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The Dynasts

T >> Thomas Hardy >> The Dynasts




[He sits down amid loud ministerial cheers, with symptoms of
great exhaustion.]


WINDHAM

The question that compels the House to-night
Is not of differences in wit and wit,
But if for England it be well or no
To null the new-fledged Act, as one inept
For setting up with speed and hot effect
The red machinery of desperate war.--
Whatever it may do, or not, it stands,
A statesman' raw experiment. If ill,
Shall more experiments and more be tried
In stress of jeopardy that stirs demand
For sureness of proceeding? Must this House
Exchange safe action based on practised lines
For yet more ventures into risks unknown
To gratify a quaint projector's whim,
While enemies hang grinning round our gates
To profit by mistake?

My friend who spoke
Found comedy in the matter. Comical
As it may be in parentage and feature,
Most grave and tragic in its consequence
This Act may prove. We are moving thoughtlessly,
We squander precious, brief, life-saving time
On idle guess-games. Fail the measure must,
Nay, failed it has already; and should rouse
Resolve in its progenitor himself
To move for its repeal! (Cheers.)


WHITBREAD

I rise but to subjoin a phrase or two
To those of my right honourable friend.
I, too, am one who reads the present pinch
As passing all our risks heretofore.
For why? Our bold and reckless enemy,
Relaxing not his plans, has treasured time
To mass his monstrous force on all the coigns
From which our coast is close assailable.
Ay, even afloat his concentrations work:
Two vast united squadrons of his sail
Move at this moment viewless on the seas.--
Their whereabouts, untraced, unguessable,
Will not be known to us till some black blow
Be dealt by them in some undreamt-of quarter
To knell our rule.

That we are reasonably enfenced therefrom
By such an Act is but a madman's dream. . . .
A commonwealth so situate cries aloud
For more, far mightier, measures! End an Act
In Heaven's name, then, which only can obstruct
The fabrication of more trusty tackle
For building up an army! (Cheers.)


BATHURST

Sir, the point
To any sober mind is bright as noon;
Whether the Act should have befitting trial
Or be blasphemed at sight. I firmly hold
The latter loud iniquity.--One task
Is theirs who would inter this corpse-cold Act--
(So said)--to bring to birth a substitute!
Sir, they have none; they have given no thought to one,
And this their deeds incautiously disclose
Their cloaked intention and most secret aim!
With them the question is not how to frame
A finer trick to trounce intrusive foes,
But who shall be the future ministers
To whom such trick against intrusive foes,
Whatever it may prove, shall be entrusted!
They even ask the country gentlemen
To join them in this job. But, God be praised,
Those gentlemen are sound, and of repute;
Their names, their attainments, and their blood,
(Ironical Opposition cheers.)
Safeguard them from an onslaught on an Act
For ends so sinister and palpable! (Cheers and jeerings.)


FULLER

I disapprove of censures of the Act.--
All who would entertain such hostile thought
Would swear that black is white, that night is day.
No honest man will join a reckless crew
Who'd overthrow their country for their gain! (Laughter.)


TIERNEY

It is incumbent on me to declare
In the last speaker's face my censure, based
On grounds most clear and constitutional.--
An Act it is that studies to create
A standing army, large and permanent;
Which kind of force has ever been beheld
With jealous-eyed disfavour in this House.
It makes for sure oppression, binding men
To serve for less than service proves it worth
Conditioned by no hampering penalty.
For these and late-spoke reasons, then, I say,
Let not the Act deface the statute-book,
But blot it out forthwith. (Hear, hear.)


FOX (rising amid cheers)

At this late hour,
After the riddling fire the Act has drawn on't,
My words shall hold the House the briefest while.
Too obvious to the most unwilling mind
It grows that the existence of this law
Experience and reflection have condemned.
Professing to do much, it makes for nothing;
Not only so; while feeble in effect
It shows it vicious in its principle.
Engaging to raise men for the common weal
It sets a harmful and unequal tax
Capriciously on our communities.--
The annals of a century fail to show
More flagrant cases of oppressiveness
Than those this statute works to perpetrate,
Which (like all Bills this favoured statesman frames,
And clothes with tapestries of rhetoric
Disguising their real web of commonplace)
Though held as shaped for English bulwarking,
Breathes in its heart perversities of party,
And instincts toward oligarchic power,
Galling the many to relieve the few! (Cheers.)

Whatever breadth and sense of equity
Inform the methods of this minister,
Those mitigants nearly always trace their root
To measures that his predecessors wrought.
And ere his Government can dare assert
Superior claim to England's confidence,
They owe it to their honour and good name
To furnish better proof of such a claim
Than is revealed by the abortiveness
Of this thing called an Act for our Defence.

