady Britomart. Adolphus!!
Lomax. Oh I say!!!
Cusins. When I learnt the horrible truth —
Lady Britomart. What do you mean by the horrible truth, pray?
Cusins. That she was enormously rich; that her grandfather was an earl; that her father was the Prince of Darkness —
Undershaft. Chut!
Cusins.— and that I was only an adventurer trying to catch a rich wife, then I stooped to deceive about my birth.
Lady Britomart. Your birth! Now Adolphus, don’t dare to make up a wicked story for the sake of these wretched cannons. Remember: I have seen photographs of your parents; and the Agent General for South Western Australia knows them personally and has assured me that they are most respectable married people.
Cusins. So they are in Australia; but here they are outcasts. Their marriage is legal in Australia, but not in England[13]. My mother is my father’s deceased wife’s sister; and in this island I am consequently a foundling. [Sensation]. Is the subterfuge good enough, Machiavelli?
Undershaft [thoughtfully] Biddy: this may be a way out of the difficulty.
Lady Britomart. Stuff! A man can’t make cannons any the better for being his own cousin instead of his proper self [she sits down in the deck chair with a bounce that expresses her downright contempt for their casuistry[14].]
Undershaft [to Cusins] You are an educated man. That is against the tradition.
Cusins. Once in ten thousand times it happens that the schoolboy is a born master of what they try to teach him. Greek has not destroyed my mind: it has nourished it. Besides, I did not learn it at an English public school.
Undershaft. Hm! Well, I cannot afford to be too particular: you have cornered the foundling market. Let it pass. You are eligible, Euripides: you are eligible.
Barbara [coming from the platform and interposing between Cusins and Undershaft] Dolly: yesterday morning, when Stephen told us all about the tradition, you became very silent; and you have been strange and excited ever since. Were you thinking of your birth then?
Cusins. When the finger of Destiny suddenly points at a man in the middle of his breakfast, it makes him thoughtful. [Barbara turns away sadly and stands near her mother, listening perturbedly].
Undershaft. Aha! You have had your eye on the business, my young friend, have you?
Cusins. Take care! There is an abyss of moral horror between me and your accursed aerial battleships.
Undershaft. Never mind the abyss for the present. Let us settle the practical details and leave your final decision open. You know that you will have to change your name. Do you object to that?
Cusins. Would any man named Adolphus — any man called Dolly!— object to be called something else?
Undershaft. Good. Now, as to money! I propose to treat you handsomely from the beginning. You shall start at a thousand a year.
Cusins. [with sudden heat, his spectacles twinkling with mischief] A thousand! You dare offer a miserable thousand to the son-in-law of a millionaire! No, by Heavens, Machiavelli! you shall not cheat me. You cannot do without me; and I can do without you. I must have two thousand five hundred a year for two years. At the end of that time, if I am a failure, I go. But if I am a success, and stay on, you must give me the other five thousand.
Undershaft. What other five thousand?
Cusins. To make the two years up to five thousand a year. The two thousand five hundred is only half pay in case I should turn out a failure. The third year I must have ten per cent on the profits.
Undershaft [taken aback] Ten per cent! Why, man, do you know what my profits are?
Cusins. Enormous, I hope: otherwise I shall require twenty-five per cent.
Undershaft. But, Mr Cusins, this is a serious matter of business. You are not bringing any capital into the concern.
Cusins. What! no capital! Is my mastery of Greek no capital? Is my access to the subtlest thought, the loftiest poetry yet attained by humanity, no capital? my character! my intellect! my life! my career! what Barbara calls my soul! are these no capital? Say another word; and I double my salary.
Undershaft. Be reasonable —
Cusins [peremptorily] Mr Undershaft: you have my terms. Take them or leave them.
Undershaft [recovering himself] Very well. I note your terms; and I offer you half.
Cusins [disgusted] Half!
Undershaft [firmly] Half.
Cusins. You call yourself a gentleman; and you offer me half!!
Undershaft. I do not call myself a gentleman; but I offer you half.
Cusins. This to your future partner! your successor! your son-in-law!
Barbara. You are selling your own soul, Dolly, not mine. Leave me out of the bargain, please.
Undershaft. Come! I will go a step further for Barbara’s sake. I will give you three fifths; but that is my last word.
Cusins. Done!
Lomax. Done in the eye. Why, I only get eight hundred, you know.
Cusins. By the way, Mac, I am a classical scholar, not an arithmetical one. Is three fifths more than half or less?
