WIDOW 
 
 HOUSES, BY C 
 
 BERNARD SHAW 
 
 EfNG NUM- 
 
 BER ONE OF THE INDEPEN- 
 ijENT THEATRE SERIES OF 
 PLAYS. EDITED BY J. T. GREIN. 
 
University of California • Berkeley 
 
 Gift of 
 
 LUCILE HEMING KOSHLAND 
 
 and 
 DANIEL EDWARD KOSHLAND 
 
/2 Jk" 
 
 '.^^ttt. 
 
 
' WIDOWERS' HOUSES 
 
WIDOWERS' HOUSES. 
 A COMEDY BY G. BER- 
 NARD SHAW. FIRST 
 ACTED AT THE INDE- 
 PENDENT THEATRE IN 
 I LONDON. 
 
 LONDON: HENRY AND CO. 
 BOUVERIE STREET, E.G. 1893 
 
PrtHtcd by HaziU, Watson, and Vtney, Ld., Lotidon and Ayltibury. 
 
The Editor's Preface 
 
 to the 
 Independent Theatre Series. 
 
 r 
 
 THE works produced by the Independent 
 Theatre are not merely plays to be seen : 
 they are plays to be read. They belong 
 to Literature as well as to Drama ; and 
 I should consider the work of the Independent 
 Theatre only half done if it did not succeed in 
 making its repertory known throughout the country 
 to those^who are out of reach of its performances. 
 Besides, looking forward as I do to the establish- 
 ment of Independent Theatres in every centre ot 
 population in the kingdom, I am anxious that the 
 work done in London should be judged in the 
 provinces at first hand from the author's own words, 
 and not solely by the hasty reports contained in the 
 London letter of the local newspaper. Hence this 
 Series, in which, if the public takes kindly to it, will 
 be published all the more important plays produced 
 by the Independent Theatre. 
 
 I have selected my friend Shaw's Widowers 
 Houses to inaugurate the Series, because it was the 
 first original English work the Independent Theatre 
 
vi The Editor*8 Preface to the 
 
 brought to light, and because it is in some respects 
 the most remarkable play in the Independent reper- 
 tory, a fact proved by the extent to which it has 
 set the machinery of public opinion in motion and 
 supplied bricks and mortar for the consolidation of 
 our Theatre. 
 
 After the performance of IVidowers' Houses many 
 correspondents inundated me with questions. Why 
 — why, indeed ! — should I produce a play which 
 in fact was not a play at all, which was a socialist 
 pamphlet in three-act form, which seemed impracti- 
 cable from a theatrical point of view, and had no 
 other merits but its dialogue and the portrayal of 
 one or two characters ? The time has now come to 
 say, in reply to these unanswered queries, that I 
 have nothing to do with the tendency, the form, the 
 practicability (a very elastic sort of term) of any play 
 that is offered to me. I ask merely. Is it artistic, is 
 it literary, is it interesting, does it reveal promise ? 
 And in the case of fVidowers' Houses i unhesitatingly 
 say Yes ! in every instance. 
 
 But there is another question which weighs heavily 
 with me. 
 
 I contend that it is one part of the mission of the 
 Independent Theatre to attract to the stage all those 
 who, having made a distinct mark in the literary 
 world, are keeping aloof from the boards of the 
 playhouse for want of encouragement, for want of 
 stimulation, for want of opportunity. 
 
 The work of such men is certain to be of some 
 value ; and even if in their firstlings the faults should 
 overwhelm the qualities, I hold that one renders a 
 service both to them and to our drama by producing 
 
Independent Theatre Series, vii 
 
 them. For through the performance, and through 
 the performance onlyy they will see their work under 
 a microscope, as it were ; they will see its strong 
 points ; they will be forced to admit its weak ones ; 
 they will be able to judge whether they possess the 
 gifts that make playwrights. 
 
 Bernard Shaw is one of the men who deserve to 
 be called to the boards ; and I trust that the result 
 will prompt him to persevere after his first fairly 
 successful effort. 
 
 I can only wish, in conclusion, that in the course 
 of time the Independent Theatre may earn the fame 
 of having so materially strengthened the ranks of 
 native dramatists, that the Independent Theatre Series 
 will become a household word. 
 
 J. T. GREIN. 
 
 London, Ides of March 1893. 
 
The 
 
 Author's Preface. 
 
 \^ H ^HE early history of the play which forms 
 
 I this first volume of the "Independent 
 
 B^ Theatre Series" has been given by Mr. 
 
 William Archer in 'The World of the 14th 
 
 December, 1892, in the following terms : — 
 
 " Partly to facilitate the labours of Mr. George 
 Bernard Shaw's biographers, and partly by way of 
 relieving^my own conscience, I think I ought to give 
 a short history of the genesis of Widowers Houses, 
 Far away back in the olden days [1885], while 
 as yet the Independent Theatre slumbered in the 
 womb of Time, together with the New Drama, the 
 New Criticism, the New Humour, and all the other 
 glories of our renovated world, I used to be a daily 
 frequenter of the British Museum Reading Room. 
 Even more assiduous in his attendance was a young 
 man of tawny complexion and attire, beside whom 
 I used frequently to find myself seated. My curiosity 
 was piqued by the odd conjunction of his subjects 
 of research. Day after day for weeks he had before 
 him two books, which he studied alternately, if 
 not simultaneously — Karl Marx's T>as Kaptal (in 
 
X The Author's Preface. 
 
 French), and an orchestral score of 'Tristan und 
 Isolde, I did not know then how exactly this quaint 
 juxtaposition symbolised the main interests of his life. 
 Presently I met him at the house of a common 
 acquaintance, and we conversed for the first time. 
 I learned from himself that he was the author of 
 several unpublished masterpieces of fiction. Con- 
 struction, he owned with engaging modesty, was not 
 his strong point, but his dialogue was incomparable. 
 Now, in those days, I had still a certain hankering 
 after the rewards, if not the glories, of the play- 
 wright. With a modesty in no way inferior to 
 Mr. Shaw's, I had realised that I could not write 
 dialogue a bit ; but I still considered myself a born 
 constructor. So I proposed, and Mr. Shaw agreed 
 to, a collaboration. I was to provide him with one 
 of the numerous plots I kept in stock, and he was 
 to write the dialogue. So said, so done. I drew 
 out, scene by scene, the scheme of a twaddling cup- 
 and-saucer comedy vaguely suggested by Augier's 
 Ceinture Doree. The details I forget, but I know 
 it was to be called Rhinegold, was to open, as 
 Widowers Houses actually does, in a hotel-garden 
 on the Rhine, and was to have two heroines, a senti- 
 mental and a comic one, according to the accepted 
 Robertson-Byron-Carton formula. I fancy the hero 
 was to propose to the sentimental heroine, believing 
 her to be the poor niece instead of the rich daughter 
 of the sweater, or slum-landlord, or whatever he 
 may have been ; and I know he was to carry on in 
 the most heroic fashion, and was ultimately to suc- 
 ceed in throwing the tainted treasure of his father-in- 
 law, metaphorically speaking, into the Rhine. All 
 
The Author's Preface. xi 
 
 this I gravely propounded to Mr. Shaw, who listened 
 vvith no less admirable gravity. Then I thought 
 the matter had dropped, for I heard no more of it 
 for many weeks. I used to see Mr. Shaw at the 
 Museum, laboriously writing page after page of the 
 most exquisitely neat shorthand at the rate of about 
 three words a minute ; but it did not occur to me 
 that this was our play. After about six weeks he 
 said to me, 'Look here, I've written half the first 
 act of that comedy, and IVe used up all your plot. 
 Now I want some more to go on with.' I told him 
 that my ^lot was a rounded and perfect organic 
 v/hole, and that I could no more eke it out in this 
 fl^shion than I could provide him or myself with 
 a set of supplementary arms and legs. I begged 
 him to extend his shorthand and let me see what he 
 had done ; but this would have taken him far too 
 long. He tried to decipher some of it orally, but 
 the process was too lingering and painful for endur- 
 ance. So he simply gave me an outline in narrative 
 of what he had done ; and I saw that, so far from 
 having used up my plot, he had not even touched it. 
 There the matter rested for months and years. Mr. 
 Shaw would now and then hold out vague threats 
 of finishing 'our play,' but I felt no serious alarm. 
 I thought fudging from my own experience in other 
 cases) that when he came to read over in cold blood 
 what he had written, he would see what impossible 
 stuff it was. Perhaps my free utterance of this view 
 piqued him ; perhaps he felt impelled to remove 
 from the Independent Theatre the reproach of 
 dealing solely in foreign products. The fire of his 
 genius, at all events, was not to be quenched by 
 
xii The Author's Preface. 
 
 my persistent applications of the wet-blanket. He 
 finished his play; Mr. Grein, as in duty bound, accepted 
 it ; and the result was the performance of Friday last 
 [9th Dec. 1892] at the Independent Theatre." 
 
