Books: MAJOR BARBARA

G >> GEORGE BERNARD SHAW >> MAJOR BARBARA

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LOMAX. I suppose he hasn't seen Sarah since she was a little kid.

LADY BRITOMART. Not since she was a little kid, Charles, as you
express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of
thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly--er--
[impatiently] Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That
comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus:
will you kindly tell me where I was.

CUSINS [sweetly] You were saying that as Mr Undershaft has not
seen his children since they were babies, he will form his
opinion of the way you have brought them up from their behavior
to-night, and that therefore you wish us all to be particularly
careful to conduct ourselves well, especially Charles.

LOMAX. Look here: Lady Brit didn't say that.

LADY BRITOMART [vehemently] I did, Charles. Adolphus's
recollection is perfectly correct. It is most important that you
should be good; and I do beg you for once not to pair off into
opposite corners and giggle and whisper while I am speaking to
your father.

BARBARA. All right, mother. We'll do you credit.

LADY BRITOMART. Remember, Charles, that Sarah will want to feel
proud of you instead of ashamed of you.

LOMAX. Oh I say! There's nothing to be exactly proud of, don't
you know.

LADY BRITOMART. Well, try and look as if there was.

Morrison, pale and dismayed, breaks into the room in unconcealed
disorder.

MORRISON. Might I speak a word to you, my lady?

LADY BRITOMART. Nonsense! Show him up.

MORRISON. Yes, my lady. [He goes].

LOMAX. Does Morrison know who he is?

LADY BRITOMART. Of course. Morrison has always been with us.

LOMAX. It must be a regular corker for him, don't you know.

LADY BRITOMART. Is this a moment to get on my nerves, Charles,
with your outrageous expressions?

LOMAX. But this is something out of the ordinary, really--

MORRISON [at the door] The--er--Mr Undershaft. [He retreats in
confusion].

Andrew Undershaft comes in. All rise. Lady Britomart meets him in
the middle of the room behind the settee.

Andrew is, on the surface, a stoutish, easygoing elderly man,
with kindly patient manners, and an engaging simplicity of
character. But he has a watchful, deliberate, waiting, listening
face, and formidable reserves of power, both bodily and mental,
in his capacious chest and long head. His gentleness is partly
that of a strong man who has learnt by experience that his
natural grip hurts ordinary people unless he handles them very
carefully, and partly the mellowness of age and success. He is
also a little shy in his present very delicate situation.

LADY BRITOMART. Good evening, Andrew.

UNDERSHAFT. How d'ye do, my dear.

LADY BRITOMART. You look a good deal older.

UNDERSHAFT [apologetically] I AM somewhat older. [With a touch of
courtship] Time has stood still with you.

LADY BRITOMART [promptly] Rubbish! This is your family.

UNDERSHAFT [surprised] Is it so large? I am sorry to say my
memory is failing very badly in some things. [He offers his hand
with paternal kindness to Lomax].

LOMAX [jerkily shaking his hand] Ahdedoo.

UNDERSHAFT. I can see you are my eldest. I am very glad to meet
you again, my boy.

LOMAX [remonstrating] No but look here don't you know--[Overcome]
Oh I say!

LADY BRITOMART [recovering from momentary speechlessness] Andrew:
do you mean to say that you don't remember how many children you
have?

UNDERSHAFT. Well, I am afraid I--. They have grown so much--er.
Am I making any ridiculous mistake? I may as well confess: I
recollect only one son. But so many things have happened since,
of course--er--

LADY BRITOMART [decisively] Andrew: you are talking nonsense. Of
course you have only one son.

UNDERSHAFT. Perhaps you will be good enough to introduce me, my
dear.

LADY BRITOMART. That is Charles Lomax, who is engaged to Sarah.

UNDERSHAFT. My dear sir, I beg your pardon.

LOMAX. Notatall. Delighted, I assure you.

LADY BRITOMART. This is Stephen.

UNDERSHAFT [bowing] Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr Stephen.
Then [going to Cusins] you must be my son. [Taking Cusins' hands
in his] How are you, my young friend? [To Lady Britomart] He is
very like you, my love.