Undershaft. More, of course.
Cusins. I would have taken two hundred and fifty. How you can succeed in business when you are willing to pay all that money to a University don who is obviously not worth a junior clerk’s wages!— well! What will Lazarus say?
Undershaft. Lazarus is a gentle romantic Jew who cares for nothing but string quartets and stalls at fashionable theatres. He will get the credit of your rapacity in money matters, as he has hitherto had the credit of mine. You are a shark of the first order, Euripides. So much the better for the firm!
Barbara. Is the bargain closed, Dolly? Does your soul belong to him now?
Cusins. No: the price is settled: that is all. The real tug of war is still to come. What about the moral question?
Lady Britomart. There is no moral question in the matter at all, Adolphus. You must simply sell cannons and weapons to people whose cause is right and just, and refuse them to foreigners and criminals.
Undershaft [determinedly] No: none of that. You must keep the true faith of an Armorer, or you don’t come in here.
Cusins. What on earth is the true faith of an Armorer?
Undershaft. To give arms to all men who offer an honest price for them, without respect of persons or principles: to aristocrat and republican, to Nihilist and Tsar, to Capitalist and Socialist, to Protestant and Catholic, to burglar and policeman, to black man white man and yellow man, to all sorts and conditions, all nationalities, all faiths, all follies, all causes and all crimes. The first Undershaft wrote up in his shop IF GOD GAVE THE HAND, LET NOT MAN WITHHOLD THE SWORD. The second wrote up ALL HAVE THE RIGHT TO FIGHT: NONE HAVE THE RIGHT TO JUDGE. The third wrote up TO MAN THE WEAPON: TO HEAVEN THE VICTORY. The fourth had no literary turn; so he did not write up anything; but he sold cannons to Napoleon under the nose of George the Third. The fifth wrote up PEACE SHALL NOT PREVAIL SAVE WITH A SWORD IN HER HAND. The sixth, my master, was the best of all. He wrote up NOTHING IS EVER DONE IN THIS WORLD UNTIL MEN ARE PREPARED TO KILL ONE ANOTHER IF IT IS NOT DONE. After that, there was nothing left for the seventh to say. So he wrote up, simply, UNASHAMED.
Cusins. My good Machiavelli, I shall certainly write something up on the wall; only, as I shall write it in Greek, you won’t be able to read it. But as to your Armorer’s faith, if I take my neck out of the noose of my own morality I am not going to put it into the noose of yours. I shall sell cannons to whom I please and refuse them to whom I please. So there!
Undershaft. From the moment when you become Andrew Undershaft, you will never do as you please again. Don’t come here lusting for power, young man.
Cusins. If power were my aim I should not come here for it. YOU have no power.
Undershaft. None of my own, certainly.
Cusins. I have more power than you, more will. You do not drive this place: it drives you. And what drives the place?
Undershaft [enigmatically] A will of which I am a part.
Barbara [startled] Father! Do you know what you are saying; or are you laying a snare for my soul?
Cusins. Don’t listen to his metaphysics, Barbara. The place is driven by the most rascally part of society, the money hunters, the pleasure hunters, the military promotion hunters; and he is their slave.
Undershaft. Not necessarily. Remember the Armorer’s Faith. I will take an order from a good man as cheerfully as from a bad one. If you good people prefer preaching and shirking to buying my weapons and fighting the rascals, don’t blame me. I can make cannons: I cannot make courage and conviction. Bah! You tire me, Euripides, with your morality mongering. Ask Barbara: SHE understands. [He suddenly takes Barbara’s hands, and looks powerfully into her eyes]. Tell him, my love, what power really means.
Barbara [hypnotized] Before I joined the Salvation Army, I was in my own power; and the consequence was that I never knew what to do with myself. When I joined it, I had not time enough for all the things I had to do.
Undershaft [approvingly] Just so. And why was that, do you suppose?
Barbara. Yesterday I should have said, because I was in the power of God. [She resumes her self-possession, withdrawing her hands from his with a power equal to his own]. But you came and showed me that I was in the power of Bodger and Undershaft. Today I feel — oh! how can I put it into words? Sarah: do you remember the earthquake at Cannes, when we were little children?— how little the surprise of the first shock mattered compared to the dread and horror of waiting for the second? That is how I feel in this place today. I stood on the rock I thought eternal; and without a word of warning it reeled and crumbled under me. I was safe with an infinite wisdom watching me, an army marching to Salvation with me; and in a moment, at a stroke of your pen in a cheque book, I stood alone; and the heavens were empty. That was the first shock of the earthquake: I am waiting for the second.