To the great gifts of its artificer
No member of this House is more disposed
To yield full recognition than am I.
No man has found more reason so to do
Through the long roll of disputatious years
Wherein we have stood opposed. . . .
But if one single fact could counsel me
To entertain a doubt of those great gifts,
And cancel faith in his capacity,
That fact would be the vast imprudence shown
In staking recklessly repute like his
On such an Act as he has offered us--
So false in principle, so poor in fruit.
Sir, the achievements and effects thereof
Have furnished not one fragile argument
Which all the partiality of friendship
Can kindle to consider as the mark
Of a clear, vigorous, freedom-fostering mind!

[He sits down amid lengthy cheering from the Opposition.]


SHERIDAN

My summary shall be brief, and to the point.--
The said right honourable Prime Minister
Has thought it proper to declare my speech
The jesting of an irresponsible;--
Words from a person who has never read
The Act he claims him urgent to repeal.
Such quips and qizzings (as he reckons them)
He implicates as gathered from long hoards
Stored up with cruel care, to be discharged
With sudden blaze of pyrotechnic art
On the devoted, gentle, shrinking head
O' the right incomparable gentleman! (Laughter.)
But were my humble, solemn, sad oration (Laughter.)
Indeed such rattle as he rated it,
Is it not strange, and passing precedent,
That the illustrious chief of Government
Should have uprisen with such indecent speed
And strenuously replied? He, sir, knows well
That vast and luminous talents like his own
Could not have been demanded to choke off
A witcraft marked by nothing more of weight
Than ignorant irregularity!
_Nec Deus intersit_--and so-and-so--
Is a well-worn citation whose close fit
None will perceive more clearly in the Fane
Than its presiding Deity opposite. (Laughter.)
His thunderous answer thus perforce condemns him!

Moreover, to top all, the while replying,
He still thought best to leave intact the reasons
On which my blame was founded!
Thus, them, stands
My motion unimpaired, convicting clearly
Of dire perversion that capacity
We formerly admired.-- (Cries of "Oh, oh.")
This minister
Whose circumventions never circumvent,
Whose coalitions fail to coalesce;
This dab at secret treaties known to all,
This darling of the aristocracy--

(Laughter, "Oh, oh," cheers, and cries of "Divide.")

Has brought the millions to the verge of ruin,
By pledging them to Continental quarrels
Of which we see no end! (Cheers.)

[The members rise to divide.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

It irks me that they thus should Yea and Nay
As though a power lay in their oraclings,
If each decision work unconsciously,
And would be operant though unloosened were
A single lip!


SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

There may react on things
Some influence from these, indefinitely,
And even on That, whose outcome we all are.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Hypotheses!--More boots it to remind
The younger here of our ethereal band
And hierarchy of Intelligences,
That this thwart Parliament whose moods we watch--
So insular, empiric, un-ideal--
May figure forth in sharp and salient lines
To retrospective eyes of afterdays,
And print its legend large on History.
For one cause--if I read the signs aright--
To-night's appearance of its Minister
In the assembly of his long-time sway
Is near his last, and themes to-night launched forth
Will take a tincture from that memory,
When me recall the scene and circumstance
That hung about his pleadings.--But no more;
The ritual of each party is rehearsed,
Dislodging not one vote or prejudice;
The ministers their ministries retain,
And Ins as Ins, and Outs as Outs, remain.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Meanwhile what of the Foeman's vast array
That wakes these tones?


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Abide the event, young Shade:
Soon stars will shut and show a spring-eyed dawn,
And sunbeams fountain forth, that will arouse
Those forming bands to full activity.

[An honourable member reports that he spies strangers.]

A timely token that we dally here!
We now cast off these mortal manacles,
And speed us seaward.

[The Phantoms vanish from the Gallery. The members file out
to the lobbies. The House and Westminster recede into the
films of night, and the point of observation shifts rapidly
across the Channel.]



SCENE IV

THE HARBOUR OF BOULOGNE

[The morning breaks, radiant with early sunlight. The French
Army of Invasion is disclosed. On the hills on either side
of the town and behind appear large military camps formed of
timber huts. Lower down are other camps of more or less
permanent kind, the whole affording accommodation for one
hundred and fifty thousand men.