 To this history I have little to add. The circum- 
 stances occurred, in the main, as Mr. Archer states 
 them. But I most strenuously deny that there is 
 any such great difference between his Rhinegold and 
 fVidowers Houses as he supposes. I appeal to the 
 impartial public, which has now both my play and 
 Mr. Archer's story before it, to judge whether I 
 did not deal faithfully with him. The Rhine hotel 
 garden, the hero proposing to the heroine in ignorance 
 of the source of her father's wealth, the ** tainted 
 treasure of the father-in-law," the renunciation of it 
 by the lover : all these will be found as prominently 
 in the following pages as in Mr. Archer's description 
 of the fable which he persists in saying I did " not 
 even touch." As a matter of fact the dissolution of 
 partnership between us came when I told him that 
 I had finished up the renunciation and wanted son^e 
 more story to go on with, as I was only in the middle 
 of the second act. He said that according to his 
 calculation the renunciation ought to have landed me 
 at the end of the play. I could only reply that his 
 calculation did not work out, and that he must supply 
 further material. This he most unreasonably refused 
 to do ; and I had eventually to fish up the tainted 
 treasure out of the Rhine, so to speak, and make it 
 last out another act and a half, which I had to invent 
 all by myself. Clearly, then, he was the defaulter ; 
 and I am the victim. 
 
The Author's Preface. xiii 
 
 It will have been noted by the attentive reader 
 that what I have called a story, Mr. Archer calls a 
 plot ; and that he mentions two heroines, introduced 
 for the sole purpose of being mistaken for one another. 
 Now, I confess to discarding the second daughter. 
 She was admittedly a mere joist in the plot ; and I 
 had then, have now, and have always had, an utter 
 contempt/ for " constructed " works of art. How any 
 man in his senses can deliberately take as his model 
 the sterile artifice of Wilkie Collins or Scribe, and 
 repudiate the natural artistic activity of Fielding, 
 Goldsmith, Defoe and Dickens, not to mention 
 zEschylus and Shakespear, is beyond argument with 
 me : those who entertain such preferences are ob- 
 viously incapable people, who prefer a *^ well made 
 play " to King Lear exactly as they prefer acrostics 
 to sonnets. As a fictionist, my natural way is to 
 imagine characters and spin out a story about them, 
 whether I am writing a novel or a play ; and I please 
 myself by reflecting that this has been the way of all 
 great masters of fiction. Af the same time I am quite 
 aware that a writer with the necessary constructive 
 ingenuity, and the itch for exercising it for its own 
 sake, can entertain audiences or readers very agreeably 
 by carefully constructing and unravelling mysteries 
 and misunderstandings ; and that this ingenuity may 
 be associated with sufficient creative imagination to 
 give a considerable show of humanity and some 
 interest of character to the puppets contrived for the 
 purpose of furthering the plot. The line between 
 the authors who place their imagination at the service 
 of their ingenuity and those who place their ingenuity 
 at the service of their imagination may be hard to 
 
xiv The Author's Preface. 
 
 draw with precise justice (to Edgar Allan Poe, for 
 instance !) ; but it is clear that if we draw it as an 
 equator, Scribe and the plot constructors will be 
 at the south pole, and iEschylus and the dramatic 
 poets at the north. Now, Archer's Rhinegold, in the 
 absence of any convincing evidence that vl was an 
 ^schylus, was designed for the southern hemisphere ; 
 and Widowers Houses was built for the north. I 
 told the story, but discarded the plot ; and Archer at 
 once perceived that this step made the enterprise 
 entirely my own, since the resultant play, whether 
 good or bad, must on my method be a growth out 
 of the stimulated imagination of the actual writer, 
 and not a manufactured article constructed by an 
 artisan according to plans and specifications sup- 
 plied by an inventor. The collaboration was there- 
 fore dropped ; and after finishing the second act, so 
 as to avoid leaving a loose end, and noting such 
 beginnings of the third as had already sprouted, I 
 left the work aside for seven years and thought no 
 more of it. Last August, having been rather over- 
 worked by the occurrence of a General Election 
 at the busiest part of the journalistic season in 
 London, I could do nothing for a while but potter 
 aimlessly over my old papers, among which I came 
 across the manuscript of the play ; and it so tickled 
 me that I there and then sat down and finished 
 it. But for Mr. Grein and the Independent Theatre 
 Society it would probably have gone back to its 
 drawer and lain there for another seven years, if not 
 for ever. 
 
 Some idea of the discussion which followed the 
 performance may be gathered from the appendices 
 
The Author's Preface. xv 
 
 which will be found at the end of this volume. The 
 entire novelty on the stage of the standpoint taken, 
 which is impartially Socialistic, greatly confused the 
 critics, especially those who are in the habit of 
 accepting as Socialism that spirit of sympathy with 
 the poor and indignant protest against suffering and 
 injustice which, in modern literature, culminated in 
 Victor Hugo's Les MiserableSy and has lately been 
 forced into the theatre by the pressure of the Socialist 
 propaganda outside. This "stage Socialism" is repre- 
 sented in my play by the good-natured compunction 
 of my hero, who conceives the horrors of the slums as 
 merely the result of atrocious individual delinquency 
 on the part of the slum landlord. In spite of the 
 unanswerable way in which the shallowness and 
 impracticability of this view are exposed at once 
 by a single speech from a practical business man, 
 many of my critics were unable to rid themselves 
 of it. They dismissed the man of business as a 
 sophistical villain, and so got hopelessly astray as to 
 the characterization in the piece. My portraiture of 
 Lickcheese, the slum rent collector, an effective but 
 quite common piece of work, pleased better than any 
 of the rest. My technical skill as a playwright sus- 
 tained many attacks, all based on the assumption 
 that the only admissible stage technique is the tech- 
 nique of plot construction, an assumption which 
 excludes Shakespear and Goethe from the ranks 
 of competent stage workmen, and which therefore 
 appears to me to reduce itself to absurdity, although 
 I am well aware that many of our critics look on 
 Shakespear and Goethe as literary men who were 
 unfortunately disabled from producing good acting 
 
xvi The Author's Preface. 
 
 plays by their deficiency in the stage craft of the 
 ordinary farcical comedy writer and melodramatist. It 
 was further objected that my play, being didactic, was 
 therefore not a work of art — a proposition which, if 
 examined, will be found to mean either that the 
 world's acknowledged masterpieces are not works of 
 art, or else exactly nothing at all. Now, I submit 
 that I could not reasonably be expected to defer to 
 the authority of canons of art which no artist ac- 
 knowledges, and in subjection to which no art would 
 be possible, even if I had not, by my practice in 
 the profession of music critic during the remarkable 
 development effected both in that art and in its 
 criticism by Richard Wagner, been sufficiently 
 trained in critical processes to recognize the objec- 
 tions I have cited as nothing more than the common 
 fallacies and ineptitudes into which all critics fall 
 when first confronted with a progressive movement. 
 I have also practised picture criticism, and have had 
 to make up my mind as to the pre-Raphaelite move- 
 ment and the Impressionist movement, with the 
 result that I have come to suspect dramatic critics 
 of never having had to make up their minds about 
 anything, owing to the fact that until the advent of 
 Ibsen the other day there had not for many years 
 been anything worth calling a movement in dramatic 
 art. I by no means undervalued their like or dislike 
 of my work, which was written as much to please 
 them as any one else ; but, as an expert, I found their 
 critical analysis anything but skilful, and their power of 
 imposing on themselves by phrase-making, boundless. 
 Even the best of the younger school will occasionally 
 be satisfied that he has quite accounted for an unex- 
 
