  A DRAMATIC PROLOGUE. Those persons who have seen Mrs. Patrick Campbell’s magnificent performance in “The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith” will have probably gone away with a quite false impression of the gentleman with whom Agnes Ebbsmith spent her eight years of married life. “For the first twelve months,” she declares bitterly in the first act, “he treated me like a woman in a harem, for the rest of the time like a beast of burden.” This is not quite just to poor Ebbsmith, who was a good sort of fellow in his commonplace way, and it is manifestly unfair that the audience should have no opportunity of hearing his side of the question. An attempt is made to remedy this injustice in the following Prologue, which all fair-minded persons are entreated to read before seeing Mr. Pinero’s very clever play. THE UNFORTUNATE MR. EBBSMITH.Scene.—The dining-room of the Ebbsmiths’ house in West Kensington. Agnes and her husband are at breakfast. They have been married seven years. She looks much as we see her in the early acts of the play—gaunt, pale, badly dressed. He is a careworn man with hair slightly grey at the temples, an anxious forehead and sad eyes. He is glancing through the “Standard” in the intervals of eating his bacon. She is absorbed in the “Morning Screamer,” one of the more violent Socialist-Radical organs of that day. Presently Ebbsmith looks up. Ebbsmith. You won’t forget, Agnes, that we are expecting people to dinner to-night? Agnes. [Putting down her paper with an air of patient endurance.] Eh? Ebbsmith. [Mildly.] I was saying, dear, if you will give me your attention for a moment, that I hoped you would not forget that Sir Myles Jawkins and his wife and the Spencers and the Thorntons were dining here to-night. Agnes. [Contemptuously.] You seem very anxious that I should remember that Lady Jawkins is honouring us with her company! Ebbsmith. I only meant that I hoped you had told Jane about dinner. Last time the Jawkinses came you may recollect that you had omitted to order anything for them to eat, and when they arrived there was nothing in the house but some soup, a little cold mutton and a rice-pudding. Agnes. Very well [returns to her paper.] Ebbsmith. Thank you. And, Agnes, if you could manage to be dressed in time to receive them I should be very much obliged. Agnes. I? Ebbsmith. Of course. I suppose you will be here to entertain our guests? Agnes. Your guests, you mean. Ebbsmith. My dear Agnes, surely my guests are your guests also. Agnes. [Breaking out.] As long as the present unjust and oppressive marriage laws remain in force—— Ebbsmith. [Interrupting.] I don’t think we need go into the question of the alteration of the marriage laws. Agnes. Ah, yes. You always refuse to listen to my arguments on that subject. You know they are unanswerable. Ebbsmith. [Patiently.] I only meant that there would hardly be time to discuss the matter at breakfast. Agnes. [Vehemently.] A paltry evasion! Ebbsmith. Still, I assume that you will be here to receive our guests—my guests if you prefer it—to-night? Agnes. Do you make a point of always being at home to receive my guests? Ebbsmith. Those Anarchist people whom you are constantly asking to tea? Certainly not. Agnes. [With triumphant logic.] Then may I ask why I should be at home to receive the Jawkinses? Ebbsmith. My dear, you surely realise that the cases are hardly parallel. T Agnes. Indeed, I can. [Rhetorically.] In a properly organized Society—— Ebbsmith. [Testily.] I really can’t stop to re-organize Society now. I am due at my chambers in half-an-hour. Agnes. [Sullenly.] As you decline to listen to what I have to say, I may as well tell you at once that I shall not be at home to dinner to-night. Ebbsmith. [Controlling his temper with an effort.] May I ask your reason? Agnes. Because I have to be at the meeting of the Anti-marriage Association. Ebbsmith. Can’t you send an excuse? Agnes. Send an excuse! Throw up a meeting called to discuss an important Public question because you have asked a few barristers and their wives to dine! You must be mad. Ebbsmith. Well, I must put them off, I suppose. What night next week will suit you to meet them? Thursday? Agnes. On Thursday I am addressing a meeting of the Society for the Encouragement of Divorce. Ebbsmith. Friday? Agnes. [Coldly.] Friday, as you know, is the weekly meeting of the Agamists’ League. Ebbsmith. Saturday? Agnes. On Saturday I am speaking on Free Union for the People at Battersea. Ebbsmith.