CUSINS. You flatter me, Mr Undershaft. My name is Cusins: engaged
to Barbara. [Very explicitly] That is Major Barbara Undershaft,
of the Salvation Army. That is Sarah, your second daughter. This
is Stephen Undershaft, your son.

UNDERSHAFT. My dear Stephen, I beg your pardon.

STEPHEN. Not at all.

UNDERSHAFT. Mr Cusins: I am much indebted to you for explaining
so precisely. [Turning to Sarah] Barbara, my dear--

SARAH [prompting him] Sarah.

UNDERSHAFT. Sarah, of course. [They shake hands. He goes over to
Barbara] Barbara--I am right this time, I hope.

BARBARA. Quite right. [They shake hands].

LADY BRITOMART [resuming command] Sit down, all of you. Sit down,
Andrew. [She comes forward and sits on the settle. Cusins also
brings his chair forward on her left. Barbara and Stephen resume
their seats. Lomax gives his chair to Sarah and goes for
another].

UNDERSHAFT. Thank you, my love.

LOMAX [conversationally, as he brings a chair forward between the
writing table and the settee, and offers it to Undershaft] Takes
you some time to find out exactly where you are, don't it?

UNDERSHAFT [accepting the chair] That is not what embarrasses me,
Mr Lomax. My difficulty is that if I play the part of a father, I
shall produce the effect of an intrusive stranger; and if I play
the part of a discreet stranger, I may appear a callous father.

LADY BRITOMART. There is no need for you to play any part at all,
Andrew. You had much better be sincere and natural.

UNDERSHAFT [submissively] Yes, my dear: I daresay that will be
best. [Making himself comfortable] Well, here I am. Now what can
I do for you all?

LADY BRITOMART. You need not do anything, Andrew. You are one of
the family. You can sit with us and enjoy yourself.

Lomax's too long suppressed mirth explodes in agonized neighings.

LADY BRITOMART [outraged] Charles Lomax: if you can behave
yourself, behave yourself. If not, leave the room.

LOMAX. I'm awfully sorry, Lady Brit; but really, you know, upon
my soul! [He sits on the settee between Lady Britomart and
Undershaft, quite overcome].

BARBARA. Why don't you laugh if you want to, Cholly? It's good
for your inside.

LADY BRITOMART. Barbara: you have had the education of a lady.
Please let your father see that; and don't talk like a street
girl.

UNDERSHAFT. Never mind me, my dear. As you know, I am not a
gentleman; and I was never educated.

LOMAX [encouragingly] Nobody'd know it, I assure you. You look
all right, you know.

CUSINS. Let me advise you to study Greek, Mr Undershaft. Greek
scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of
them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable.
Other languages are the qualifications of waiters and commercial
travellers: Greek is to a man of position what the hallmark is to
silver.

BARBARA. Dolly: don't be insincere. Cholly: fetch your concertina
and play something for us.

LOMAX [doubtfully to Undershaft] Perhaps that sort of thing isn't
in your line, eh?

UNDERSHAFT. I am particularly fond of music.

LOMAX [delighted] Are you? Then I'll get it. [He goes upstairs
for the instrument].

UNDERSHAFT. Do you play, Barbara?

BARBARA. Only the tambourine. But Cholly's teaching me the
concertina.

UNDERSHAFT. Is Cholly also a member of the Salvation Army?

BARBARA. No: he says it's bad form to be a dissenter. But I don't
despair of Cholly. I made him come yesterday to a meeting at the
dock gates, and take the collection in his hat.

LADY BRITOMART. It is not my doing, Andrew. Barbara is old enough
to take her own way. She has no father to advise her.

BARBARA. Oh yes she has. There are no orphans in the Salvation
Army.

UNDERSHAFT. Your father there has a great many children and
plenty of experience, eh?

BARBARA [looking at him with quick interest and nodding] Just so.
How did you come to understand that? [Lomax is heard at the door
trying the concertina].

LADY BRITOMART. Come in, Charles. Play us something at once.

LOMAX. Righto! [He sits down in his former place, and preludes].