The Author's Preface. xvii 
 
 pected speech by dismissing it as a wanton paradox 
 (without any consciousness of having insulted the 
 author) ; or he will dispose of an incident by pointing 
 out that it is " inconsistent " ; or, if he wishes to 
 be specially ingenious, he will say of a character — a 
 red-haired one, for instance — that it is not a human 
 being at all, but a type of the red-haired variety of 
 mankind. I make free to criticize my critics thus 
 because some of them are my personal friends ; 
 others have dealt so handsomely by me that I cannot 
 very well except them without a ridiculous appear- 
 ance of returning the compliment ; and the rest will 
 be all the better for being brought to book. Besides, 
 I may offer my Qiuintessence of Ibsenism^ written and 
 published before there was any question of finishing 
 or producing Widowers Houses^ as a substantial proof 
 that my interest in the art of criticism is not at 
 bottom merely the protest of my own sensitiveness 
 against the very disrespectful way in which my work 
 has been handled in various quarters. There must, 
 however, be no mistake as to the ground upon 
 which I challenge criticism for the play, now 
 that I submit it in print to the public. It is a 
 propagandist play — a didactic play — a play with a 
 purpose ; but I do not therefore claim any special 
 indulgence for it from people who go to the theatre 
 to be entertained. I offer it as a technically good 
 practicable stage play, one which will, if adequately 
 acted, hold its proper audience and drive its story 
 home to the last word. 
 
 But in claiming place for my play among works 
 of art, I must make a melancholy reservation. One 
 or two friendly readers may find it interesting, 
 
 h 
 
xviii The Author's Preface. 
 
 amusing, even admirable, as far as a mere topical 
 farce can excite admiration ; but nobody will find it 
 a beautiful or lovable work. It is saturated with 
 the vulgarity of the life it represents: the people 
 do not speak nobly, live gracefully, or sincerely face 
 their own position : the author is not giving expres- 
 sion in pleasant fancies to the underlying beauty and 
 romance of happy life, but dragging up to the smooth 
 surface of ** respectability " a handful of the slime and 
 foulness of its polluted bed, and playing off your 
 laughter at the scandal of the exposure against your 
 shudder at its blackness. 1 offer it as my own 
 criticism of the author of Widowers' Houses that 
 the disillusion which makes all great dramatic poets 
 tragic has here made him only derisive ; and derision 
 is by common consent a baser atmosphere than that 
 of tragedy. I had better have written a beautiful 
 play, like Twelfth Nighty or a grand play, like the 
 tragic masterpieces ; but, frankly, I was not able to : 
 modern commercialism is a bad art school, and 
 cannot, with all its robberies, murders and prostitu- 
 tions, move us in the grand manner to pity and 
 terror : it is squalid, futile, blundering, mean, 
 ridiculous, for ever uneasily pretending to be the 
 wide-minded, humane, enterprising thing it is not. 
 It is not my fault, reader, that my art is the expression 
 of my sense of moral and intellectual perversity rather 
 than of my sense of beauty. My life has been 
 passed mostly in big modern towns, where my sense 
 of beauty has been starved whilst my intellect has 
 been gorged with problems like that of the slums in 
 this play, until at last I have come, in a horrible sort 
 of way, to relish them enough to make them the 
 
The Author's Preface. xix 
 
 subjects of my essays as an artist. Such art as can 
 come out of these conditions for a man of my endow- 
 ment I claim to have put into my work ; and therefore 
 you will please judge it, not as a pamphlet in dialogue, 
 but as in intention a work of art as much as any 
 comedy of Moliere's is a work of art, and as pre- 
 tending to be a better made play for actual use and 
 long wear on the boards than anything that has 
 yet been turned out by the patent constructive 
 machinery. And I claim that its value in both 
 respects is enhanced by the fact that it deals with a 
 burning social question, and is deliberately intended 
 to induce people to vote on the Progressive side at 
 the next County Council election in London. So, 
 as the clown says in All's JVell^ '* Spare not me." I 
 am no novice in the current critical theories of 
 dramatic art ; and what I have done I have done on 
 purpose. 
 
 London, March 1893. 
 
ROYALTY THEATRE, 
 
 DEAN STREET, SOHO. 
 THE INDEPENDENT THEATRE. 
 
 Founder and Sole Director, J. T. GREIN. 
 
 SECOND SEASON, SIXTH PERFORMANCE. 
 
 F RID AT, ^th December, 1892, 
 
 wiT>oweT(S' Houses, 
 
 An Original Didactic Realistic Play in Three Acts, by 
 
 G. BERNARD SHAW. 
 
 DRAMATIS 
 
 PERSONiE. 
 
 Harry Trench . 
 
 
 Mr. W. J. Robertson. 
 
 Cokane . 
 
 
 Mr. Arthur Whittaker. 
 
 Sarforius 
 
 
 Mr. T. W. Percyval. 
 
 Lickcheese 
 
 
 Mr. James Welch. 
 
 Waiter . 
 
 
 Mr. E. P. Donne. 
 
 Porter . 
 
 
 Mr. W. Alison. 
 
 Annie 
 
 
 Miss N. DE SiLVA. 
 
 Blanche . 
 
 
 Miss Florence Farr. 
 
 The Tlay produced under the direction of 
 Mr. H. DE Lange. 
 
Dramatis Personae. 
 
 r 
 
 Harry Trench, a newly qualified physician. Age 
 about 24, dark, stoutly built, thick neck, cJose- 
 cropped black hair, undignified medical-student 
 manners, frank, hasty, rather boyish. 
 CoKANE, any age from 35 to 50, reduced gentleman 
 with good shop- walker s manners, fidgety, touchy, 
 I scanty hair, constitutionally ridiculous. 
 
 I Sartorius, 50, well preserved, upright carriage, 
 I imposing domineering style, incisive utterance, 
 
 high forehead, aquiline nose, resolute mouth, 
 clean shaven, evidences of money about him, in 
 first Act wears light grey frock coat with silk 
 linings, white hat, field-glass slung in new leather 
 case, &c. 
 
 [ LiCKCHEESE, shabby slum rent collector, dirty face 
 and linen, scrubby beard and whiskers, going 
 I bald. In the third act he is brilliantly clean, 
 
 I shaved except for wax-ended imperial moustache, 
 
 7 is much fatter, wears expensive fur overcoat, &c. 
 
 Blanche Sartorius, well dressed, good-looking, 
 strong-minded young woman, presentably lady- 
 like, not too delicate or refined. Fresh and 
 attractive, but her father's daughter. 
 Also Annie, a parlourmaid; an English Waiter 
 at a German Hotel ; and a Porter. 
 
Act L In the grounds of a Hotel-Restaurant at 
 Remagen on the Rhine. 
 
 Acts IL and III. In Sartorius's house at Surbiton. 
 
 Interval of four months supposed to elapse 
 between Acts II. and III. 
 
Widowers' Houses- 
 r 
 
 Act I. 
 
 Garden of a Hotel at Remagen on the Rhine, 
 on a fine afternoon in August. Tables and chairs 
 under the trees. Entrance to garden from rinjer- 
 side, L. Entrance to hotel, r. Entrance to Table 
 d'Hote, R c. Waiter in attendance. 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH. 
 
 Enter from hotel Trench and Cokane, in tourist 
 dress. 
 
 Cokane. 
 {on the threshold, speaking to the waiter) Two beers 
 for us out here. {Exit Waiter into hotel. Cokane 
 comes down to Trench) We have got the room with 
 the best view in the hotel, Harry, thanks to my 
 tact — thanks to my tact. We'll leave in the morn- 
 ing and do Mainz and Frankfurt. Frankfurt wont 
 take us long — nothing there but pictures. Next 
 day, Nuremberg ! — finest collection of instruments 
 of torture in the world. 
 