Can you suggest an evening? Agnes. [Firmly.] No. I think the time has come to make a stand against the convention which demands that a wife should preside at her husband’s dinner-parties. It is an absurdity. Away with it! Ebbsmith. [Alarmed.] But, Agnes! Think what you are doing. You don’t want to offend these people. Spencer and Thornton are useful men to know, and Jawkins puts a lot of work in my way. E. J. Wheeler. “Friday, you know, is the meeting of the Agamists’ League.” Agnes. [With magnificent scorn.] How like a man! And so I am to be civil to this Jawkins person because he “puts a lot of work in your way!” Ebbsmith. [Meekly.] Well, you know, my dear, I have to make an income somehow. Agnes. I would sooner starve than resort to such truckling! Ebbsmith. [Gloomily.] We are likely to do that, sooner or later, in any case. Agnes. What do you mean? Ebbsmith. [Diffidently.] Your—ahem!—somewhat subversive tenets, my love, are not precisely calculated to improve my professional prospects. Agnes. What have I to do with your prospects? Ebbsmith. The accounts of your meetings which appear in the newspapers are not likely to encourage respectable solicitors to send me briefs. Agnes. [Indifferently.] Indeed! Ebbsmith. Here’s a report in to-day’s Standard of a meeting addressed by you last night which would certainly not have that effect. Shall I read it to you? Agnes. If you wish it. Ebbsmith. [Reads.] “The meeting which was held in St. Luke’s parish last night under the auspices of the Polyandrous Club proved to be of an unusually exciting description. The lecturer was Mrs. John Ebbsmith, wife of the well-known barrister of that name.” [Breaking off.] Really, Agnes, I think my name need not have been dragged into the business. Agnes. Go on. Ebbsmith. “As soon as the doors were opened the place of meeting—the Iron Hall, Carter Street—was filled with a compact body of roughs assembled from the neighbouring streets, and there seemed every prospect of disorderly scenes. The appearance of Mrs. Ebbsmith on the platform was greeted with cheers and cries of ‘Mad Agnes!’” Surely, my dear, you must recognise that my professional reputation is endangered when my wife is reported in the newspapers as addressing meetings in discreditable parts of London, where her appearance is greeted with shouts of ‘Mad Agnes!’ Agnes. Nonsense! Who is likely to read an obscure paragraph like that? Ebbsmith. Obscure paragraph! My dear Agnes, the Standard has a leading article on it. Listen to this:—“Mrs. Ebbsmith’s crusade against the institution of marriage is again attracting unfavourable attention. Last night in St. Luke’s she once more attempted to ventilate her preposterous schemes ... crack-brained crusade ... bellowing revolutionary nonsense on obscure platforms.... This absurd visionary, whom her audiences not inappropriately nickname ‘Mad Agnes’.... Ultimately the meeting had to be broken up by the police.... We cannot understand how a man in Mr. Ebbsmith’s position can allow himself to be made ridiculous.” [Almost weeping.] I do think they might leave my name out of it. In a leading article too! Agnes. Is there any more of the stuff? Ebbsmith. Another half column. Do, my dear, to oblige me, find some less ostentatious method of making known your views on the subject of marriage. Agnes. [Anticipating a remark subsequently made by the Duke of St. Olpherts.] Unostentatious immodesty is not part of my programme. Ebbsmith. [Humbly.] Could you not, for my sake, consent to take a less prominent part in the movement? Agnes. [Enthusiastically.] But I want to be among the Leaders—the Leaders! That will be my hour. Ebbsmith. [Puzzled.] Your hour? I don’t think I quite understand you. Agnes. There’s only one hour in a woman’s life—when she’s defying her husband, wrecking his happiness and blasting his prospects. That is her hour! Let her make the most of every second of it! Ebbsmith. [Wearily.] Well, my dear, when it’s over, you’ll have the satisfaction of counting the departing footsteps of a ruined man. Agnes. Departing? Ebbsmith. Certainly. You and your crusade between them will [Exit. Curtain. |
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