The Admirable Bashville

Act II

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LUCIAN. I have been greatly occupied of late.

The minister to whom I act as scribe

In Downing Street was born in Birmingham,

And, like a thoroughbred commercial statesman,

Splits his infinities, which I, poor slave,

Must reunite, though all the time my heart

Yearns for my gentle coz's company.

LYDIA. Lucian: there is some other reason. Think!

Since England was a nation every mood

Her scribes have prepositionally split;

But thine avoidance dates from yestermonth.

LUCIAN. Aye, of him.

Hast thou forgotten that eventful night

When as we gathered were at Hoskyn House

To hear a lecture by Herr Abendgasse,

He placed a single finger on my chest,

And I, ensorceled, would have sunk supine

Had not a chair received my falling form.

LUCIAN. What right had he to illustrate his point

Upon my person? Was I his assistant

That he should try experiments on me

As Simpson did on his with chloroform?

Now, by the cannon balls of Galileo

He hath unmanned me: all my nerve is gone.

This very morning my official chief,

Tapping with friendly forefinger this button,

Levelled me like a thunderstricken elm

Flat upon the Colonial Office floor.

LUCIAN. Fancies! Fits! the chief said fits!

Delirium tremens! the chlorotic dance

Of Vitus! What could any one have thought?

Your ruffian friend hath ruined me. By Heaven,

I tremble at a thumbnail. Give me drink.

LYDIA. True. It is horrible. Said I "Some wet"?

I meant, some drink. Why did I say "Some wet"?

Am I ensorceled too? "Some wet"! Fie! fie!

I feel as though some hateful thing had stained me.

Oh, Lucian, how could I have said "Some wet"?

BASHVILLE. Madam: yes. [He produces a newspaper.

All England for these thrilling paragraphs

A week has waited breathless.

BASHVILLE [reading]. "At noon to-day, unknown to the police,

Within a thousand miles of Wormwood Scrubbs,

Th' Australian Champion and his challenger,

The Flying Dutchman, formerly engaged

I' the mercantile marine, fought to a finish.

Lord Worthington, the well-known sporting peer

Acted as referee."

BASHVILLE. "The bold Ned Skene revisited the ropes

To hold the bottle for his quondam novice;

Whilst in the seaman's corner were assembled

Professor Palmer and the Chelsea Snob.

Mellish, whose epigastrium has been hurt,

'Tis said, by accident at Wiltstoken,

Looked none the worse in the Australian's corner.

The Flying Dutchman wore the Union Jack:

His colors freely sold amid the crowd;

But Cashel's well-known spot of white on blue--"

LYDIA. Proceed.

What you have read I do not understand;

Yet I will hear it through. Proceed.

BASHVILLE. "But Cashel's well-known spot of white on blue

Was fairly rushed for. Time was called at twelve,

When, with a smile of confidence upon

His ocean-beaten mug--"

BASHVILLE [continuing]. "The Dutchman came undaunted to the scratch,

But found the champion there already. Both

Most heartily shook hands, amid the cheers

Of their encouraged backers. Two to one

Was offered on the Melbourne nonpareil;

And soon, so fit the Flying Dutchman seemed,

Found takers everywhere. No time was lost

In getting to the business of the day.

The Dutchman led at once, and seemed to land

On Byron's dicebox; but the seaman's reach,

Too short for execution at long shots,

Did not get fairly home upon the ivory;

And Byron had the best of the exchange."

BASHVILLE. "Round Three: the rumors that had gone about

Of a breakdown in Byron's recent training

Seemed quite confirmed. Upon the call of time

He rose, and, looking anything but cheerful,

Proclaimed with every breath Bellows to Mend.

At this point six to one was freely offered

Upon the Dutchman; and Lord Worthington

Plunged at this figure till he stood to lose

A fortune should the Dutchman, as seemed certain,

Take down the number of the Panley boy.

The Dutchman, glutton as we know he is,

Seemed this time likely to go hungry. Cashel

Was clearly groggy as he slipped the sailor,

Who, not to be denied, followed him up,

Forcing the fighting mid tremendous cheers."

LYDIA. Oh stop-no more-or tell the worst at once.

I'll be revenged. Bashville: call the police.

This brutal sailor shall be made to know

There's law in England.

BASHVILLE. "Forty to one, the Dutchman's friends exclaimed.