UNDERSHAFT. One moment, Mr Lomax. I am rather interested in the
Salvation Army. Its motto might be my own: Blood and Fire.

LOMAX [shocked] But not your sort of blood and fire, you know.

UNDERSHAFT. My sort of blood cleanses: my sort of fire purifies.

BARBARA. So do ours. Come down to-morrow to my shelter--the West
Ham shelter--and see what we're doing. We're going to march to a
great meeting in the Assembly Hall at Mile End. Come and see the
shelter and then march with us: it will do you a lot of good. Can
you play anything?

UNDERSHAFT. In my youth I earned pennies, and even shillings
occasionally, in the streets and in public house parlors by my
natural talent for stepdancing. Later on, I became a member of
the Undershaft orchestral society, and performed passably on the
tenor trombone.

LOMAX [scandalized] Oh I say!

BARBARA. Many a sinner has played himself into heaven on the
trombone, thanks to the Army.

LOMAX [to Barbara, still rather shocked] Yes; but what about the
cannon business, don't you know? [To Undershaft] Getting into
heaven is not exactly in your line, is it?

LADY BRITOMART. Charles!!!

LOMAX. Well; but it stands to reason, don't it? The cannon
business may be necessary and all that: we can't get on without
cannons; but it isn't right, you know. On the other hand, there
may be a certain amount of tosh about the Salvation Army--I
belong to the Established Church myself--but still you can't deny
that it's religion; and you can't go against religion, can you?
At least unless you're downright immoral, don't you know.

UNDERSHAFT. You hardly appreciate my position, Mr Lomax--

LOMAX [hastily] I'm not saying anything against you personally,
you know.

UNDERSHAFT. Quite so, quite so. But consider for a moment. Here I
am, a manufacturer of mutilation and murder. I find myself in a
specially amiable humor just now because, this morning, down at
the foundry, we blew twenty-seven dummy soldiers into fragments
with a gun which formerly destroyed only thirteen.

LOMAX [leniently] Well, the more destructive war becomes, the
sooner it will be abolished, eh?

UNDERSHAFT. Not at all. The more destructive war becomes the more
fascinating we find it. No, Mr Lomax, I am obliged to you for
making the usual excuse for my trade; but I am not ashamed of it.
I am not one of those men who keep their morals and their
business in watertight compartments. All the spare money my trade
rivals spend on hospitals, cathedrals and other receptacles for
conscience money, I devote to experiments and researches in
improved methods of destroying life and property. I have always
done so; and I always shall. Therefore your Christmas card
moralities of peace on earth and goodwill among men are of no use
to me. Your Christianity, which enjoins you to resist not evil,
and to turn the other cheek, would make me a bankrupt. My
morality--my religion--must have a place for cannons and
torpedoes in it.

STEPHEN [coldly--almost sullenly] You speak as if there were half
a dozen moralities and religions to choose from, instead of one
true morality and one true religion.

UNDERSHAFT. For me there is only one true morality; but it might
not fit you, as you do not manufacture aerial battleships. There
is only one true morality for every man; but every man has not
the same true morality.

LOMAX [overtaxed] Would you mind saying that again? I didn't
quite follow it.

CUSINS. It's quite simple. As Euripides says, one man's meat is
another man's poison morally as well as physically.

UNDERSHAFT. Precisely.

LOMAX. Oh, that. Yes, yes, yes. True. True.

STEPHEN. In other words, some men are honest and some are
scoundrels.

BARBARA. Bosh. There are no scoundrels.

UNDERSHAFT. Indeed? Are there any good men?

BARBARA. No. Not one. There are neither good men nor scoundrels:
there are just children of one Father; and the sooner they stop
calling one another names the better. You needn't talk to me: I
know them. I've had scores of them through my hands: scoundrels,
criminals, infidels, philanthropists, missionaries, county
councillors, all sorts. They're all just the same sort of sinner;
and there's the same salvation ready for them all.

UNDERSHAFT. May I ask have you ever saved a maker of cannons?

BARBARA. No. Will you let me try?

UNDERSHAFT. Well, I will make a bargain with you. If I go to see
you to-morrow in your Salvation Shelter, will you come the day
after to see me in my cannon works?