2 Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 Trench. 
 All right. Let's sit down here under the trees 
 and look out the trains {produces Railway Guide — 
 Continental Br ads haw or HendscheV s telegraph — and 
 is about to sit at the l table), 
 
 Cokane. 
 No, not under the trees, dear boy : there is a 
 frightful draught coming in between them. Let us 
 get the shelter of the building. {Gees to r table,) 
 You will find this the most comfortable chair. Pah ! 
 the seat is all dusty. These foreigners are deplorably 
 unclean in their habits. I shall complain of this. 
 Kellner ! Kellner ! ! 
 
 Trench. 
 Never mind : it dont matter, old chappie. Let's 
 sit here. {Goes to centre table and sits,) 
 Cokane. 
 Certainly, my dear fellow, if you wish. But dont 
 you think this table has a northerly aspect ? Is it 
 
 safe to expose ourselves 
 
 Trench. 
 
 My dear Cokane, I can assure you, as a medical 
 
 man of three weeks* standing, that you will not get 
 
 rheumatism from the sun here at five o'clock on an 
 
 August afternoon. Come along : dont be an ass. 
 
 {Pulls Cokane into the chair beside him, Cokane is 
 
 offended. He sits down under protest; buttons his coat; 
 
 and coughs slightly, "Trench loses his temper.) I will 
 
 go inside if you like — if you persist in making a fool 
 
 of yourself. Exposed ! What are you exposed to ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 We are exposed to the gaze of the people with 
 
sc. I.] Widowers' Houses. 3 
 
 whom we have been travelling. The canaille I do 
 not mind ; but nearly all the people who came on 
 board the steamer at Coblentz are English ; and I 
 do not wish for your sake — for your sake, Harry — 
 to be seen by them until I have at least put on 
 a tall hat. Look at our appearance. 
 
 Trench. 
 What is the matter with our appearance } 
 
 Cokane. 
 Neglige^ my dear fellow : neglige. On the steam- 
 boat a little neglige was quite en regie ; but here, in 
 this palatial hotel, I think we owe it to ourselves to 
 put on something a trifle more — more recherche. 
 
 Trench. 
 Why, the steamboat people were the scum of the 
 earth — Americans and all sorts. They may go hang 
 themselves, Billy. I shall not bother about them. 
 ['Takes out his pipe case,) 
 
 Cokane. 
 Dont call me Billy before people. Trench. My 
 name is Cokane. I am sure they are persons of 
 consequence : you were struck with the distinguished 
 appearance of the father yourself. They are staying 
 here — here^ Harry, at this hotel. They are out buy- 
 ing photographs, and may be back at any moment. 
 
 Trench. 
 What ! those people.? [Puts up his pipe; pulls 
 his coat straight ; and glances at his hoots}) Perhaps 
 we had better touch ourselves up a little : we look 
 rather the worse for the heat. {Both rise.) Too late, 
 by Jove : here she comes with her governor. (Cokane 
 and Trench retreat. Enter Sartorius l, with Blanche^ 
 
4 Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 and a porter with parcels, 'The waiter enters from 
 the hotely with beer,) 
 
 SCENE 11. 
 
 TRENCH, COKANE, WAITER, SARTORIUS, PORTER, BLANCHE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (/^ porter^ indicating c table) Place those things on 
 that table. {'The porter does not understand,) 
 
 Waiter. 
 These gentlemen are using this table, I think, sir. 
 
 Would you mind 
 
 Sartorius. 
 You should have told me so before. {To Cokane) 
 I regret the mistake, sir. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Dont mention it, my dear sir: dont mention it. 
 Retain the place, I beg. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {coldly turning his back on him) Thank you. {To 
 porter) Place them on that table. {The porter 
 makes no movement until Sartorius points to the 
 parcels and raps the table,) 
 
 Porter. 
 Ja wohl, gnadige Herr. {Puts down parcels, 
 Sartorius tips him^ and, as he goes outy sits at l table 
 and begins to study his Badeker, taking no further 
 notice of Cokane^ whom he evidently wishes to snub. 
 Blanche is already seated at the table , her father being 
 between her and the two men.) 
 
 Cokane. 
 {resuming his place at c table. Trench does so too) 
 We are fellow-travellers, if I mistake not. 
 
sc. 2.] Widowers' Houses. 5 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {without looking round) Indeed ? 
 Cokane. 
 Kellner ! Garden ! 
 
 Waiter. 
 Yes sir. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Have you a visitors' book ? 
 Waiter. 
 Yes sir. Anything else sir ? 
 Cokane. 
 Produce it. {Exit waiter, Cokane continues to 
 Trench, with emphasis) I am anxious to ascertain 
 whether this is the hotel your aunt stays at, my dear 
 fellow. 
 
 Trench. 
 What on earth has put that into your head ? Why 
 not ask the waiter, if you really want to know ? 
 Cokane. 
 Because it would be indelicate, my dear fellow. 
 It would appear as if I were making a parade of 
 my acquaintance with Lady Roxdale. Good taste 
 forbids, Trench, good taste forbids. (Jside) Say 
 something to the old man, Trench : strike up a 
 conversation. 
 
 Trench. 
 I shall do nothing of the sort. I dont know him. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Precisely, dear boy. Then let us get to know 
 him as soon as possible. His daughter is an angel. 
 Havent you a paper to offer them ? 
 
6 Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 Trench. 
 I have the Lancet, 
 
 Cokane. 
 The Lancet ! Would you offer a medical paper 
 to the father of that girl ? You have no delicacy, 
 Trench. Havent you Tit Bits} 
 
 Trench. 
 Yes — the week before last. {Pulls it out of his 
 pocket,) 
 
 Cokane. 
 Admirable ! they will have forgotten all about the 
 week before last. (To Sartorius) Sir : you have 
 perhaps not seen Tit Bits, If not, allow me to 
 
 offer {Hands it,) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {graciously) Thank you. Blanche : Tit Bits, {She 
 takes it coolly,) We are fellow-travellers, I believe. 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 Quite so, quite so. And fellow-countrymen also. 
 We rarely feel the charm of our own tongue until 
 it reaches our ears under a foreign sky. You have 
 no doubt noticed that .? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Hm ! From a romantic point of view, possibly, 
 very possibly. As a matter of fact, the sound of 
 English makes me feel at home ; and I dislike feeling 
 at home when I am abroad. It is not precisely what 
 one goes to the expense for. I think this gentleman 
 travelled with us also. 
 
 Cokane. 
 {rising to act as Master of the Ceremonies. Sartorius 
 and Trench rise also) My valued friend, Dr. Trench. 
 
sc. 2.] Widowers' Houses. 7 
 
 The strain of a London season on a medical man 
 is enormous. Trench, my dear fellow : allow me to 
 introduce you to — er — ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Permit me to shake your hand, Dr. Trench. My 
 name is Sartorius ; and I have the honor of being 
 known to Lady Roxdale, who is, I believe, a near 
 and dear relative of yours. 
 
 Trench. 
 (sheepishly) Yes : she is my aunt ; but I dont 
 know about her being particularly fond of me. In 
 fact, I hardly know 
 
 Cokane. 
 My dear fellow, dont harp on family quarrels : 
 they dont interest Mr. Sartorius. Good taste forbids: 
 good taste forbids. {<tAside) Do hold your tongue, 
 Harry. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Blanche. {She looks up from the paper.) My 
 friend Dr. Trench. {T^hey bow.) 
 
 Trench. 
 Perhaps I should introduce my friend Cokane to 
 you, Mr. Sartorius. {Cokane makes an elaborate bow. 
 Sartorius accepts it with dignity. 'The waiter mean- 
 while re-enters with book and inkstand^ which he places 
 on the R table^ 
 
 Waiter. 
 Table d'hote at 'alf past six, gen'lmen. {^0 Trench) 
 Like anything else now, sir } 
 
 Trench. 
 
 No, thank you : TU wait. 
 