Done, said Lord Worthington, who shewed himself

A sportsman every inch. Barely the bet

Was booked, when, at the reeling champion's jaw

The sailor, bent on winning out of hand,

Sent in his right. The issue seemed a cert,

When Cashel, ducking smartly to his left,

Cross-countered like a hundredweight of brick--"

BASHVILLE. "A scene of indescribable excitement

Ensued; for it was now quite evident

That Byron's grogginess had all along

Been feigned to make the market for his backers.

We trust this sample of colonial smartness

Will not find imitators on this side.

The losers settled up like gentlemen;

But many felt that Byron shewed bad taste

In taking old Ned Skene upon his back,

And, with Bob Mellish tucked beneath his oxter,

Sprinting a hundred yards to show the crowd

The perfect pink of his condition"-[a knock].

LYDIA. Send him away.

I will not see the wretch. How dare he keep

Secrets from ME? I'll punish him. Pray say

I'm not at home. [Bashvilleturns to go.] Yet stay. I am afraid

He will not come again.

LUCIAN [stopping her]. No, Lydia:

You shall not countermand that proper order.

Oh, would you cast the treasure of your mind,

The thousands at your bank, and, above all,

Your unassailable social position

Before this soulless mass of beef and brawn?

BASHVILLE. Save yourselves: at the staircase foot the champion

Sprawls on the mat, by trick of wrestler tripped;

But when he rises, woe betide us all!

BASHVILLE. He would not take my answer; thrust the door

Back in my face; gave me the lie i' the throat;

Averred he felt your presence in his bones.

I said he should feel mine there too, and felled him;

Then fled to bar your door.

LYDIA. O lover's instinct!

He felt my presence. Well, let him come in.

We must not fail in courage with a fighter.

Unlock the door.

LUCIAN. Stop. Like all women, Lydia,

You have the courage of immunity.

To strike you were against his code of honor;

But me, above the belt, he may perform on

T' th' height of his profession. Also Bashville.

BASHVILLE. Think not of me, sir. Let him do his worst.

Oh, if the valor of my heart could weigh

The fatal difference twixt his weight and mine,

A second battle should he do this day:

Nay, though outmatched I be, let but my mistress

Give me the word: instant I'll take him on

Here-now-at catchweight. Better bite the carpet

A man, than fly, a coward.

CASHEL [toBashville]. Why didst thou better thy instruction, man?

Hadst thou but said, "She bade me tell thee this,"

Thoudst burst my heart. I thank thee for thy mercy.

CASHEL [toLUCIAN]. The unwritten law that shields the amateur

Against professional resentment, saves thee.

O coward, to traduce behind their backs

Defenceless prizefighters!

CASHEL. It was my glory.

I had hoped to offer to my lady there

My belts, my championships, my heaped-up stakes,

My undefeated record; but I knew

Behind their blaze a hateful secret lurked.

CASHEL. A thousand victories cannot wipe out

That birthstain. Oh, my speech bewrayeth it:

My earliest lesson was the player's speech

In Hamlet; and to this day I express myself

More like a mobled queen than like a man

Of flesh and blood. Well may your cousin sneer!

What's Hecuba to him or he to Hecuba?

LUCIAN. Injurious upstart: if by Hecuba

Thou pointest darkly at my lovely cousin,

Know that she is to me, and I to her,

What never canst thou be. I do defy thee;

And maugre all the odds thy skill doth give,

Outside I will await thee.

LYDIA. I forbid

Expressly any such duello. Bashville:

The door. Put Mr. Webber in a hansom,

And bid the driver hie to Downing Street.

No answer: 'tis my will. [ExeuntLucianandBashville.

And now, farewell.

You must not come again, unless indeed

You can some day look in my eyes and say:

Lydia: my occupation's gone.

CASHEL. Ah, no:

It would remind you of my wretched mother.

O God, let me be natural a moment!

What other occupation can I try?

What would you have me be?

CASHEL. A gentleman! I, Cashel Byron, stoop

To be the thing that bets on me! the fool

I flatter at so many coins a lesson!

The screaming creature who beside the ring

Gambles with basest wretches for my blood,

And pays with money that he never earned!

Let me die broken-hearted rather!

CASHEL. That's the collection for the loser, Lydia.