BARBARA. Take care. It may end in your giving up the cannons for
the sake of the Salvation Army.

UNDERSHAFT. Are you sure it will not end in your giving up the
Salvation Army for the sake of the cannons?

BARBARA. I will take my chance of that.

UNDERSHAFT. And I will take my chance of the other. [They shake
hands on it]. Where is your shelter?

BARBARA. In West Ham. At the sign of the cross. Ask anybody in
Canning Town. Where are your works?

UNDERSHAFT. In Perivale St Andrews. At the sign of the sword. Ask
anybody in Europe.

LOMAX. Hadn't I better play something?

BARBARA. Yes. Give us Onward, Christian Soldiers.

LOMAX. Well, that's rather a strong order to begin with, don't
you know. Suppose I sing Thou'rt passing hence, my brother. It's
much the same tune.

BARBARA. It's too melancholy. You get saved, Cholly; and you'll
pass hence, my brother, without making such a fuss about it.

LADY BRITOMART. Really, Barbara, you go on as if religion were a
pleasant subject. Do have some sense of propriety.

UNDERSHAFT. I do not find it an unpleasant subject, my dear. It
is the only one that capable people really care for.

LADY BRITOMART [looking at her watch] Well, if you are determined
to have it, I insist on having it in a proper and respectable
way. Charles: ring for prayers. [General amazement. Stephen rises
in dismay].

LOMAX [rising] Oh I say!

UNDERSHAFT [rising] I am afraid I must be going.

LADY BRITOMART. You cannot go now, Andrew: it would be most
improper. Sit down. What will the servants think?

UNDERSHAFT. My dear: I have conscientious scruples. May I suggest
a compromise? If Barbara will conduct a little service in the
drawingroom, with Mr Lomax as organist, I will attend it
willingly. I will even take part, if a trombone can be procured.

LADY BRITOMART. Don't mock, Andrew.

UNDERSHAFT [shocked--to Barbara] You don't think I am mocking, my
love, I hope.

BARBARA. No, of course not; and it wouldn't matter if you were:
half the Army came to their first meeting for a lark. [Rising]
Come along. Come, Dolly. Come, Cholly. [She goes out with
Undershaft, who opens the door for her. Cusins rises].

LADY BRITOMART. I will not be disobeyed by everybody. Adolphus:
sit down. Charles: you may go. You are not fit for prayers: you
cannot keep your countenance.

LOMAX. Oh I say! [He goes out].

LADY BRITOMART [continuing] But you, Adolphus, can behave
yourself if you choose to. I insist on your staying.

CUSINS. My dear Lady Brit: there are things in the family prayer
book that I couldn't bear to hear you say.

LADY BRITOMART. What things, pray?

CUSINS. Well, you would have to say before all the servants that
we have done things we ought not to have done, and left undone
things we ought to have done, and that there is no health in us.
I cannot bear to hear you doing yourself such an unjustice, and
Barbara such an injustice. As for myself, I flatly deny it: I
have done my best. I shouldn't dare to marry Barbara--I couldn't
look you in the face--if it were true. So I must go to the
drawingroom.

LADY BRITOMART [offended] Well, go. [He starts for the door]. And
remember this, Adolphus [he turns to listen]: I have a very
strong suspicion that you went to the Salvation Army to worship
Barbara and nothing else. And I quite appreciate the very clever
way in which you systematically humbug me. I have found you out.
Take care Barbara doesn't. That's all.

CUSINS [with unruffled sweetness] Don't tell on me. [He goes
out].

LADY BRITOMART. Sarah: if you want to go, go. Anything's better
than to sit there as if you wished you were a thousand miles
away.

SARAH [languidly] Very well, mamma. [She goes].

Lady Britomart, with a sudden flounce, gives way to a little gust
of tears.

STEPHEN [going to her] Mother: what's the matter?

LADY BRITOMART [swishing away her tears with her handkerchief]
Nothing. Foolishness. You can go with him, too, if you like, and
leave me with the servants.

STEPHEN. Oh, you mustn't think that, mother. I--I don't like him.