8 Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 Waiter. 
 Thank you^ sir. {Looks at the rest for orders in 
 vairiy and exit,) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {to Trench) We are going to have another look at 
 the river before dinner. If you feel disposed to 
 accompany us 
 
 Cokane. 
 With pleasure, my dear sir : with the greatest 
 pleasure. {Moves towards Blanche^ who does not look 
 up from her paper,) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {looking at his watch) We have about half an hour. 
 Trench. 
 Is that all ? Then we had better start at once. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 So I think. Blanche. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes, papa. Quite ready. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {to Cokane^ who is absorbed in contemplation of 
 Blanche) You were observing, sir, that 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 {recollecting himself and eagerly joining Sartorius) 
 — that the pleasures — the glories of this splendid 
 Rhine scenery are doubled by the society of men of 
 taste and the absence of vulgar and intrusive persons. 
 True, sir : very true. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I made no such remark, Mr. Cokane ; but it is 
 not impossible that some reflection of the kind may 
 
sc. 3.] Widowers' Houses. 9 
 
 have been in my mind. (Exeunt Cokane and Sartorius 
 by the entrance to the gar dens ^ l.) 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 BLANCHE. 
 
 Trench. 
 I believe I have had the pleasure of meeting you 
 before. Miss Sartorius. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 (ironically^ Indeed ? 
 
 Trench. 
 (injured) I thought you might have remembered it. 
 Blanche. 
 I believe I have had the pleasure of conversing 
 with you for an hour or so on three different 
 occasions, Dr. Trench. I thought you might have 
 remembered it. 
 
 Trench. 
 I do remember it very well, of course. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Oh ! I did not catch your recognition of me just 
 now — before we were introduced, I mean. 
 
 Trench. 
 Well, I thought you might not like Mr. Sartorius 
 to know about — that is, I mean — I 
 
 Blanche. 
 There is no apology needed : I quite understand. 
 You did just what pleased you. 
 
 Trench. 
 I did not : indeed I did not. Miss Sartorius. Not 
 
lo Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 having been formally introduced to you, I thought 
 I had no right to claim your acquaintance. 
 Blanche. 
 It does not matter at all. We had better follow 
 papa, I think. 
 
 Trench. 
 But it does matter — at least it does to me. {hoses 
 confidence) Perhaps it doesnt to you, though ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Not in the least. Pray dont be uneasy about it. 
 
 Trench. 
 {offended) Oh ! then perhaps we had better rejoin 
 Mr. Sartorius, as you suggest. {She turns to go^ and 
 pauses y waiting for him) There is of course no 
 reason whatever why you should care. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Papa will wonder what has become of me. 
 
 Trench. 
 I beg your pardon. {Going with her : stops with a 
 growing sense of injury) Have I offended you in 
 any way } 
 
 Blanche. 
 {coolly) • Oh dear^ no ! 
 
 Trench. 
 I thought your tone a good deal colder than when 
 we last met. You remember our last meeting, I hope. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 Yes : we were just speaking of it, were we not? 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Yes, of course. But — but Cokane is quite 
 
 out of sight. 
 
sc. 3»] Widowers' Houses. ii 
 
 Blanche. 
 We had better hurry on. 
 
 Trench. 
 Yes, if you like. But I am afraid we shall not be 
 able to overtake them now. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 Perhaps not. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 You see we dont know what direction they have 
 taken, do we? 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 No. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Of course we shall do just as you please ; but I 
 think the safest plan is to wait here until they come 
 back. They know where they left us ; and if we 
 move, we may lose hours looking for one another 
 in this strange place. But just as you please, of 
 course. 
 
 Blanche. 
 How very thoughtful of you ! (Si^s,) 
 
 Trench. 
 You are chaffing ; but I am quite in earnest, I 
 assure you. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I hope so. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 (startled by her tone) Blanche ! (She looks up at him 
 in affected surprise) I beg your pardon. {Hesitates a 
 moment and then sits opposite her) Cokane is a very 
 good fellow. Miss Sartorius. 
 
12 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {coldly) Yes, he seems to be a very interesting man. 
 Trench. 
 Interesting ! Do you think so ? I shouldnt have 
 thought that he was particularly interesting. But he 
 is not a bad fellow. No, I assure you : Cokane is 
 a very good fellow — really an uncommonly good 
 fellow. Perhaps he is interesting. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I meant interesting as a subject of conversation. 
 
 Trench. 
 {jealous) Oh, indeed. Have you been talking much 
 about him of late ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 (out of patience) I really must go and find papa. 
 (Rises,) It is hardly fair to Mr. Cokane to speak so 
 very much of him behind his back. 
 
 Trench. 
 {to himself) Been making an ass of myself, it 
 strikes me. (to her) I really didnt mean to bore 
 you about Cokane ; but it is very difficult to broach 
 a serious topic ten minutes after an introduction. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Is it? You were at no loss the day before you 
 were introduced. 
 
 Trench. 
 You were not indifferent to all my — my prattle 
 on the steamboat, then } I meant everything I said. 
 
 Blanche. 
 It was very interesting. I have written some of it 
 down. 
 
sc. 3.] Widowers' Houses. 13 
 
 Trench. 
 What have you written down, if I may ask ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Oh, a great deal — especially about the new germ 
 theory. 
 
 Trench. 
 (much disappointed) I had forgotten all about that. 
 I hope I have not been wearying you with my shop. 
 I meant to have talked more about myself. At least, 
 about ourselves, you know. However, perhaps it*s 
 as well as it is. (Distraught) Yes. But I assure 
 
 you that Cokane oh, hang Cokane ! I am talking 
 
 about him again. I beg your pardon. After all, 
 what does it matter.? I suppose we shall never see 
 each other again after we part here. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {hurt) I suppose not — particularly if you make up 
 your mind not to. 
 
 Trench. 
 Perhaps you think that would be best for us. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I really will go and look for papa. {Rises in a 
 very ill humour?^ 
 
 Trench. 
 One moment. I have something to say that may 
 as well be said now. (Blanche sits) I have no idea 
 how you will receive this: it must seem horribly 
 abrupt ; bijt the circumstances do not admit of 
 — the fact is, my utter want of experience — (he 
 flounders: she waits calmly) Now, if it were 
 Cokane 
 
14 Widowers' Houses. [act r. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {rising almost with a hound) Cokane I 
 
 Trench. 
 No, not Cokane. Though I assure you I was 
 only going to say about him that 
 
 Blanche. 
 That he will be back presently with papa. 
 
 Trench. 
 (unnerved again) Yes, of course. Perhaps I am 
 detaining you. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 (with emphasis^ making a last effort to bring him to 
 the point) Yes. I thought you were detaining me 
 because you had something to say. 
 
 Trench. 
 Not at all. At least, nothing very particular. 
 That is, nothing very particular to you. Another 
 time, perhaps 
 
 Blanche. 
 What other time ? Were we not saying just now 
 that we might never meet again ? 
 Trench. 
 That is, you said, if we made up our minds not to. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {giving it up) I do not think there is much danger 
 of your making up your mind, Dr. Trench. 
 
 Trench. 
 No: you see I have made it up already. I am 
 glad you have found that out. And you are not 
 angry ? 
 
sc. 3.] Widowers' Houses. 15 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 Why should I be angry ? 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Then I will tell you that I have made up my 
 mind to see you as often as possible. I — {losing 
 his resolution again) perhaps I — Cokane is really — 
 no : I dont mean that ; but it is not good for man 
 to be alone — at least not a man like me — I mean 
 
 a man like you — that is, a woman like me — you 
 
 (She deliberately puts her hands into his; and he 
 catches her in his arms.) Dear Blanche ! (She hides 
 her face against him : he recovers himself completely 
 and gives a great sigh of relief.) I thought I should 
 never have said it. I believe I should have stood 
 stammering here all day if you had not helped me 
 out with it. 
 
 Blanche. 
 (starting away from him) I didnt help you out with it. 
 
 Trench. 
 You helped me unconsciously, or instinctively — by 
 suggestion, as it were, dearest, if you like that better. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I dont like it at all. Besides, you have not said 
 anything. You have only been rather rude. 
 
 Trench. 
 Then let's go through it all over again and make 
 it right this time. (He kisses her) There ! 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 (in his arms) I thought you were a very shy person. 
 (Sartorius enters^ and observes them with quiet satis- 
 faction. Cokane follows ; starts; and coughs^ 
 
1 6 Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 SCENE IV. 
 