South of the town is an extensive basin surrounded by quays,
the heaps of fresh soil around showing it to be a recent
excavation from the banks of the Liane. The basin is crowded
with the flotilla, consisting of hundreds of vessels of sundry
kinds: flat-bottomed brigs with guns and two masts; boats of
one mast, carrying each an artillery waggon, two guns, and a
two-stalled horse-box; transports with three low masts; and
long narrow pinnaces arranged for many oars.

Timber, saw-mills, and new-cut planks spread in profusion
around, and many of the town residences are seen to be adapted
for warehouses and infirmaries.]


DUMB SHOW

Moving in this scene are countless companies of soldiery, engaged
in a drill practice of embarking and disembarking, and of hoisting
horses into the vessels and landing them again. Vehicles bearing
provisions of many sorts load and unload before the temporary
warehouses. Further off, on the open land, bodies of troops are at
field-drill. Other bodies of soldiers, half stripped and encrusted
with mud, are labouring as navvies in repairing the excavations.

An English squadron of about twenty sail, comprising a ship or two of
the line, frigates, brigs, and luggers, confronts the busy spectacle
from the sea.

The Show presently dims and becomes broken, till only its flashes and
gleams are visible. Anon a curtain of cloud closes over it.



SCENE V

LONDON. THE HOUSE OF A LADY OF QUALITY

[A fashionable crowd is present at an evening party, which
includes the DUKES of BEAUFORT and RUTLAND, LORDS MALMESBURY,
HARROWBY, ELDON, GRENVILLE, CASTLEREAGH, SIDMOUTH, and MULGRAVE,
with their ladies; also CANNING, PERCEVAL, TOWNSHEND, LADY
ANNE HAMILTON, MRS. DAMER, LADY CAROLINE LAMB, and many other
notables.]


A GENTLEMAN (offering his snuff-box)

So, then, the Treaty anxiously concerted
Between ourselves and frosty Muscovy
Is duly signed?


A CABINET MINISTER

Was signed a few days back,
And is in force. And we do firmly hope
The loud pretensions and the stunning dins
Now daily heard, these laudable exertions
May keep in curb; that ere our greening land
Darken its leaves beneath the Dogday suns,
The independence of the Continent
May be assured, and all the rumpled flags
Of famous dynasties so foully mauled,
Extend their honoured hues as heretofore.


GENTLEMAN

So be it. Yet this man is a volcano;
And proven 'tis, by God, volcanos choked
Have ere now turned to earthquakes!


LADY

What the news?--
The chequerboard of diplomatic moves
Is London, all the world knows: here are born
All inspirations of the Continent--
So tell!

GENTLEMAN

Ay. Inspirations now abound!


LADY

Nay, but your looks are grave! That measured speech
Betokened matter that will waken us.--
Is it some piquant cruelty of his?
Or other tickling horror from abroad
The packet has brought in?


GENTLEMAN

The treaty's signed!


MINISTER

Whereby the parties mutually agree
To knit in union and in general league
All outraged Europe.


LADY

So to knit sounds well;
But how ensure its not unravelling?


MINISTER

Well; by the terms. There are among them these:
Five hundred thousand active men in arms
Shall strike (supported by the Britannic aid
In vessels, men, and money subsidies)
To free North Germany and Hanover
From trampling foes; deliver Switzerland,
Unbind the galled republic of the Dutch,
Rethrone in Piedmont the Sardinian King,
Make Naples sword-proof, un-French Italy
From shore to shore; and thoroughly guarantee
A settled order to the divers states;
Thus rearing breachless barriers in each realm
Against the thrust of his usurping hand.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

They trow not what is shaping otherwhere
The while they talk this stoutly!


SPIRIT OF RUMOUR

Bid me go
And join them, and all blandly kindle them
By bringing, ere material transit can,
A new surprise!


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Yea, for a moment, wouldst.

[The Spirit of Rumour enters the apartment in the form of a
personage of fashion, newly arrived. He advances and addresses
the group.]


SPIRIT

The Treaty moves all tongues to-night.--Ha, well--
So much on paper!


GENTLEMAN

What on land and sea?
You look, old friend, full primed with latest thence.


SPIRIT

Yea, this. The Italy our mighty pact
Delivers from the French and Bonaparte
Makes haste to crown him!--Turning from Boulogne
He speeds toward Milan, there to glory him
In second coronation by the Pope,
And set upon his irrepressible brow
Lombardy's iron crown.

[The Spirit of Rumour mingles with the throng, moves away, and
disappears.]


LADY

Fair Italy,
Alas, alas!


LORD

Yet thereby English folk
Are freed him.--Faith, as ancient people say,
It's an ill wind that blows good luck to none!


MINISTER

Who is your friend that drops so airily
This precious pinch of salt on our raw skin?