LADY BRITOMART. The others do. That is the injustice of a woman's
lot. A woman has to bring up her children; and that means to
restrain them, to deny them things they want, to set them tasks,
to punish them when they do wrong, to do all the unpleasant
things. And then the father, who has nothing to do but pet them
and spoil them, comes in when all her work is done and steals
their affection from her.

STEPHEN. He has not stolen our affection from you. It is only
curiosity.

LADY BRITOMART [violently] I won't be consoled, Stephen. There is
nothing the matter with me. [She rises and goes towards the
door].

STEPHEN. Where are you going, mother?

LADY BRITOMART. To the drawingroom, of course. [She goes out.
Onward, Christian Soldiers, on the concertina, with tambourine
accompaniment, is heard when the door opens]. Are you coming,
Stephen?

STEPHEN. No. Certainly not. [She goes. He sits down on the
settee, with compressed lips and an expression of strong
dislike].

ACT II

The yard of the West Ham shelter of the Salvation Army is a cold
place on a January morning. The building itself, an old
warehouse, is newly whitewashed. Its gabled end projects into the
yard in the middle, with a door on the ground floor, and another
in the loft above it without any balcony or ladder, but with a
pulley rigged over it for hoisting sacks. Those who come from
this central gable end into the yard have the gateway leading to
the street on their left, with a stone horse-trough just beyond
it, and, on the right, a penthouse shielding a table from the
weather. There are forms at the table; and on them are seated a
man and a woman, both much down on their luck, finishing a meal
of bread [one thick slice each, with margarine and golden syrup]
and diluted milk.

The man, a workman out of employment, is young, agile, a talker,
a poser, sharp enough to be capable of anything in reason except
honesty or altruistic considerations of any kind. The woman is a
commonplace old bundle of poverty and hard-worn humanity. She
looks sixty and probably is forty-five. If they were rich people,
gloved and muffed and well wrapped up in furs and overcoats, they
would be numbed and miserable; for it is a grindingly cold, raw,
January day; and a glance at the background of grimy warehouses
and leaden sky visible over the whitewashed walls of the yard
would drive any idle rich person straight to the Mediterranean.
But these two, being no more troubled with visions of the
Mediterranean than of the moon, and being compelled to keep more
of their clothes in the pawnshop, and less on their persons, in
winter than in summer, are not depressed by the cold: rather are
they stung into vivacity, to which their meal has just now given
an almost jolly turn. The man takes a pull at his mug, and then
gets up and moves about the yard with his hands deep in his
pockets, occasionally breaking into a stepdance.

THE WOMAN. Feel better otter your meal, sir?

THE MAN. No. Call that a meal! Good enough for you, props; but
wot is it to me, an intelligent workin man.

THE WOMAN. Workin man! Wot are you?

THE MAN. Painter.

THE WOMAN [sceptically] Yus, I dessay.

THE MAN. Yus, you dessay! I know. Every loafer that can't do
nothink calls isself a painter. Well, I'm a real painter:
grainer, finisher, thirty-eight bob a week when I can get it.

THE WOMAN. Then why don't you go and get it?

THE MAN. I'll tell you why. Fust: I'm intelligent--fffff! it's
rotten cold here [he dances a step or two]--yes: intelligent
beyond the station o life into which it has pleased the
capitalists to call me; and they don't like a man that sees
through em. Second, an intelligent bein needs a doo share of
appiness; so I drink somethink cruel when I get the chawnce.
Third, I stand by my class and do as little as I can so's to
leave arf the job for me fellow workers. Fourth, I'm fly enough
to know wots inside the law and wots outside it; and inside it I
do as the capitalists do: pinch wot I can lay me ands on. In a
proper state of society I am sober, industrious and honest: in
Rome, so to speak, I do as the Romans do. Wots the consequence?
When trade is bad--and it's rotten bad just now--and the
employers az to sack arf their men, they generally start on me.

THE WOMAN. What's your name?

THE MAN. Price. Bronterre O'Brien Price. Usually called Snobby
Price, for short.

THE WOMAN. Snobby's a carpenter, ain't it? You said you was a
painter.