 TRENCH, BLANCHE, SARTORIUS, COKANE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I intended you to accompany us, Blanche, in our 
 walk. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes, papa. We were just about to start. You 
 cannot have walked very far. {First dinner bell 
 rings) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 The table d'hote will be ready in twenty minutes ; 
 and we are rather dusty : we must make ourselves 
 presentable. I think you had better come in with 
 me, my child. Come. {Exit into hotel with "Blanche^ 
 who turns to glance at ^rench^ and is much disgusted 
 to find Cokane between them^ looking reproachfully at 
 her.) 
 
 SCENE V. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH. 
 
 Cokane. 
 No, my dear boy. No. No. {Conveying repro^ 
 bat ion of ^rencKs conduct.) 
 
 Trench. 
 What the deuce are you No-ing at } 
 
 Cokane. 
 Nothing : I am the last man in the world you 
 could describe as knowing at anything : I am simple 
 as a child, Trench ; but I am not blind. I blush 
 for you — was never so ashamed in my life. You 
 have been taking advantage of that unprotected girl. 
 
sc. 5.] Widowers' Houses. 17 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Cokane ! 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 Her father seems to be a perfect gentleman. I 
 obtained the privilege of his acquaintance : I intro- 
 duced you : I allowed hint to believe that he might 
 abandon his daughter to your charge with absolute 
 confidence. And what did I see on our return ? 
 — what did her father see.? Oh, Trench, Trench ! 
 No, my dear fellow, no, no. Bad taste, Harry, bad 
 form ! 
 
 Trench. 
 Stuff ! There was nothing to see. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Nothing to see ! She ! a perfect lady, a person 
 of the highest breeding, actually in your arms ; and 
 you say there was nothing to see ! Have you no 
 principles. Trench .? Have you no religious con- 
 victions ? Have you no acquaintance with the 
 usages of society.? You actually kissed 
 
 Trench. 
 You didnt see me kiss her. 
 
 Cokane. 
 No ; but I heard the report, I heard the report. 
 Dont condescend to subterfuge. 
 
 Trench. 
 Nonsense, my dear Billy. You 
 
 Cokane. 
 There you go again. Bont use that low abbrevia- 
 tion. How am I to preserve the respect of fellow- 
 travellers of position and wealth, if I am to be Billied 
 
 1 
 
1 8 Widowers' Houses, [act i. 
 
 at every turn ? My name is William — William de 
 Burgh Cokane. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Oh bother ! There, dont be offended, old chap. 
 What's the use of putting your back up at every 
 trifle ? I only say Billy bj^cause it suits you, some- 
 how. 
 
 Cokane. 
 (mortified) You have no delicacy of feeling. Trench 
 — no taste. I never mention it to any one ; but 
 nothing, I am afraid, will ever make a gentleman of 
 you. {Enter Sartorius, from the hotel) Oh no : I 
 am not ofl^ended — not in the least. Here is my 
 friend Sartorius, coming, no doubt, to ask you for 
 an explanation of your conduct. I should not have 
 been surprised to see him bring a substantial weapon 
 with him. I shall not intrude on the painful scene. 
 {Going,) 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Dont go, confound it. I dont want to meet him 
 alone just now. 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 Delicacy, Harry, delicacy. Good taste ! Savoir 
 faire ! {Exit, r. French tries to escape by strolling 
 off towards the garden entrance,) 
 
 SCENE VI. 
 
 SARTORIUS, TRENCH. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Are you at leisure for ten minutes or so ? 
 Trench. 
 {stopping and turning) Certainly. Certainly. 
 
sc. 6.] Widowers' Houses. 19 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I shall ask you to oblige me with a few words. 
 {^rench assents. "They sit) Ahem ! You have been 
 speaking to my daughter, Dr. Trench. 
 
 Trench. 
 (with affected ease of manner) Yes : we had a 
 conversation — quite a chat, in fact — whilst you were 
 taking a turn with Cokane. He is a very good 
 fellow, is Cokane. Oh yes. You see. Miss Sartorius 
 and I had a few scientific discussions on board the 
 steamboat. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Scientific discussions .f* 
 
 Trench. 
 Chiefly so. Scientific in the main — in the main. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I have just had a word with Blanche on the 
 subject. Dr. Trench ; and I find her under the 
 impression that something has passed between you 
 which I hardly think is fairly to be described as a 
 scientific discussion. Now my daughter, perhaps 
 foolishly, has taken you quite seriously ; and 
 
 Trench. 
 But 
 
 Sartorius. 
 One moment, if you will be so good. I have 
 been a young man myself — younger, perhaps, than 
 you would suppose from my present appearance. 
 If you were not serious 
 
 Trench. 
 But I was perfectly serious. I want to marry your 
 
20 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 daughter, Mr. Sartorius. {Sartorius is again about 
 to put him down ; but Trench takes the upper hand^ 
 and continues) Excuse my interrupting you ; but 
 that is the long and short of the matter. I hope 
 you dont object. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 So far, no. I may say that your proposal seems 
 to be an honorable and straightforward one, and 
 that it is very gratifying to me personally. 
 Trench. 
 Then I suppose we may regard the affair as settled. 
 (Offers his hand) It is really very good of you. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {avoiding T*s hand) Gently, Dr. Trench, gently. 
 Such a transaction as this cannot be settled ofF-hand. 
 Trench. 
 Not ofF-hand, no. There are settlements and 
 things, of course. But I only meant that the matter 
 may be regarded as settled between ourselves. 
 Sartorius. 
 Hm ! Have you nothing further to mention ? 
 Trench. 
 
 Only that — that no : I dont know that I 
 
 have, except that I love 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Anything about your family, for example.? You 
 do not anticipate any objection on their part, do you.? 
 Trench. 
 Oh, they have nothing to do with it. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Gently, pray : they have a great deal to do with 
 
sc. 6,] Widowers' Houses. 21 
 
 it. I am resolved that my daughter shall approach 
 no circle in which she would not be received with 
 the full consideration to which her education and her 
 breeding {here his self-control slips a little) — I say, 
 her breeding — entitle her. 
 
 Trench. 
 But why are you anxious about that, Mr. Sartorius? 
 My people are thickheaded enough, I grant you ; 
 but they are ladies and gentlemen after all, and know 
 what is due to themselves too well to behave rudely 
 even to my wife. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 That wont do for me, sir. Families often think it 
 due to themselves to turn their backs on new-comers 
 whom they may not think quite good enough to mix 
 their noble blood with. 
 
 Trench. 
 Blanche*s blood is as good as theirs, confound them ! 
 Sartorius. 
 {moved) I am glad you think so. {Offers his hand, 
 irench is astonished) I think so myself. And now, 
 Dr. Trench, since you have acted handsomely, you 
 shall have no cause to complain of me. There shall 
 be no difficulty about money. I dont ask you whether 
 you have a hundred a year or ten thousand : I will 
 guarantee all that. But I must have a guarantee on 
 my side that she will be received on equal terms by 
 your family. 
 
 Trench.- 
 Guarantee ! 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Yes, a reasonable guarantee. I shall expect you to 
 
2 2 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 write to your relatives explaining your intention, and 
 adding what you think proper as to my daughter's 
 fitness for the best society. When you can shew me 
 a few letters from the principal members of your 
 family, congratulating you in a fairly cordial way, 
 I shall be satisfied. Can I say more? 
 
 Trench. 
 {much puzzledy but grateful) No indeed. You are 
 really very good. Many thanks. Since you wish it, 
 ril write to my people. You will find that they will 
 be as jolly as possible over it. Til make them write 
 
 by return. In the meantime 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 In the meantime, I must ask you not to regard 
 the matter as settled. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Oh ! Not to regard the I see. You mean 
 
 between Blanche and 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 I mean between you and Miss Sartorius. When 
 I interrupted your conversation here some time ago, 
 you and she were evidently regarding it as settled. 
 In case difliculties arise, and the match — you see I 
 call it a match — be broken off, I should not wish 
 Blanche to have to think that she had allowed a 
 
 gentleman to — to (Trench nods sympathetically, 
 
 Sartorius continues) Quite so. May I depend on 
 you to keep a fair distance, and so spare me the 
 necessity of having to restrain an intercourse which 
 has been very pleasant to us all.? 
 Trench. 
 