GENTLEMAN

Why, Norton. You know Norton well enough?


MINISTER

Nay, 'twas not he. Norton of course I know.
I thought him Stewart for a moment, but---


LADY

But I well scanned him--'twas Lord Abercorn;
For, said I to myself, "O quaint old beau,
To sleep in black silk sheets so funnily:--
That is, if the town rumour on't be true.


LORD

My wig, ma'am, no! 'Twas a much younger man.


GENTLEMAN

But let me call him! Monstrous silly this,
That don't know my friends!

[They look around. The gentleman goes among the surging and
babbling guests, makes inquiries, and returns with a perplexed
look.]


GENTLEMAN

They tell me, sure,
That he's not here to-night!


MINISTER

I can well swear
It was not Norton.--'Twas some lively buck,
Who chose to put himself in masquerade
And enter for a whim. I'll tell our host.
--Meantime the absurdity of his report
Is more than manifested. How knows he
The plans of Bonaparte by lightning-flight,
Before another man in England knows?


LADY

Something uncanny's in it all, if true.
Good Lord, the thought gives me a sudden sweat,
That fairly makes my linen stick to me!


MINISTER

Ha-ha! 'Tis excellent. But we'll find out
Who this impostor was.

[They disperse, look furtively for the stranger, and speak of
the incident to others of the crowded company.]


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Now let us vision onward, till we sight
Famed Milan's aisles of marble, sun-alight,
And there behold, unbid, the Coronation-rite.

[The confused tongues of the assembly waste away into distance,
till they are heard but as the babblings of the sea from a
high cliff, the scene becoming small and indistinct therewith.
This passes into silence, and the whole disappears.]



SCENE VI

MILAN. THE CATHEDRAL

[The interior of the building on a sunny May day.

The walls, arched, and columns are draped in silk fringed with
gold. A gilded throne stand in front of the High Altar. A
closely packed assemblage, attired in every variety of rich
fabric and fashion, waits in breathless expectation.]


DUMB SHOW

From a private corridor leading to a door in the aisle the EMPRESS
JOSEPHINE enters, in a shining costume, and diamonds that collect
rainbow-colours from the sunlight piercing the clerestory windows.
She is preceded by PRINCESS ELIZA, and surrounded by her ladies.
A pause follows, and then comes the procession of the EMPEROR,
consisting of hussars, heralds, pages, aides-de-camp, presidents
of institutions, officers of the state bearing the insignia of the
Empire and of Italy, and seven ladies with offerings. The Emperor
himself in royal robes, wearing the Imperial crown, and carrying the
sceptre. He is followed my ministers and officials of the household.
His gait is rather defiant than dignified, and a bluish pallor
overspreads his face.

He is met by the Cardinal Archbishop of CAPRARA and the clergy, who
burn incense before him as he proceeds towards the throne. Rolling
notes of music burn forth, and loud applause from the congregation.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

What is the creed that these rich rites disclose?


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

A local cult, called Christianity,
Which the wild dramas of the wheeling spheres
Include, with divers other such, in dim
Pathetical and brief parentheses,
Beyond whose span, uninfluenced, unconcerned,
The systems of the suns go sweeping on
With all their many-mortaled planet train
In mathematic roll unceasingly.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I did not recognize it here, forsooth;
Though in its early, lovingkindly days
Of gracious purpose it was much to me.


ARCHBISHOP (addressing Bonaparte)

Sire, with that clemency and right goodwill
Which beautify Imperial Majesty,
You deigned acceptance of the homages
That we the clergy and the Milanese
Were proud to offer when your entrance here
Streamed radiance on our ancient capital.
Please, then, to consummate the boon to-day
Beneath this holy roof, so soon to thrill
With solemn strains and lifting harmonies
Befitting such a coronation hour;
And bend a tender fatherly regard
On this assembly, now at one with me
To supplicate the Author of All Good
That He endow your most Imperial person
With every Heavenly gift.


[The procession advances, and the EMPEROR seats himself on the
throne, with the banners and regalia of the Empire on his right,
and those of Italy on his left hand. Shouts and triumphal music
accompany the proceedings, after which Divine service commences.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Thus are the self-styled servants of the Highest
Constrained by earthly duress to embrace
Mighty imperiousness as it were choice,
And hand the Italian sceptre unto one
Who, with a saturnine, sour-humoured grin,
Professed at first to flout antiquity,
Scorn limp conventions, smile at mouldy thrones,
And level dynasts down to journeymen!--
Yet he, advancing swiftly on that track
Whereby his active soul, fair Freedom's child
Makes strange decline, now labours to achieve
The thing it overthrew.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Thou reasonest ever thuswise--even if
A self-formed force had urged his loud career.


