The Family Reunion Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Persons

  PART I

  Scene I

  Scene II

  Scene III

  PART II

  Scene I

  Scene II

  Scene III

  About the Author

  Copyright 1939 by T. S. Eliot

  Copyright renewed 1967 by Esme Valerie Eliot

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  This play is fully protected by copyright and is subject to royalty. No performance, professional or amateur, may be given without a license. Applications for licenses for stock and amateur performances in the U.S.A. and Canada should be mailed to Samuel French Inc., 45 West 25th Street, New York, NY 10010, or 7623 Sunset Boulevard, Hollywood, CA 90046, or Samuel French (Canada) Ltd., 80 Richmond Street East, Toronto, ON M5C 1P1, Canada. All other applications should be addressed to The League of Dramatists, 84 Drayton Gardens, London S.W.10.

  ISBN 978-0-15-630157-2 (pbk.)

  First Harvest edition 1964

  eISBN 978-0-544-35835-5

  v1.0214

  Persons

  AMY, DOWAGER LADY MONCHENSEY

  IVY, VIOLET, and AGATHA,

  her younger sisters

  COL. THE HON. GERALD PIPER, and

  THE HON. CHARLES PIPER,

  brothers of her deceased husband

  MARY,

  daughter of a deceased cousin of Lady Monchensey

  DENMAN, a parlourmaid

  HARRY, LORD MONCHENSEY, Amy’s eldest son

  DOWNING, his servant and chauffeur

  DR. WARBURTON

  SERGEANT WINCHELL

  THE EUMENIDES

  The scene is laid in a country house in the

  North of England

  PART I

  The Drawing Room, After Tea.

  An Afternoon in Late March

  Scene I

  AMY, IVY, VIOLET, AGATHA, GERALD,

  CHARLES, MARY

  DENMAN enters to draw the curtains

  AMY

  Not yet! I will ring for you. It is still quite light.

  I have nothing to do but watch the days draw out,

  Now that I sit in the house from October to June,

  And the swallow comes too soon and the spring will be over

  And the cuckoo will be gone before I am out again.

  O Sun, that was once so warm, O Light that was taken for granted

  When I was young and strong, and sun and light unsought for

  And the night unfeared and the day expected

  And clocks could be trusted, tomorrow assured

  And time would not stop in the dark!

  Put on the lights. But leave the curtains undrawn.

  Make up the fire. Will the spring never come? I am cold.

  AGATHA

  Wishwood was always a cold place, Amy.

  IVY

  I have always told Amy she should go south in the winter.

  Were I in Amy’s position, I would go south in the winter.

  I would follow the sun, not wait for the sun to come here.

  I would go south in the winter, if I could afford it,

  Not freeze, as I do, in Bayswater, by a gas-fire counting shillings.

  VIOLET

  Go south! to the English circulating libraries,

  To the military widows and the English chaplains,

  To the chilly deck-chair and the strong cold tea—

  The strong cold stewed bad Indian tea.

  CHARLES

  That’s not Amy’s style at all. We are country-bred people.

  Amy has been too long used to our ways

  Living with horses and dogs and guns

  Ever to want to leave England in the winter.

  But a single man like me is better off in London:

  A man can be very cosy at his club

  Even in an English winter.

  GERALD

  Well, as for me,

  I’d just as soon be a subaltern again

  To be back in the East. An incomparable climate

  For a man who can exercise a little common prudence;

  And your servants look after you very much better.

  AMY

  My servants are perfectly competent, Gerald.

  I can still see to that.

  VIOLET

  Well, as for me,

  I would never go south, no, definitely never,

  Even could I do it as well as Amy:

  England’s bad enough, I would never go south,

  Simply to see the vulgarest people—

  You can keep out of their way at home;

  People with money from heaven knows where—

  GERALD

  Dividends from aeroplane shares.

  VIOLET

  They bathe all day and they dance all night

  In the absolute minimum of clothes.

  CHARLES

  It’s the cocktail-drinking does the harm:

  There’s nothing on earth so bad for the young.

  All that a civilised person needs

  Is a glass of dry sherry or two before dinner.