Undershaft. Come, come, my daughter! Don’t make too much of your little tinpot tragedy. What do we do here when we spend years of work and thought and thousands of pounds of solid cash on a new gun or an aerial battleship that turns out just a hairsbreadth wrong after all? Scrap it. Scrap it without wasting another hour or another pound on it. Well, you have made for yourself something that you call a morality or a religion or what not. It doesn’t fit the facts. Well, scrap it. Scrap it and get one that does fit. That is what is wrong with the world at present. It scraps its obsolete steam engines and dynamos; but it won’t scrap its old prejudices and its old moralities and its old religions and its old political constitutions. What’s the result? In machinery it does very well; but in morals and religion and politics it is working at a loss that brings it nearer bankruptcy every year. Don’t persist in that folly. If your old religion broke down yesterday, get a newer and a better one for tomorrow.
Barbara. Oh how gladly I would take a better one to my soul! But you offer me a worse one. [Turning on him with sudden vehemence]. Justify yourself: show me some light through the darkness of this dreadful place, with its beautifully clean workshops, and respectable workmen, and model homes.
Undershaft. Cleanliness and respectability do not need justification, Barbara: they justify themselves. I see no darkness here, no dreadfulness. In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.
Barbara. And their souls?
Undershaft. I save their souls just as I saved yours.
Barbara [revolted] You saved my soul! What do you mean?
Undershaft. I fed you and clothed you and housed you. I took care that you should have money enough to live handsomely — more than enough; so that you could be wasteful, careless, generous. That saved your soul from the seven deadly sins.
Barbara [bewildered] The seven deadly sins!
Undershaft. Yes, the deadly seven. [Counting on his fingers] Food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted. I lifted them from your spirit. I enabled Barbara to become Major Barbara; and I saved her from the crime of poverty.
Cusins. Do you call poverty a crime?
Undershaft. The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty. Pah! [turning on Barbara] you talk of your half-saved ruffian in West Ham: you accuse me of dragging his soul back to perdition. Well, bring him to me here; and I will drag his soul back again to salvation for you. Not by words and dreams; but by thirty-eight shillings a week, a sound house in a handsome street, and a permanent job. In three weeks he will have a fancy waistcoat; in three months a tall hat and a chapel sitting; before the end of the year he will shake hands with a duchess at a Primrose League[15] meeting, and join the Conservative Party.
Barbara. And will he be the better for that?
Undershaft. You know he will. Don’t be a hypocrite, Barbara. He will be better fed, better housed, better clothed, better behaved; and his children will be pounds heavier and bigger. That will be better than an American cloth mattress in a shelter, chopping firewood, eating bread and treacle, and being forced to kneel down from time to time to thank heaven for it: knee drill, I think you call it. It is cheap work converting starving men with a Bible in one hand and a slice of bread in the other. I will undertake to convert West Ham to Mahometanism on the same terms. Try your hand on my men: their souls are hungry because their bodies are full.
Barbara. And leave the east end to starve?
Undershaft [his energetic tone dropping into one of bitter and brooding remembrance] I was an east ender. I moralized and starved until one day I swore that I would be a fullfed free man at all costs — that nothing should stop me except a bullet, neither reason nor morals nor the lives of other men. I said “Thou shalt starve ere I starve”; and with that word I became free and great. I was a dangerous man until I had my will: now I am a useful, beneficent, kindly person. That is the history of most self-made millionaires, I fancy. When it is the history of every Englishman we shall have an England worth living in.
Lady Britomart. Stop making speeches, Andrew. This is not the place for them.
Undershaft [punctured] My dear: I have no other means of conveying my ideas.
Lady Britomart. Your ideas are nonsense. You got oil because you were selfish and unscrupulous.
Undershaft. Not at all. I had the strongest scruples about poverty and starvation. Your moralists are quite unscrupulous about both: they make virtues of them. I had rather be a thief than a pauper. I had rather be a murderer than a slave. I don’t want to be either; but if you force the alternative on me, then, by Heaven, I’ll choose the braver and more moral one. I hate poverty and slavery worse than any other crimes whatsoever. And let me tell you this. Poverty and slavery have stood up for centuries to your sermons and leading articles: they will not stand up to my machine guns. Don’t preach at them: don’t reason with them. Kill them.