 Certainly, since you prefer it. (They shake hands.) 
 
sc. 7.] Widowers' Houses. 23 
 
 Sartorius. 
 You will write to-day, I think you said ? 
 
 Trench. 
 I will write now, before I leave here — straight off. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I will leave you to yourself. (Hesitates^ then more 
 firmly) I am pleased to have come to an under- 
 standing with you. (Exit, as Cokane^ who has been 
 hanging about inquisitively ^ re-enters), 
 
 SCENE VII. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH. 
 
 Trench. 
 Billy, old chap, you are just in time to do me a 
 favor. I want you to draft a letter for me to copy 
 out. 
 
 Cokane. 
 I came with you on this tour as a friend. Trench : 
 not as a secretary. 
 
 Trench. 
 Well, you will write as a friend. It is to my 
 I Aunt Maria, about Blanche and me. To tell her, 
 § you know. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Tell her about Blanche and you ! Tell her about 
 your conduct ! Betray you, my friend ; and forget 
 that I am writing to a lady ? Never ! 
 Trench. 
 Bosh, Billy : it's all right. We are engaged. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Engaged ! To you ! Trench : you have cut me 
 
 i 
 
24 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 out. You have stolen a march on me. Your 
 behaviour is far from friendly. 
 
 Trench. 
 Why, confound you, you're married. Have you 
 forgotten your wife and your five children ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 Do you suppose a married man has no feelings .? 
 
 Trench. 
 He has no business to have any of that sort. In 
 any case, Billy, she seems to prefer me ; for, as I 
 said, we are engaged. 
 
 Cokane. 
 No doubt, when you have spoken to her behind 
 my back. 
 
 Trench. 
 It isnt usual to broach such subjects before 
 company. As you say yourself, good taste forbids. 
 Ha ! ha ! Eh ? Come, old chap (coaxing and 
 pushing him into a chair at the r table) : here's the 
 pen — just the sort of nib you like. {Cokane takes the 
 pen and sits down.) That's right. Thanks awfully, old 
 chap ! Be careful how you word it, though, Cokane. 
 
 Cokane. 
 If you doubt my ability to express myself 
 becomingly to Lady Roxdale 
 
 Trench. 
 All right, old fellow, all right. There's not a 
 man alive who could do it half so well as you. I 
 only wanted to explain. Sartorius has got it into his 
 head, somehow, that my people will snub Blanche; 
 and he wont consent unless they send letters and 
 
sc. 7.] Widowers' Houses. 25 
 
 invitations and congratulations and deuce knows 
 what not. So just put it in such a way that Aunt 
 Maria will write by return saying she is delighted, 
 and asking us — Blanche and me, you know — to stay 
 with her, and so forth. Tou know what I mean. 
 Just tell her all about it in a chatty way ; and 
 
 Cokane. 
 If you will tell me all about it in a chatty way, 
 I dare say I can communicate it to Lady Roxdale 
 with proper delicacy. What is Sartorius .? 
 
 Trench. 
 {taken aback) I dont know : I didnt ask. It's a 
 sort of question you cant very well put to a man — 
 particularly a touchy fellow such as he seems to be. 
 Dont you think you could word the letter so as to 
 pass all that over ^ I really dont like to ask him. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Nothing easier. I can pass over it if you wish. 
 But if you think Lady Roxdale will pass it over, I 
 diifer from you. I may be wrong : no doubt I am. 
 I generally am wrong, I believe ; but that is my 
 opinion. 
 
 Trench. 
 Confound it ! I say, Billy, what the deuce am 
 I to do ? Stop : I have an idea. Say he's a gentle- 
 man : that wont commit us to anything. If you 
 dwell on his being well off, and Blanche an only 
 child. Aunt Maria will be satisfied. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Henry Trench : when will you begin to get a 
 little sense ^ This is a serious business. Act re- 
 sponsibly, Harry : act responsibly. 
 
26 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Oh bosh ! Dont be moral ! 
 Cokane. 
 
 I am not moral, Trench. At least I am not a 
 moralist: that is the expression I should have used 
 — moral, but not a moralist. If you are going to 
 get money with your wife, doesnt it concern you to 
 know how that money was made ^ It is no business 
 of mine : I only throw out the suggestion. Sartorius 
 may be a retired burglar. ^Trench makes an impatient 
 movement) Oh, I do not say that he is retired: how 
 
 should I know.? It is nothing to me. But 
 
 {Enter Sartorius and Blanche^ ready for dinner.) 
 
 Trench. 
 Sh ! Here they come. I wonder whether my 
 promise binds me not to speak to her. {Blanche 
 leaves Sartorius and strolls away through the garden) 
 I had better go and explain to her, anyhow. (Exit 
 after Blanche,) 
 
 SCENE VIII. 
 
 COKANE, SARTORIUS. 
 
 {Sartorius comes down and sits at the table opposite 
 Cokane. He reads Badeker. Cokane^ in the agonies 
 of composition^ makes hideous faces^ and is disconcerted 
 to find Sartorius' s eye on him.) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I do not disturb you, I hope, Mr. Cokane. 
 
 Cokane. 
 By no means. Our friend Trench has intrusted 
 me with a difficult and delicate task. I may mention 
 that Trench is the friend of my boyhood. Without 
 
sc. 8.] Widowers' Houses. 27 
 
 wishing to flatter him, I may say that he is my other 
 self. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Indeed ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 Yes. The most perfect confidence exists between 
 us. [Confidentially) He has requested me to write to 
 his family on a subject that concerns you. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Oh, he has left the letter to you, sir, has he.? 
 Hm! 
 
 Cokane. 
 Yes. He is a capital fellow, my dear sir, a capital 
 fellow. But family communications like these require 
 good manners. They require taste ; and taste is 
 Trench's weak point. He has an excellent heart, 
 but no taste — none whatever. Everything depends 
 on the way the matter is put to Lady Roxdale. But 
 as to that, you may rely on me. I understand the 
 sex. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I was not fully aware of the closeness of the 
 intimacy betv/een you, Mr. Cokane. Now that I 
 am better informed, I trust I may have the pleasure 
 of seeing you at my house at Surbiton when we 
 return. 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 {overwhelmed) My dear sir ! You express yourself 
 
 in the true spirit of an English gentleman. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 I fear I have disturbed you in the composition of 
 
 your letter. Pray resume it. I shall leave you to 
 
2 8 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 yourself — unless indeed I can assist you in any way 
 — by clearing up any point on which you are not 
 informed, for instance ; or even, if I may so far 
 presume on my years, giving you the benefit of my 
 experience as to the best way of wording the matter. 
 I shall always be happy to help any friend of Dr. 
 Trench's, in any way, to the best of my ability and 
 of my means. 
 
 Cokane. 
 My dear sir, you are really very good. Trench 
 and I were putting our heads together over the letter 
 just now; and there certainly were one or two points 
 on which we were a little in the dark. But I would 
 not permit Harry to question you. No. I pointed 
 out to him that, as a matter of taste, it would be 
 more delicate to wait until you volunteered the 
 necessary information. {Looking round.) By the 
 bye, I see they have given us the slip again. They 
 regard it as quite settled. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 But Dr. Trench has just given me his word not 
 to regard it as quite settled yet. 
 Cokane. 
 Ah, my dear sir, it is not the first time I have had 
 to blush for him. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Hm ! Well, Mr. Cokane, as to the letter ? You 
 have made a beginning, I see ? May I ask what you 
 have said, so far ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 ** My dear Aunt Maria." That is. Trench's dear 
 Aunt Maria, my friend. Lady Roxdale. You under- 
 
sc. 8.] Widowers' Houses. 29 
 
 stand I am only drafting a letter for Trench to copy- 
 out. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Quite so. Will you proceed ; or would it help 
 you if I were to suggest a word or two ? 
 Cokane. 
 Your suggestions will be most valuable, my dear 
 sir, immensely valuable. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I think I should begin in some such way as this. 
 " In travelling with my friend Mr. Cokane up the 
 
 Rhine, " 
 
 Cokane. 
 Invaluable, invaluable. The very thing. {Writes) 
 " — my friend Mr. Cokane up the Rhine." 
 Sartorius. 
 " I have made the acquaintance of" — or you may 
 say ''picked up," or "come across," if you think that 
 would suit your friend's style better. We must not 
 be too formal. 
 