SPIRIT SINISTER

Do not the prelate's accents falter thin,
His lips with inheld laughter grow deformed,
While blessing one whose aim is but to win
The golden seats that other b---s have warmed?


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Soft, jester; scorn not puppetry so skilled,
Even made to feel by one men call the Dame.


SHADE OF THE EARTH

Yea; that they feel, and puppetry remain,
Is an owned flaw in her consistency
Men love to dub Dame Nature--that lay-shape
They use to hang phenomena upon--
Whose deftest mothering in fairest sphere
Is girt about by terms inexorable!


SPIRIT SINISTER

The lady's remark is apposite, and reminds me that I may as well
hold my tongue as desired. For if my casual scorn, Father Years,
should set thee trying to prove that there is any right or reason
in the Universe, thou wilt not accomplish it by Doomsday! Small
blame to her, however; she must cut her coat according to her
cloth, as they would say below there.


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

O would that I could move It to enchain thee,
And shut thee up a thousand years!--(to cite
A grim terrestrial tale of one thy like)
Thou Iago of the Incorporeal World,
"As they would say below there."


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Would thou couldst!
But move That scoped above percipience, Sire,
It cannot be!


SHADE OF THE EARTH

The spectacle proceeds.


SPIRIT SINISTER

And we may as well give all attention thereto, for the evils at
work in other continents are not worth eyesight by comparison.

[The ceremonial in the Cathedral continues. NAPOLEON goes to
the front of the altar, ascends the steps, and, taking up the
crown of Lombardy, places it on his head.]


NAPOLEON

'Tis God has given it to me. So be it.
Let any who shall touch it now beware! (Reverberations of applause.)

[The Sacrament of the Mass. NAPOLEON reads the Coronation Oath in
a loud voice.]


HERALDS

Give ear! Napoleon, Emperor of the French
And King of Italy, is crowned and throned!


CONGREGATION

Long live the Emperor and King. Huzza!

[Music. The Te Deum.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

That vulgar stroke of vauntery he displayed
In planting on his brow the Lombard crown,
Means sheer erasure of the Luneville pacts,
And lets confusion loose on Europe's peace
For many an undawned year! From this rash hour
Austria but waits her opportunity
By secret swellings of her armaments
To link her to his foes.--I'll speak to him.

[He throws a whisper into NAPOLEON'S ear.]

Lieutenant Bonaparte,
Would it not seemlier be to shut thy heart
To these unhealthy splendours?--helmet thee
For her thou swar'st-to first, fair Liberty?


NAPOLEON

Who spoke to me?


ARCHBISHOP

Not I, Sire. Not a soul.


NAPOLEON

Dear Josephine, my queen, didst call my name?


JOSEPHINE

I spoke not, Sire.


NAPOLEON

Thou didst not, tender spouse;
I know it. Such harsh utterance was not thine.
It was aggressive Fancy, working spells
Upon a mind o'erwrought!

[The service closes. The clergy advance with the canopy to the
foot of the throne, and the procession forms to return to the
Palace.]


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Officious sprite,
Thou art young, and dost not heed the Cause of things
Which some of us have inkled to thee here;
Else wouldst thou not have hailed the Emperor,
Whose acts do but outshape Its governing.


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

I feel, Sire, as I must! This tale of Will
And Life's impulsion by Incognizance
I cannot take!


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Let me then once again
Show to thy sceptic eye the very streams
And currents of this all-inhering Power,
And bring conclusion to thy unbelief.

[The scene assumes the preternatural transparency before mentioned,
and there is again beheld as it were the interior of a brain which
seems to manifest the volitions of a Universal Will, of whose
tissues the personages of the action form portion.]


SPIRIT OF THE PITIES

Enough. And yet for very sorriness
I cannot own the weird phantasma real!


SPIRIT OF THE YEARS

Affection ever was illogical.


SPIRIT IRONIC (aside)

How should the Sprite own to such logic--a mere juvenile-- who only
came into being in what the earthlings call their Tertiary Age!

[The scene changes. The exterior of the Cathedral takes the place
of the interior, and the point of view recedes, the whole fabric
smalling into distance and becoming like a rare, delicately carved
alabaster ornament. The city itself sinks to miniature, the Alps
show afar as a white corrugation, the Adriatic and the Gulf of
Genoa appear on this and on that hand, with Italy between them,
till clouds cover the panorama.]

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