PRICE. Not that kind of snob, but the genteel sort. I'm too
uppish, owing to my intelligence, and my father being a Chartist
and a reading, thinking man: a stationer, too. I'm none of your
common hewers of wood and drawers of water; and don't you forget
it. [He returns to his seat at the table, and takes up his mug].
Wots YOUR name?

THE WOMAN. Rummy Mitchens, sir.

PRICE [quaffing the remains of his milk to her] Your elth, Miss
Mitchens.

RUMMY [correcting him] Missis Mitchens.

PRICE. Wot! Oh Rummy, Rummy! Respectable married woman, Rummy,
gittin rescued by the Salvation Army by pretendin to be a bad un.
Same old game!

RUMMY. What am I to do? I can't starve. Them Salvation lasses is
dear good girls; but the better you are, the worse they likes to
think you were before they rescued you. Why shouldn't they av a
bit o credit, poor loves? They're worn to rags by their work. And
where would they get the money to rescue us if we was to let on
we're no worse than other people? You know what ladies and
gentlemen are.

PRICE. Thievin swine! Wish I ad their job, Rummy, all the same.
Wot does Rummy stand for? Pet name props?

RUMMY. Short for Romola.

PRICE. For wot!?

RUMMY. Romola. It was out of a new book. Somebody me mother
wanted me to grow up like.

PRICE. We're companions in misfortune, Rummy. Both on us got
names that nobody cawnt pronounce. Consequently I'm Snobby and
you're Rummy because Bill and Sally wasn't good enough for our
parents. Such is life!

RUMMY. Who saved you, Mr. Price? Was it Major Barbara?

PRICE. No: I come here on my own. I'm goin to be Bronterre
O'Brien Price, the converted painter. I know wot they like. I'll
tell em how I blasphemed and gambled and wopped my poor old
mother--

RUMMY [shocked] Used you to beat your mother?

PRICE. Not likely. She used to beat me. No matter: you come and
listen to the converted painter, and you'll hear how she was a
pious woman that taught me me prayers at er knee, an how I used
to come home drunk and drag her out o bed be er snow white airs,
an lam into er with the poker.

RUMMY. That's what's so unfair to us women. Your confessions is
just as big lies as ours: you don't tell what you really done no
more than us; but you men can tell your lies right out at the
meetins and be made much of for it; while the sort o confessions
we az to make az to be wispered to one lady at a time. It ain't
right, spite of all their piety.

PRICE. Right! Do you spose the Army'd be allowed if it went and
did right? Not much. It combs our air and makes us good little
blokes to be robbed and put upon. But I'll play the game as good
as any of em. I'll see somebody struck by lightnin, or hear a
voice sayin "Snobby Price: where will you spend eternity?" I'll
ave a time of it, I tell you.

RUMMY. You won't be let drink, though.

PRICE. I'll take it out in gorspellin, then. I don't want to
drink if I can get fun enough any other way.

Jenny Hill, a pale, overwrought, pretty Salvation lass of 18,
comes in through the yard gate, leading Peter Shirley, a half
hardened, half worn-out elderly man, weak with hunger.

JENNY [supporting him] Come! pluck up. I'll get you something to
eat. You'll be all right then.

PRICE [rising and hurrying officiously to take the old man off
Jenny's hands] Poor old man! Cheer up, brother: you'll find rest
and peace and appiness ere. Hurry up with the food, miss: e's
fair done. [Jenny hurries into the shelter]. Ere, buck up, daddy!
She's fetchin y'a thick slice o breadn treacle, an a mug o
skyblue. [He seats him at the corner of the table].

RUMMY [gaily] Keep up your old art! Never say die!

SHIRLEY. I'm not an old man. I'm ony 46. I'm as good as ever I
was. The grey patch come in my hair before I was thirty. All it
wants is three pennorth o hair dye: am I to be turned on the
streets to starve for it? Holy God! I've worked ten to twelve
hours a day since I was thirteen, and paid my way all through;
and now am I to be thrown into the gutter and my job given to a
young man that can do it no better than me because I've black
hair that goes white at the first change?

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