  The modern young people don’t know what they’re drinking,

  Modern young people don’t care what they’re eating;

  They’ve lost their sense of taste and smell

  Because of their cocktails and cigarettes.

  [Enter DENMAN with sherry and whisky. CHARLES takes sherry and GERALD whisky.]

  That’s what it comes to.

  [Lights a cigarette.]

  LVY

  The younger generation

  Are undoubtedly decadent.

  CHARLES

  The younger generation

  Are not what we were. Haven’t the stamina,

  Haven’t the sense of responsibility.

  GERALD

  You’re being very hard on the younger generation.

  I don’t come across them very much now, myself;

  But I must say I’ve met some very decent specimens

  And some first-class shots—better than you were,

  Charles, as I remember. Besides, you’ve got to make allowances:

  We haven’t left them such an easy world to live in.

  Let the younger generation speak for itself:

  It’s Mary’s generation. What does she think about it?

  MARY

  Really, Cousin Gerald, if you want information

  About the younger generation, you must ask someone else.

  I’m afraid that I don’t deserve the compliment:

  I don’t belong to any generation.

  [Exit.]

  VIOLET

  Really, Gerald, I must say you’re very tactless,

  And I think that Charles might have been more considerate.

  GERALD

  I’m very sorry: but why was she upset?

  I only meant to draw her into the conversation.

  CHARLES

  She’s a nice girl; but it’s a difficult age for her.

  I suppose she must be getting on for thirty?

  She ought to be married, that’s what it is.

  AMY

  So she should have been, if things had gone as I intended.

  Harry’s
return does not make things easy for her

  At the moment: but life may still go right.

  Meanwhile, let us drop the subject. The less said the better.

  GERALD

  That reminds me, Amy,

  When are the boys all due to arrive?

  AMY

  I do not want the clock to stop in the dark.

  If you want to know why I never leave Wishwood

  That is the reason. I keep Wishwood alive

  To keep the family alive, to keep them together,

  To keep me alive, and I live to keep them.

  You none of you understand how old you are

  And death will come to you as a mild surprise,

  A momentary shudder in a vacant room.

  Only Agatha seems to discover some meaning in death

  Which I cannot find.

  —I am only certain of Arthur and John,

  Arthur in London, John in Leicestershire:

  They should both be here in good time for dinner.

  Harry telephoned to me from Marseilles,

  He would come by air to Paris, and so to London,

  And hoped to arrive in the course of the evening.

  VIOLET

  Harry was always the most likely to be late.

  AMY

  This time, it will not be his fault.

  We are very lucky to have Harry at all.

  IVY

  And when will you have your birthday cake, Amy,

  And open your presents?

  AMY

  After dinner:

  That is the best time.

  IVY

  It is the first time

  You have not had your cake and your presents at tea.

  AMY

  This is a very particular occasion

  As you ought to know. It will be the first time

  For eight years that we have all been together.

  AGATHA

  It is going to be rather painful for Harry

  After eight years and all that has happened

  To come back to Wishwood.

  GERALD

  Why, painful?

  VIOLET

  Gerald! you know what Agatha means.

  AGATHA

  I mean painful, because everything is irrevocable,

  Because the past is irremediable,

  Because the future can only be built

  Upon the real past. Wandering in the tropics

  Or against the painted scene of the Mediterranean,

  Harry must often have remembered Wishwood—

  The nursery tea, the school holiday,

  The daring feats on the old pony,

  And thought to creep back through the little door.

  He will find a new Wishwood. Adaptation is hard.

  AMY

  Nothing is changed, Agatha, at Wishwood.

  Everything is kept as it was when he left it,

  Except the old pony, and the mongrel setter

  Which I had to have destroyed.

  Nothing has been changed. I have seen to that.

  AGATHA

  Yes. I mean that at Wishwood he will find another Harry.

  The man who returns will have to meet

  The boy who left. Round by the stables,

  In the coach-house, in the orchard,

  In the plantation, down the corridor

  That led to the nursery, round the corner

  Of the new wing, he will have to face him—

  And it will not be a very jolly corner.

