The maiden and the youth are seated on a white china horse which gallops but never moves— Behind them every imaginable scenery passes in a brief space (cast by a magic lantern). They are on their honeymoon— The scene fades.
The crystal becomes clouded, only to light up again partially for a moment, to reveal a crystalline baby tumbling over and over itself swiftly out of the sky, while the blue ribbon, in momentous curves, with, as in old story books, “The End” written upon it, rises up to receive the baby as it falls.
THE PAMPERERS
Invisible
Obvious
Picked
People
Houseless
Loony
Porcelain breath — Sèvres bow — Gilded crimson — Curved flutings — Brocade — Tailored muscles — Whipped cream — Blue spirals — Salved lips — Salon — Debussy — Azaleas — Ancestors — Armorial complacencies — Ooze
Picked People melted by a distinguished method among the upholstery.
TAG ENDS OF OVERHEARD CONVERSATION
The social fabric is a curtain. . and that warm garnet foldshadow there, for souls’ hide and seek. .
Decency shudders in the bare moment, taut between vestibule and auto. .
. . my crystalline lorgnette, . trees. . at this season all are undressed.
The earth a poignant undertaker. .
I wish I had a wig darling.
. . Observe the legs, the agony of the crucified. . the tendons. . delicate as Dresden china 15th century. . ah yes! the troubles of the steam-heating plant. . man from Milan knows his business. .
Oh Prince how charming of you. . and what is your opinion of the sex question?
How simple. . still I can’t quite agree with you. . we shall never give up wearing silk stockings.
SOMEBODY. Ossy you know has discovered a genius. . coming from the club. . wonderful chap, see his predatory eye. .picking up cigar ends. . the grand passion. . pockets full. .
SOMEBODY. Picasso uses all sorts of odds and ends.
OSSY. No critic dare anticipate the masterpiece this man may stack. .
SOMEBODY. Mud larks and geniuses!
OSSY. There’s a revival in THE THING being a patron. . I’ve got a Medici Villa somewhere. . put the fellow in the stables here. . heart’s content. . counting fags Wait and see; fond of my dinner doesn’t prevent me having an enormous respect for these creative sky-rocket-in-the-sewer chaps; wait and see
I’ve got flair. . taken two of you to have got onto those cigar ends. . like that . . my God!
I’d forgotten Diana. . Diana collects geniuses!
SOMEBODY. She’s got perfect toes. . pedicured on a diamond footstool. .
SOMBODY ELSE. Bach played for her bath. .
SOMEBODY. Isadora Allen to dance her awake
S. E. Bought a museum to wear at a ball
SOMEBODY. Has to have the Daily Mail transposed into the Arabic for the autumn, British Jour-nalese has a bite in it. . superfluously supplements the morning frost. .
S. E. Steam from hot cocoa is so suggestive of breathing in the open
SOMEBODY. But she has so many butterflies in her nightcap. .
S. E. Avoiding the vulgarity of looking expensive she waters the aloe in sack-cloth. Does nothing to her complexion, but a penny worth of ice
Has her own bran-mash prepared for her at the Ritz. . reads Mahabharata through cotillions. .
SOMEBODY. So bored. . has the most perfect yawn in Europe. . virgin eyelashes, and abortive morals. . why Di dear, we were just talking about you. .
(DIANA turns off the light, sits on the pekinese which sinking still deeper into cushions notices nothing; and meditates in a fussy silence on the dial of a lumi- nous watch.)
(Two intimate FRIENDS sidle into the conservatory)
1ST FRIEND. Can I trust you?
2ND FRIEND. Did I trust you?
1ST F. Then I will tell you where I really was last week. . at home with a black eye.
2ND F. And where. .?
1ST F. Oh, he was at home with a black eye too.
2ND F. How ripping!
1ST F. Delicious, we wore Longhi masks and had Watsiswinski play Handel on the spinet
2ND F. Life can be very beautiful with a lover
1ST F. The Wedgewood and the Venetian lustres are in splinters and the ceiling had to be repainted
2ND F. It is your passion for danger, serves you your incontestable hold on our social circle, whose criterion the intactness of porcelain, the watchword. . “No china is ever broken here; here where the vir-ginity of white carpets, sanctifies the passage of the correct”
1ST F. Profundity of superficies
2ND F. While to Stavinski’s meteors the animal whines a million moons behind evening dress
1ST F. Split passion to the forty gold pieces of a manicure set. . and there it still is
2ND F. Strew souls in fractions on dressing tables
1ST F. Oh keep it up. . disintegratedly above those others. . what do you suppose they do. . with insufficient money to do it with?
2ND F. Nature looks after them. .
1ST F. When you consider what our régime has done to Nature
2ND F. Diversion for our old age, in patching them up
1ST F. Well, I suppose we’re rotten. . thank God, we’re rotting soft
2ND F. Double pile. . or an intellect walking about on it. .
1ST F. Don’t make me think. . might drive me to anything. .
2ND F. Come Di’s lit up again. . Ossy’s cocktails Remember . . no china broken here. .
SOMEBODY. Diana dear, you might tell us where you were. . while we were so patiently watching you?
(DIANA’s chameleon rattles her emeralds.)
DIANA. Systematizing Futurist plastic velocity by the displacement of the minute-hand. . Ho capito.
SOMEBODY ELSE. Isn’t she wonderful?
A MAN. (whose monocle has been hypnotized to idea associations by the luminous dial) I don’t know anything about Marinetti; I don’t want to know anything about Marinetti but I respect him. . he has a clean collar I am willing to accept the creed of any man who wears a clean collar
SOMEBODY. Why the devil shouldn’t Marinetti wear a clean collar?
I don’t know why Marinetti shouldn’t wear a clean collar, all I say is. . Marinetti wears a clean collar!
OSSY. Di. . if you half guessed what I’ve caught in the stables, you’d throw Futurism to. .
DIANA. Don’t mean. . that I’m out of fashion again
OSSY. Since 1 p.m. . dispensing entirely with the middleman, we now have the genius served directly to the consumer
DIANA. Let us consume. .
OSSY. (to the footman) James! just fetch the whatsisname out of the whatyoumecallems and don’t let its feet touch the floor.