Barbara. Killing. Is that your remedy for everything?
Undershaft. It is the final test of conviction, the only lever strong enough to overturn a social system, the only way of saying Must. Let six hundred and seventy fools loose in the street; and three policemen can scatter them. But huddle them together in a certain house in Westminster[16]; and let them go through certain ceremonies and call themselves certain names until at last they get the courage to kill; and your six hundred and seventy fools become a government. Your pious mob fills up ballot papers and imagines it is governing its masters; but the ballot paper that really governs is the paper that has a bullet wrapped up in it.
Cusins. That is perhaps why, like most intelligent people, I never vote.
Undershaft Vote! Bah! When you vote, you only change the names of the cabinet. When you shoot, you pull down governments, inaugurate new epochs, abolish old orders and set up new. Is that historically true, Mr Learned Man, or is it not?
Cusins. It is historically true. I loathe having to admit it. I repudiate your sentiments. I abhor your nature. I defy you in every possible way. Still, it is true. But it ought not to be true.
Undershaft. Ought, ought, ought, ought, ought! Are you going to spend your life saying ought, like the rest of our moralists? Turn your oughts into shalls, man. Come and make explosives with me. Whatever can blow men up can blow society up. The history of the world is the history of those who had courage enough to embrace this truth. Have you the courage to embrace it, Barbara?
Lady Britomart. Barbara, I positively forbid you to listen to your father’s abominable wickedness. And you, Adolphus, ought to know better than to go about saying that wrong things are true. What does it matter whether they are true if they are wrong?
Undershaft. What does it matter whether they are wrong if they are true?
Lady Britomart [rising] Children: come home instantly. Andrew: I am exceedingly sorry I allowed you to call on us. You are wickeder than ever. Come at once.
Barbara [shaking her head] It’s no use running away from wicked people, mamma.
Lady Britomart. It is every use. It shows your disapprobation of them.
Barbara. It does not save them.
Lady Britomart. I can see that you are going to disobey me. Sarah: are you coming home or are you not?
Sarah. I daresay it’s very wicked of papa to make cannons; but I don’t think I shall cut him on that account.
Lomax [pouring oil on the troubled waters] The fact is, you know, there is a certain amount of tosh about this notion of wickedness. It doesn’t work. You must look at facts. Not that I would say a word in favor of anything wrong; but then, you see, all sorts of chaps are always doing all sorts of things; and we have to fit them in somehow, don’t you know. What I mean is that you can’t go cutting everybody; and that’s about what it comes to. [Their rapt attention to his eloquence makes him nervous] Perhaps I don’t make myself clear.
Lady Britomart. You are lucidity itself, Charles. Because Andrew is successful and has plenty of money to give to Sarah, you will flatter him and encourage him in his wickedness.
Lomax [unruffled] Well, where the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered[17], don’t you know. [To Undershaft] Eh? What?
Undershaft. Precisely. By the way, may I call you Charles?
Lomax. Delighted. Cholly is the usual ticket.
Undershaft [to Lady Britomart] Biddy —
Lady Britomart [violently] Don’t dare call me Biddy. Charles Lomax: you are a fool. Adolphus Cusins: you are a Jesuit[18]. Stephen: you are a prig. Barbara: you are a lunatic. Andrew: you are a vulgar tradesman. Now you all know my opinion; and my conscience is clear, at all events [she sits down again with a vehemence that almost wrecks the chair].
Undershaft. My dear, you are the incarnation of morality. [She snorts]. Your conscience is clear and your duty done when you have called everybody names. Come, Euripides! it is getting late; and we all want to get home. Make up your mind.
Cusins. Understand this, you old demon —
Lady Britomart. Adolphus!
Undershaft. Let him alone, Biddy. Proceed, Euripides.
Cusins. You have me in a horrible dilemma. I want Barbara.
Undershaft. Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.
Barbara. Quite true, Dolly.
Cusins. I also want to avoid being a rascal.
Undershaft [with biting contempt] You lust for personal righteousness, for self-approval, for what you call a good conscience, for what Barbara calls salvation, for what I call patronizing people who are not so lucky as yourself.
Cusins. I do not: all the poet in me recoils from being a good man. But there are things in me that I must reckon with: pity —
Undershaft. Pity! The scavenger of misery.
Cusins. Well, love.