  When the loop in time comes—and it does not come for everybody—

  The hidden is revealed, and the spectres show themselves.

  GERALD

  I don’t in the least know what you’re talking about.

  You seem to be wanting to give us all the hump.

  I must say, this isn’t cheerful for Amy’s birthday

  Or for Harry’s homecoming. Make him feel at home, I say!

  Make him feel that what has happened doesn’t matter.

  He’s taken his medicine, I’ve no doubt.

  Let him marry again and carry on at Wishwood.

  AMY

  Thank you, Gerald. Though Agatha means

  As a rule, a good deal more than she cares to betray,

  I am bound to say that I agree with you.

  CHARLES

  I never wrote to him when he lost his wife—

  That was just about a year ago, wasn’t it?

  Do you think that I ought to mention it now?

  It seems to me too late.

  AMY

  Much too late.

  If he wants to talk about it, that’s another matter;

  But I don’t believe he will. He will wish to forget it.

  I do not mince matters in front of the family:

  You can call it nothing but a blessed relief.

  VIOLET

  I call it providential.

  IVY

  Yet it must have been shocking,

  Especially to lose anybody in that way—

  Swept off the deck in the middle of a storm,

  And never even to recover the body.

  CHARLES

  “Well-known Peeress Vanishes from Liner.”

  GERALD

  Yes, it’s odd to think of her as permanently missing.

  VIOLET

  Had she been drinking?

  AMY

  I would never ask him.

  IVY

  These things are much better not enquired into.

  She may have done it in a fit of temper.

  GERALD

  I never met her.

  AMY

  I am very glad you did not.

  I am very glad that none of you ever met her.

  It will make the situation very much easier

  And is why I was so anxious you should all be here.

  She never would have been one of the family,

  She never wished to be one of the family,

  She only wanted to keep him to herself

  To satisfy her vanity. That’s why she dragged him

  All over Europe and half round the world

  To expensive hotels and undesirable society

  Which she could choose herself. She never wanted

  Harry’s relations or Harry’s old friends;

  She never wanted to fit herself to Harry,

  But only to bring Harry down to her own level.

  A restless shivering painted shadow

  In life, she is less than a shadow in death.

  You might as well all of you know the truth

  For the sake of the future. There can be no grief

  And no regret and no remorse.

  I would have prevented it if I could. For the sake of the future:

  Harry is to take command at Wishwood

  And I hope we can contrive his future happiness.

  Do not discuss his absence. Please behave only

  As if nothing had happened in the last eight years.

  GERALD

  That will be a little difficult.

  VIOLET

  Nonsense, Gerald!

  You must see for yourself it's the only thing to do.

  AGATHA

  Thus with most careful devotion

  Thus with precise attention

  To detail, interfering preparation

  Of that which is already prepared

  Men tighten the knot of confusion

  Into perfect misunderstanding,

  Reflecting a pocket-torch of observation

  Upon each other’s opacity

  Neglecting all the admonitions

  From the world around the corner

  The wind’s talk in the dry holly-tree

  To inclination of the moon

  The attraction of the dark passage

  The paw under the door.

  CHORUS [IVY, VIOLET, GERALD and CHARLES]

  Why do we feel embarrassed, impatient, fretful, ill at ease,

  A
ssembled like amateur actors who have not been assigned their parts?

  Like amateur actors in a dream when the curtain rises, to find themselves dressed for a different play, or having rehearsed the wrong parts,

  Waiting for the rustling in the stalls, the titter in the dress circle, the laughter and catcalls in the gallery?

  CHARLES

  I might have been in St. James’s Street, in a comfortable chair rather nearer the fire.

  IVY

  I might have been visiting Cousin Lily at Sidmouth, if I had not had to come to this party.

  GERALD

  I might have been staying with Compton-Smith, down at his place in Dorset.

  VIOLET

  I should have been helping Lady Bumpus, at the Vicar’s American Tea.

  CHORUS

  Yet we are here at Amy’s command, to play an unread part in some monstrous farce, ridiculous in some nightmare pantomime.

  AMY

  What’s that? I thought I saw someone pass the window.