London. thomasina: I must waltz, Septimus! I will be despised if I do not
waltz! It is the most fashionable and gayest and boldest
invention conceivable - started in Germany!
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Septimus: Let them have the waltz, they cannot have the calculus.
thomasina: Mama has brought from town a whole book of waltzes for the Broad wood, to play with Count Zelinsky.
Septimus: I need not be told what I cannot but suffer. Count Zelinsky banging on the Broadwood without relief has me reading in waltz time.
thomasina: Oh, stuff! What is your book?
Septimus: A prize essay of the Scientific Academy in Paris. The author deserves your indulgence, my lady, for you are his prophet.
thomasina: I? What does he write about? The waltz?
Septimus: Yes. He demonstrates the equation of the propagation of heat in a solid body. But in doing so he has discovered heresy - a natural contradiction of Sir Isaac Newton.
thomasina: Oh! - he contradicts determinism?
Septimus: No!... Well, perhaps. He shows that the atoms do not go according to Newton.
(Her interest has switched in the mercurial way characteristic of her-she has crossed to take the book.)
thomasina: Let me see - oh! In French?
Septimus: Yes. Paris is the capital of France.
thomasina: Show me where to read.
(He takes the book back from her and finds the page for her. Meanwhile, the piano music from the next room has doubled its notes and its emotion.)
thomasina: Four-handed now! Mama is in love with the Count.
Septimus: He is a Count in Poland. In Derbyshire he is a piano tuner.
(She has taken the book and is already immersed in it. The piano music becomes rapidly more passionate, and then breaks off suddenly in mid-phrase. There is an expressive silence next door which makes SEPTIMUS raise his eyes. It does not register with thomasina. The silence allows us to hear the distant regular thump of the steam engine which is to be a topic. A few moments later LADY CROOM enters from the music room, seeming surprised and slightly flustered to find the schoolroom occupied. She collects herself, closing the door behind her. And remains watching,
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aimless and discreet, as though not wanting to interrupt the lesson. SEPTIMUS has stood, and she nods him back into his chair.
CHLOfi, in Regency dress, enters from the door opposite the music
room. She takes in valentine and HANNAH but crosses without
pausing to the music room door.) CHLOfi: Oh!-where's Gus? valentine: Dunno.
(CHLOfi goes into the music room.) lady croom: (Annoyed) Oh! - Mr Noakes's engine!
(She goes to the garden door and steps outside.
CHLOfi re-enters.) CHLOfi: Damn.
lady croom: (Calls out) Mr Noakes! valentine: He was there not long ago... lady croom: Halloo!
CHLOfi: Well, he has to be in the photograph - is he dressed? hannah: Is Bernard back? CHLOfi: No-he's late!
(The piano is heard again, under the noise of the steam engine.
lady croom steps back into the room.
CHLOfi steps outside the garden door. Shouts.) Gus! lady croom: I wonder you can teach against such a disturbance
and I am sorry for it, Mr Hodge.
(CHLOfi comes back inside.) valentine: (Getting up) Stop ordering everybody about. lady croom: It is an unendurable noise. valentine: The photographer will wait.
(But, grumbling, he follows CHLOfi out of the door she came in by,
and closes the door behind them, hannah remains absorbed.
In the silence, the rhythmic thump can be heard again.) lady croom: The ceaseless dull overbearing monotony of it! It
will drive me distracted. I may have to return to town to
escape it. Septimus: Your ladyship could remain in the country and let
Count Zelinsky return to town where you would not hear him. lady croom: I mean Mr Noakes's engine! (Semi-aside to
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Septimus.) Would you sulk? I will not have my daughter study sulking. thomasina: (Not listening) What, mama?
(thomasina remains lost in her book, lady croom returns to close the garden door and the noise of the steam engine subsides.
HANNAH closes one of the 'garden books', and opens the next. She is making occasional notes.
The piano ceases.) lady croom: (To thomasina) What are we learning today?
(Pause.) Well, not manners. Septimus: We are drawing today.
(lady croom negligently examines what thomasina had
started to draw.) lady croom: Geometry. I approve of geometry. Septimus: Your ladyship's approval is my constant object. lady croom: Well, do not despair of it. (Returning to the window
impatiently.) Where is 'Culpability' Noakes? (She looks out
and is annoyed.) Oh! - he has gone for his hat so that he may
remove it.
(She returns to the table and touches the bowl of dahlias.
HANNAH sits back in her chair, caught by what she is reading.) For the widow's dowry of dahlias I can almost forgive my brother's marriage. We must be thankful the monkey bit the husband. If it had bit the wife the monkey would be dead and we would not be first in the kingdom to show a dahlia. (HANNAH, still reading the garden book, stands up.) I sent one potted to Chatsworth. The Duchess was most satisfactorily put out by it when I called at Devonshire House. Your friend was there lording it as a poet.
(HANNAH leaves through the door, following valentine and CHLOE.)
Meanwhile, thomasina thumps the book down on the table.) thomasina: Well! Just as I said! Newton's machine which would knock our atoms from cradle to grave by the laws of motion is incomplete! Determinism leaves the road at every corner, as I knew all along, and the cause is very likely
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hidden in this gentleman's observation. lady croom: Of what? thomasina: The action of bodies in heat. lady croom: Is this geometry? thomasina: This? No, I despise geometry!
(Touching the dahlias she adds, almost to herself.) The
Chater would overthrow the Newtonian system in a
weekend. Septimus: Geometry, Hobbes assures us in the Leviathan, is the
only science God has been pleased to bestow on mankind. lady croom: And what does he mean by it? Septimus: Mr Hobbes or God?
lady croom: I am sure I do not know what either means by it. thomasina: Oh, pooh to Hobbes! Mountains are not pyramids
and trees are not cones. God must love gunnery and
architecture if Euclid is his only geometry. There is another
geometry which I am engaged in discovering by trial and
error, am I not, Septimus? Septimus: Trial and error perfectly describes your enthusiasm,
my lady. lady croom: How old are you today? thomasina: Sixteen years and eleven months, mama, and three
weeks. lady croom: Sixteen years and eleven months. We must have
you married before you are educated beyond eligibility. thomasina: I am going to marry Lord Byron. lady croom: Are you? He did not have the manners to mention
it. thomasina: You have spoken to him?! lady croom: Certainly not. thomasina: Where did you see him? lady croom: (With some bitterness) Everywhere. thomasina: Did you, Septimus? Septimus: At the Royal Academy where I had the honour to
accompany your mother and Count Zelinsky. thomasina: What was Lord Byron doing? lady croom: Posing. Septimus: (Tactfully) He was being sketched during his visit. . .
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by the Professor of Painting ... Mr Fuseli.
lady croom: There was more posing at the pictures than in them. His companion likewise reversed the custom of the Academy that the ladies viewing wear more than the ladies viewed - well, enough! Let him be hanged there for a Lamb. I have enough with Mr Noakes, who is to a garden what a bull is to a china shop. (This as noakes enters.)
thomasina: The Emperor of Irregularity!
(She settles down to drawing the diagram which is to be the third item in the surviving portfolio.)