Undershaft. I know. You love the needy and the outcast: you love the oppressed races, the negro, the Indian ryot[19], the Pole, the Irishman. Do you love the Japanese? Do you love the Germans? Do you love the English?
Cusins. No. Every true Englishman detests the English. We are the wickedest nation on earth; and our success is a moral horror.
Undershaft. That is what comes of your gospel of love, is it?
Cusins. May I not love even my father-in-law?
Undershaft. Who wants your love, man? By what right do you take the liberty of offering it to me? I will have your due heed and respect, or I will kill you. But your love! Damn your impertinence!
Cusins [grinning] I may not be able to control my affections, Mac.
Undershaft. You are fencing, Euripides. You are weakening: your grip is slipping. Come! try your last weapon. Pity and love have broken in your hand: forgiveness is still left.
Cusins. No: forgiveness is a beggar’s refuge. I am with you there: we must pay our debts.
Undershaft. Well said. Come! you will suit me. Remember the words of Plato[20].
Cusins [starting] Plato! You dare quote Plato to me!
Undershaft. Plato says, my friend, that society cannot be saved until either the Professors of Greek take to making gunpowder, or else the makers of gunpowder become Professors of Greek.
Cusins. Oh, tempter, cunning tempter!
Undershaft. Come! choose, man, choose.
Cusins. But perhaps Barbara will not marry me if I make the wrong choice.
Barbara. Perhaps not.
Cusins [desperately perplexed] You hear —
Barbara. Father: do you love nobody?
Undershaft. I love my best friend.
Lady Britomart. And who is that, pray?
Undershaft. My bravest enemy. That is the man who keeps me up to the mark.
Cusins. You know, the creature is really a sort of poet in his way. Suppose he is a great man, after all!
Undershaft. Suppose you stop talking and make up your mind, my young friend.
Cusins. But you are driving me against my nature. I hate war.
Undershaft. Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated. Dare you make war on war? Here are the means: my friend Mr Lomax is sitting on them.
Lomax [springing up] Oh I say! You don’t mean that this thing is loaded, do you? My ownest: come off it.
Sarah [sitting placidly on the shell] If I am to be blown up, the more thoroughly it is done the better. Don’t fuss, Cholly.
Lomax [to Undershaft, strongly remonstrant] Your own daughter, you know.
Undershaft. So I see. [To Cusins] Well, my friend, may we expect you here at six tomorrow morning?
Cusins [firmly] Not on any account. I will see the whole establishment blown up with its own dynamite before I will get up at five. My hours are healthy, rational hours eleven to five.
Undershaft. Come when you please: before a week you will come at six and stay until I turn you out for the sake of your health. [Calling] Bilton! [He turns to Lady Britomart, who rises]. My dear: let us leave these two young people to themselves for a moment. [Bilton comes from the shed]. I am going to take you through the gun cotton shed.
Bilton [barring the way] You can’t take anything explosive in here, Sir.
Lady Britomart. What do you mean? Are you alluding to me?
Bilton [unmoved] No, ma’am. Mr Undershaft has the other gentleman’s matches in his pocket.
Lady Britomart [abruptly] Oh! I beg your pardon. [She goes into the shed].
Undershaft. Quite right, Bilton, quite right: here you are. [He gives Bilton the box of matches]. Come, Stephen. Come, Charles. Bring Sarah. [He passes into the shed].
Bilton opens the box and deliberately drops the matches into the fire-bucket.
Lomax. Oh I say! [Bilton stolidly hands him the empty box]. Infernal nonsense! Pure scientific ignorance! [He goes in].
Sarah. Am I all right, Bilton?
Bilton. You’ll have to put on list slippers, miss: that’s all. We’ve got em inside. [She goes in].
Stephen [very seriously to Cusins] Dolly, old fellow, think. Think before you decide. Do you feel that you are a sufficiently practical man? It is a huge undertaking, an enormous responsibility. All this mass of business will be Greek to you.
Cusins. Oh, I think it will be much less difficult than Greek.
Stephen. Well, I just want to say this before I leave you to yourselves. Don’t let anything I have said about right and wrong prejudice you against this great chance in life. I have satisfied myself that the business is one of the highest character and a credit to our country. [Emotionally] I am very proud of my father. I— [Unable to proceed, he presses Cusins’ hand and goes hastily into the shed, followed by Bilton].
Barbara and Cusins, left alone together, look at one another silently.
Cusins. Barbara: I am going to accept this offer.