I am not wont to need it. When your friends

Contest elections, and at foot o' th' poll

Rue their presumption, 'tis their wont to claim

A moral victory. In a sort they are

Nature's M. P.s. I am not yet so threadbare

As to accept these consolation stakes.

CASHEL. Yes, I am.

I can put up with much; but-"Nature's gentleman"!

I thank your ladyship of Lyons, but

Must beg to be excused.

LYDIA. But surely, surely,

To be a prizefighter, and maul poor mariners

With naked knuckles, is no work for you.

CASHEL. Thou dost arraign the inattentive Fates

That weave my thread of life in ruder patterns

Than these that lie, antimacassarly,

Asprent thy drawingroom. As well demand

Why I at birth chose to begin my life

A speechless babe, hairless, incontinent,

Hobbling upon all fours, a nurse's nuisance?

Or why I do propose to lose my strength,

To blanch my hair, to let the gums recede

Far up my yellowing teeth, and finally

Lie down and moulder in a rotten grave?

Only one thing more foolish could have been,

And that was to be born, not man, but woman.

This was thy folly, why rebuk'st thou mine?

CASHEL. And did I choose

My quick divining eye, my lightning hand,

My springing muscle and untiring heart?

Did I implant the instinct in the race

That found a use for these, and said to me,

Fight for us, and be fame and fortune thine?

CASHEL. Go tell thy painters to turn stockbrokers,

Thy poet friends to stoop o'er merchants' desks

And pen prose records of the gains of greed.

Tell bishops that religion is outworn,

And that the Pampa to the horsebreaker

Opes new careers. Bid the professor quit

His fraudulent pedantries, and do i' the world

The thing he would teach others. Then return

To me and say: Cashel: they have obeyed;

And on that pyre of sacrifice I, too,

Will throw my championship.

CASHEL. Is it so? I have hardly noticed that,

So cruel are all callings. Yet this hand,

That many a two days' bruise hath ruthless given,

Hath kept no dungeon locked for twenty years,

Hath slain no sentient creature for my sport.

I am too squeamish for your dainty world,

That cowers behind the gallows and the lash,

The world that robs the poor, and with their spoil

Does what its tradesmen tell it. Oh, your ladies!

Sealskinned and egret-feathered; all defiance

To Nature; cowering if one say to them

"What will the servants think?" Your gentlemen!

Your tailor-tyrannized visitors of whom

Flutter of wing and singing in the wood

Make chickenbutchers. And your medicine men!

Groping for cures in the tormented entrails

Of friendly dogs. Pray have you asked all these

To change their occupations? Find you mine

So grimly crueller? I cannot breathe

An air so petty and so poisonous.

CASHEL. To me, perfection. Oh, they condescend

With a rare grace. Your duke, who condescends

Almost to the whole world, might for a Man

Pass in the eyes of those who never saw

The duke capped with a prince. See then, ye gods,

The duke turn footman, and his eager dame

Sink the great lady in the obsequious housemaid!

Oh, at such moments I could wish the Court

Had but one breadbasket, that with my fist

I could make all its windy vanity

Gasp itself out on the gravel. Fare you well.

I did not choose my calling; but at least

I can refrain from being a gentleman.

CASHEL. My calling hath apprenticed me to pangs.

This is a rib-bender; but I can bear it.

It is a lonely thing to be a champion.

CASHEL. Be lonely then. Shall it be said of thee

That for his brawn thou misalliance mad'st

Wi' the Prince of Ruffians? Never. Go thy ways;

Or, if thou hast nostalgia of the mud,

Wed some bedogg d wretch that on the slot

Of gilded snobbery, ventre terre,

Will hunt through life with eager nose on earth

And hang thee thick with diamonds. I am rich;

But all my gold was fought for with my hands.

CASHEL. There is a man,

Hight Paradise, vaunted unconquerable,

Hath dared to say he will be glad to hear from me.

I have replied that none can hear from me

Until a thousand solid pounds be staked.

His friends have confidently found the money.

Ere fall of leaf that money shall be mine;

And then I shall possess ten thousand pounds.

I had hoped to tempt thee with that monstrous sum.

LYDIA. Thou silly Cashel, 'tis but a week's income.

I did propose to give thee three times that

For pocket money when we two were wed.

CASHEL. Give me my hat. I have been fooling here.

Now, by the Hebrew lawgiver, I thought

That only in America such revenues

Were decent deemed. Enough. My dream is dreamed.