Barbara. I thought you would.
Cusins. You understand, don’t you, that I had to decide without consulting you. If I had thrown the burden of the choice on you, you would sooner or later have despised me for it.
Barbara. Yes: I did not want you to sell your soul for me any more than for this inheritance.
Cusins. It is not the sale of my soul that troubles me: I have sold it too often to care about that. I have sold it for a professorship. I have sold it for an income. I have sold it to escape being imprisoned for refusing to pay taxes for hangmen’s ropes and unjust wars and things that I abhor. What is all human conduct but the daily and hourly sale of our souls for trifles? What I am now selling it for is neither money nor position nor comfort, but for reality and for power.
Barbara. You know that you will have no power, and that he has none.
Cusins. I know. It is not for myself alone. I want to make power for the world.
Barbara. I want to make power for the world too; but it must be spiritual power.
Cusins. I think all power is spiritual: these cannons will not go off by themselves. I have tried to make spiritual power by teaching Greek. But the world can never be really touched by a dead language and a dead civilization. The people must have power; and the people cannot have Greek. Now the power that is made here can be wielded by all men.
Barbara. Power to burn women’s houses down and kill their sons and tear their husbands to pieces.
Cusins. You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes. This power which only tears men’s bodies to pieces has never been so horribly abused as the intellectual power, the imaginative power, the poetic, religious power that can enslave men’s souls. As a teacher of Greek I gave the intellectual man weapons against the common man. I now want to give the common man weapons against the intellectual man. I love the common people. I want to arm them against the lawyer, the doctor, the priest, the literary man, the professor, the artist, and the politician, who, once in authority, are the most dangerous, disastrous, and tyrannical of all the fools, rascals, and impostors. I want a democratic power strong enough to force the intellectual oligarchy to use its genius for the general good or else perish.
Barbara. Is there no higher power than that [pointing to the shell]?
Cusins. Yes: but that power can destroy the higher powers just as a tiger can destroy a man: therefore man must master that power first. I admitted this when the Turks and Greeks were last at war[21]. My best pupil went out to fight for Hellas. My parting gift to him was not a copy of Plato’s Republic, but a revolver and a hundred Undershaft cartridges. The blood of every Turk he shot — if he shot any — is on my head as well as on Undershaft’s. That act committed me to this place for ever. Your father’s challenge has beaten me. Dare I make war on war? I dare. I must. I will. And now, is it all over between us?
Barbara [touched by his evident dread of her answer] Silly baby Dolly! How could it be?
Cusins [overjoyed] Then you — you — you — Oh for my drum! [He flourishes imaginary drumsticks].
Barbara [angered by his levity] Take care, Dolly, take care. Oh, if only I could get away from you and from father and from it all! if I could have the wings of a dove and fly away to heaven!
Cusins. And leave me!
Barbara. Yes, you, and all the other naughty mischievous children of men. But I can’t. I was happy in the Salvation Army for a moment. I escaped from the world into a paradise of enthusiasm and prayer and soul saving; but the moment our money ran short, it all came back to Bodger: it was he who saved our people: he, and the Prince of Darkness, my papa. Undershaft and Bodger: their hands stretch everywhere: when we feed a starving fellow creature, it is with their bread, because there is no other bread; when we tend the sick, it is in the hospitals they endow; if we turn from the churches they build, we must kneel on the stones of the streets they pave. As long as that lasts, there is no getting away from them. Turning our backs on Bodger and Undershaft is turning our backs on life.
Cusins. I thought you were determined to turn your back on the wicked side of life.
Barbara. There is no wicked side: life is all one. And I never wanted to shirk my share in whatever evil must be endured, whether it be sin or suffering. I wish I could cure you of middle-class ideas, Dolly.
Cusins [gasping] Middle cl —! A snub! A social snub to ME! from the daughter of a foundling!
Barbara. That is why I have no class, Dolly: I come straight out of the heart of the whole people. If I were middle-class I should turn my back on my father’s business; and we should both live in an artistic drawingroom, with you reading the reviews in one corner, and I in the other at the piano, playing Schumann: both very superior persons, and neither of us a bit of use. Sooner than that, I would sweep out the guncotton shed, or be one of Bodger’s barmaids. Do you know what would have happened if you had refused papa’s offer?
Cusins. I wonder!
Barbara. I should have given you up and married the man who accepted it. After all, my dear old mother has more sense than any of you. I felt like her when I saw this place — felt that I must have it — that never, never, never could I let it go; only she thought it was the houses and the kitchen ranges and the linen and china, when it was really all the human souls to be saved: not weak souls in starved bodies, crying with gratitude or a scrap of bread and treacle, but fullfed, quarrelsome, snobbish, uppish creatures, all standing on their little rights and dignities, and thinking that my father ought to be greatly obliged to them for making so much money for him — and so he ought. That is where salvation is really wanted. My father shall never throw it in my teeth again that my converts were bribed with bread. [She is transfigured]. I have got rid of the bribe of bread. I have got rid of the bribe of heaven. Let God’s work be done for its own sake: the work he had to create us to do because it cannot be done by living men and women. When I die, let him be in my debt, not I in his; and let me forgive him as becomes a woman of my rank.
Cusins. Then the way of life lies through the factory of death?
Barbara. Yes, through the raising of hell to heaven and of man to God, through the unveiling of an eternal light in the Valley of The Shadow[22]. [Seizing him with both hands] Oh, did you think my courage would never come back? did you believe that I was a deserter? that I, who have stood in the streets, and taken my people to my heart, and talked of the holiest and greatest things with them, could ever turn back and chatter foolishly to fashionable people about nothing in a drawingroom? Never, never, never, never: Major Barbara will die with the colors. Oh! and I have my dear little Dolly boy still; and he has found me my place and my work. Glory Hallelujah! [She kisses him].
Cusins. My dearest: consider my delicate health. I cannot stand as much happiness as you can.
Barbara. Yes: it is not easy work being in love with me, is it? But it’s good for you. [She runs to the shed, and calls, childlike] Mamma! Mamma! [Bilton comes out of the shed, followed by Undershaft]. I want Mamma.
Undershaft. She is taking off her list slippers, dear. [He passes on to Cusins]. Well? What does she say?
Cusins. She has gone right up into the skies.
Lady Britomart [coming from the shed and stopping on the steps, obstructing Sarah, who follows with Lomax. Barbara clutches like a baby at her mother’s skirt]. Barbara: when will you learn to be independent and to act and think for yourself? I know as well as possible what that cry of “Mamma, Mamma,” means. Always running to me!
Sarah [touching Lady Britomart’s ribs with her finger tips and imitating a bicycle horn] Pip! Pip!
Lady Britomart [highly indignant] How dare you say Pip! pip! to me, Sarah? You are both very naughty children. What do you want, Barbara?
Barbara. I want a house in the village to live in with Dolly. [Dragging at the skirt] Come and tell me which one to take.
Undershaft [to Cusins] Six o’clock tomorrow morning, my young friend.
- To court or pay addresses to (a person), especially in a sentimental manner. ↵
- A London weekly magazine devoted to political and current events. ↵
- In 1867, Dr. John Barnardo (1845-1905) set up an organization that placed destitute children in homes. ↵
- Something or someone of frightful appearance, probably an allusion to effigies of Guy Fawkes, the leader of the Gunpowder Plot, November 5, 1605. ↵
- A free-thought society whose first London chapel was built at South Place in Finsbury, central London. ↵
- Term coined by T. H. Huxley in 1869 to describe those who withold their assent from whatever is incapable of proof (e.g., the existence of God). ↵
- Be gone. A command directed at the Devil. ↵
- The pins used in a game similar to bowling. ↵
- Co-operative Movement, founded by Robert Owen (1771-1858) characterized by shops and businesses that were jointly owned by the workers. ↵
- Site of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). ↵
- See sonnet, “To the Lord General Cromwell, May 1652” by John Milton (1608-1674). ↵
- William Morris (1834-1896). Utopian socialist and author of News from Nowhere (1890). ↵
- Marriage between a man and his dead wife’s sister was illegal at the time Shaw was writing Major Barbara. ↵
- Equivocal or specious reasoning. ↵
- British conservative political organization founded in 1883. ↵
- The House of Commons. ↵
- See Matthew 24:28. ↵
- Member of the Society of Jesus, a Catholic organization founded by Ignatius Loyola in 1534. Cusins is using the term in its secondary sense (i.e., a casuist, a deceiver). See Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. ↵
- Indian peasant. ↵
- Undershaft here plays with Plato’s idea that philosophers must be the kings in an ideal state. See The Republic, 5.473d. ↵
- Thirty Days’ War of 1897. ↵
- See Psalm 23: “Yea thou I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” ↵