Your gold weighs like a mountain on my chest.

Farewell.

CASHEL. A cab!

Go call a cab; and let a cab be called;

And let the man that calls it be thy footman.

LYDIA. You are not well. You shall not go alone.

My carriage waits. I must accompany you.

I go to find my hat. [Exit.

CASHEL. Like Paracelsus,

Who went to find his soul. [ToBashville.] And now, young man,

How comes it that a fellow of your inches,

So deft a wrestler and so bold a spirit,

Can stoop to be a flunkey? Call on me

On your next evening out. I'll make a man of you.

Surely you are ambitious and aspire--

CASHEL. True. Pardon me.

I have received a blow upon the nose

In sport from Bashville. Next, ablution; else

I shall be total gules. [He hurries out.

LYDIA. How well he speaks!

There is a silver trumpet in his lips

That stirs me to the finger ends. His nose

Dropt lovely color: 'tis a perfect blood.

I would 'twere mingled with mine own!

LYDIA. I do beseech him

A moment's grace. Oh, mockery of wealth!

The third class passenger unchidden rides

Whither and when he will: obsequious trams

Await him hourly: subterranean tubes

With tireless coursers whisk him through the town;

But we, the rich, are slaves to Houyhnhnms:

We wait upon their colds, and frowst all day

Indoors, if they but cough or spurn their hay.

CASHEL. Did he guess

He stays for Cashel Byron, he'd outwait

Pompei's sentinel. Let us away.

This day of deeds, as yet but half begun,

Must ended be in merrie Islington. [ExeuntLydiaandCashel.

BASHVILLE. Gods! how she hangs on's arm! I am alone.

Now let me lift the cover from my soul.

O wasted humbleness! Deluded diffidence!

How often have I said, Lie down, poor footman:

She'll never stoop to thee, rear as thou wilt

Thy powder to the sky. And now, by Heaven,

She stoops below me; condescends upon

This hero of the pothouse, whose exploits,

Writ in my character from my last place,

Would damn me into ostlerdom. And yet

There's an eternal justice in it; for

By so much as the ne'er subdu d Indian

Excels the servile n***o, doth this ruffian

Precedence take of me. "Ich dien." Damnation!

I serve. My motto should have been, "I scalp."

And yet I do not bear the yoke for gold.

Because I love her I have blacked her boots;

Because I love her I have cleaned her knives,

Doing in this the office of a boy,

Whilst, like the celebrated maid that milks

And does the meanest chares, I've shared the passions

Of Cleopatra. It has been my pride

To give her place the greater altitude

By lowering mine, and of her dignity

To be so jealous that my cheek has flamed

Even at the thought of such a deep disgrace

As love for such a one as I would be

For such a one as she; and now! and now!

A prizefighter! O irony! O bathos!

To have made way for this! Oh, Bashville, Bashville:

Why hast thou thought so lowly of thyself,

So heavenly high of her? Let what will come,

My love must speak: 'twas my respect was dumb.

The Agricultural Hall in Islington, crowded with spectators.

In the arena a throne, with a boxing ring

before it. A balcony above on the right, occupied

by persons of fashion: among others, Lydiaand

Lord Worthington.

LUCIAN. Mislike us not for our complexions,

The pallid liveries of the pall of smoke

Belched by the mighty chimneys of our factories,

And by the million patent kitchen ranges

Of happy English homes.

CETEWAYO. When first I came

I deemed those chimneys the fuliginous altars

Of some infernal god. I now perceive

The English dare not look upon the sky.

They are moles and owls: they call upon the soot

To cover them.

LUCIAN. You cannot understand

The greatness of this people, Cetewayo.

You are a savage, reasoning like a child.

Each pallid English face conceals a brain

Whose powers are proven in the works of Newton

And in the plays of the immortal Shakespear.

There is not one of all the thousands here

But, if you placed him naked in the desert,

Would presently construct a steam engine,

And lay a cable t' th' Antipodes.

CETEWAYO. Have I been brought a million miles by sea

To learn how men can lie! Know, Father Webber,

Men become civilized through twin diseases,

Terror and Greed to wit: these two conjoined

Become the grisly parents of Invention.

Why does the trembling white with frantic toil

Of hand and brain produce the magic gun

That slays a mile off, whilst the manly Zulu

Dares look his foe i' the face; fights foot to foot;

Lives in the present; drains the Here and Now;

Makes life a long reality, and death

A moment only! whilst your Englishman

Glares on his burning candle's winding-sheets,

Counting the steps of his approaching doom.

And in the murky corners ever sees

Two horrid shadows, Death and Poverty:

In the which anguish an unnatural edge

Comes on his frighted brain, which straight devises

Strange frauds by which to filch unearn d gold,

Mad crafts by which to slay unfac d foes,

Until at last his agonized desire

Makes possibility its slave. And then-

Horrible climax! All-undoing spite!-

Th' importunate clutching of the coward's hand

From wearied Nature Devastation's secrets

Doth wrest; when straight the brave black-livered man

Is blown explosively from off the globe;

And Death and Dread, with their white-livered slaves

O'er-run the earth, and through their chattering teeth

Stammer the words "Survival of the Fittest."

Enough of this: I came not here to talk.

Thou say'st thou hast two white-faced ones who dare

Fight without guns, and spearless, to the death.

Let them be brought.

LUCIAN. They fight not to the death,

But under strictest rules: as, for example,

Half of their persons shall not be attacked;

Nor shall they suffer blows when they fall down,

Nor stroke of foot at any time. And, further,

That frequent opportunities of rest

With succor and refreshment be secured them.

CETEWAYO. Ye gods, what cowards! Zululand, my Zululand:

Personified Pusillanimity

Hath ta'en thee from the bravest of the brave!

CETEWAYO. Well, well, produce these heroes. I surmise

They will be carried by their nurses, lest

Some barking dog or bumbling bee should scare them.

LYDIA. He of whom Cashel spoke?

A dreadful thought ices my heart. Oh, why

Did Cashel leave us at the door?

LYDIA. Oh, I could kiss him now,

Here, before all the world. His boxing things

Render him most attractive. But I fear

Yon villain's fists may maul him.

PARADISE. Your royal highness, you beholds a bloke

What gets his living honest by his fists.

I may not have the polish of some toffs

As I could mention on; but up to now

No man has took my number down. I scale

Close on twelve stun; my age is twenty-three;

And at Bill Richardson's Blue Anchor pub

Am to be heard of any day by such

As likes the job. I don't know, governor,

As ennythink remains for me to say.

CETEWAYO. Six wives and thirty oxen shalt thou have

If on the sand thou leave thy foeman dead.

Methinks he looks scornfully on thee.

[ToCashel] Ha! dost thou not so?

CASHEL. Sir, I do beseech you

To name the bone, or limb, or special place

Where you would have me hit him with this fist.

CASHEL. Dread monarch: this is called the upper cut,

And this a hook-hit of mine own invention.

The hollow region where I plant this blow

Is called the mark. My left, you will observe,

I chiefly use for long shots: with my right

Aiming beside the angle of the jaw

And landing with a certain delicate screw

I without violence knock my foeman out.

Mark how he falls forward upon his face!

The rules allow ten seconds to get up;

And as the man is still quite silly, I

Might safely finish him; but my respect

For your most gracious majesty's desire

To see some further triumphs of the science

Of self-defence postpones awhile his doom.

CETEWAYO. The joy of battle surges boiling up

And bids me join the mellay. Isandhlana

And Victory! [He falls on the bystanders.

[He engagesCetewayohis umbrella. The balcony

comes down with a crash. Screams from its

occupants. Indescribable confusion.

CASHEL. Africa!

Not all the continents whose mighty shoulders

The dancing diamonds of the seas bedeck

Shall trample on the blue with spots of white.

Now, Lydia, mark thy lover. [He charges the Zulus.

LYDIA. Hercules

Cannot withstand him. See: the king is down;

The tallest chief is up, heels over head,

Tossed corklike o'er my Cashel's sinewy back;

And his lieutenant all deflated gasps

For breath upon the sand. The others fly

In vain: his fist o'er magic distances

Like a chameleon's tongue shoots to its mark;

And the last African upon his knees

Sues piteously for quarter. [Rushing intoCashel'sarms.] Oh, my hero:

Thou'st saved us all this day.

LUCIAN. Sir, your conduct

Can only be described as most ungentlemanly.

In the 1600s, Balthasar Gracian, a jesuit priest wrote 300 aphorisms on living life called "The Art of Worldly Wisdom." Join our newsletter below and read them all, one at a time.