 Cokane. 
 "Picked up !" Oh no: too dega^e, Mr. Sartorius, 
 too degage. I should say " had the honor of becom- 
 ing acquainted with " 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {quickly) By no means : Lady Roxdale must judge 
 of that for herself Let it stand as I said. " I have 
 made the acquaintance of a young lady, the daughter 
 
 of " 
 
 Cokane. 
 (writing " — acquaintance of a young lady, the 
 daughter of" yes.^ 
 
30 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 '* Of " you had better say a gentleman. 
 
 Cokane. 
 {surprised) Of course. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {with sudden passion) It is not of course, sir. 
 {Recovers) Hm ! " of a gentleman of con- 
 siderable wealth and position " 
 
 Cokane. 
 {writing) " and position.*' 
 
 Sartorius. 
 "which, however, he has made entirely for him- 
 self" {Cokane^ struck by this, stares at him instead 
 of writing, and expands his obsequious manner into one 
 of patronage and encouragement.) Have you written 
 that f* 
 
 Cokane. 
 {resuming his writing) Yes. Proceed, Sartorius, 
 proceed. Very clearly expressed. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 "The young lady will inherit the bulk of her 
 father's fortune, and will be liberally treated on her 
 marriage. Her education has been of the most 
 expensive and complete kind obtainable ; and her 
 surroundings from her birth have been characterized 
 by the strictest refinement. She is in every essential 
 particular 
 
 Cokane. 
 Excuse the remark; but dont you think this is 
 rather too much in the style of a prospectus of the 
 young lady } I throw out the suggestion as a matter 
 of taste. 
 
sc. 8.] Widowers' Houses. 31 
 
 Sartorius. 
 [troubled) Perhaps you are right. I am of course 
 not dictating the exact words 
 
 Cokane. 
 Of course not : of course not. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 •so that you may remodel it to any extent you 
 
 may see fit. But I desire that there may be no 
 wrong impression as to my daughter's — er — breed- 
 ing. As to myself 
 
 Cokane. 
 Oh, it will be sufficient to mention your pro- 
 fession, or pursuits, or (jhey look pretty hard at 
 
 one another. Pause.) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {very deliberately) My income, sir, is derived from 
 the rental of a very extensive real estate in London. 
 Lady Roxdale is one of the head landlords; and 
 Dr. Trench himself holds a mortgage from which, 
 if I mistake not, his entire income is derived. 
 
 Cokane. 
 {again deferential^ but still inquisitive) What a 
 remarkable coincidence ! In what quarter is the 
 demesne situated, did you say } 
 
 Sartorius. 
 In London^ sir. The management of that estate 
 occupies as much of my time as is not devoted to 
 the ordinary pursuits of a gentleman. (Rises.) The 
 rest I leave to your discretion. ( Tuts card on table) 
 That is my address at Surbiton. I shall leave you 
 to yourself. {Strolls off. Blanche returns ^ evidently 
 
32 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 annoyed^ French following. Cokane devotes himself 
 to composition.) 
 
 SCENE IX. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH, BLANCHE. 
 
 Trench. • 
 
 Do you find the sun too warm ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 No. 
 
 Trench. 
 Look here : ycJur manner is completely changed. 
 I cant help noticing it. What's the matter ^ 
 
 Blanche. 
 The change has not been on my part. I am not 
 accountable for your moods. 
 
 Trench. 
 For my moods ! Oh Blanche ! — I mean, oh Miss 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Do you ? 
 
 Trench. 
 {puzzled) Do I what ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Oh, never mind. Of course if you mean Miss 
 Sartorius 
 
 Trench. 
 No, 1 dont mean Miss Sartorius. I say Miss 
 Sartorius {looks stealthily to see whether Cokane is 
 listening — finds he is not) I mean Blanche. I mean 
 dearest Blanche — darling Blanche. I didnt mean to 
 be cold : it was only a promise I made to your 
 
sc. lo.] Widowers' Houses. 33 
 
 father not to regard anything as settled until I hear 
 from my people at home. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Oh, I see. Your family may object to me ; and 
 then it will be all over between us. They are 
 almost sure to. 
 
 Trench. 
 {alarmed) Dont say that, Blanche : it sounds as if 
 you didnt care. I hope you regard it as settled. 
 Tou havent made any promise, you know. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes, I have : / promised papa too. But I forgot 
 my promise when I met you. I suppose I am not so 
 conscientious as you. And if the matter is not to be 
 regarded as settled, family or no family, promise or no 
 promise, let us break it oiF here and now. 
 
 Trench. 
 Blanche : on my most sacred honour, family or 
 no family, promise or no promise 
 
 Cokane. 
 {interrupting) Finished, dear boy, finished. {'The 
 second dinner hell sounds^ Done to a turn, punc- 
 tually to the second. C^est fini^ mon cher gar^on^ 
 cest fini, {Sartorius returns,) 
 
 SCENE X. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH, BLANCHE, SARTORIUS. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Will you take Blanche in. Dr. Trench .? {exit 
 Trench into table d'hote^ taking Blanche), Can I help 
 you to a stamp, Mr. Cokane ^ I have some letters 
 
 3 
 
34 Widowers' Houses. [act i. 
 
 of my own to send. If you will allow me — {takes 
 out pocket case and begins stamping some letters), 
 
 Cokane. 
 Thank you ; but Trench will have to copy all this 
 out : Lady Roxdale knows his handwriting. He 
 can do it after dinner [puts the draft in the visitors' 
 book for safe keeping, and shuts it). Shall I keep 
 you a place next me at table .? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {still busying himself) If you will be so good. 
 (jVatches Cokane off; then deliberately opens the 
 visitors' book ; takes out the draft letter ; and proceeds 
 to read it as the act drop comes down,) 
 
 END OF ACT I. 
 
Act II. 
 
 Library in Sartorius' s house at Surbiton. Two 
 doors ^ R and c. Sartorius busy at a writing table^ 
 littered with business papers, l, near the fireplace , 
 which is decorated for summer, Blanche seated reading 
 The ^een^ nearly c. Clock strikes eleven. She looks 
 round at it, and resumes her reading inattentively, 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 BLANCHE, SARTORIUS. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Blanche. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes, papa ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I have some news here. {Looking for a letter.^ 
 
 Blanche. 
 [indifferent) What is it? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I mean news for you — from Trench. 
 Blanche. 
 
 Indeed .? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 " Indeed .? " Is that all you have to say to me ? 
 Ch, very well. [Resumes writing. Silence.) 
 
$6 Widowers' Houses, [act lu 
 
 Blanche. 
 What do his people say, papa ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 His people ? I dont know. (Sfill busy. Another 
 pause.) 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 What does he say, papa ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 He ! He says nothing. {Folds a letter leisurely 
 and looks for the envelope) He prefers to communicate 
 the result of his — where did I put?— oh, here. Yes, 
 he prefers to communicate the result in person. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {springing up) Oh, papa ! When is he coming ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 If he walks from the station, he may arrive in the 
 course of the next half-hour. If he drives, he may 
 be here at any moment. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Oh ! {Going hastily.) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Blanche. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes, papa. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 You will of course not meet him until he has 
 spoken to me. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 Of course not, papa. I shouldnt have thought of 
 such a thing. 
 
sc. 2.] Widowers' Houses. 37 
 
 Sartorius. 
 That is all. {She is goings when he puts out his 
 handy and says with fatherly emotion^ My dear child. 
 {She responds by going over to kiss him, A tap at the 
 c. door^ Come in. (Enter Lickcheese, He bids 
 Blanche^ Good morning, miss ; and she passes out 
 with a slight and contemptuous recognition of him.) 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 LICKCHEESE, / SARTORIUS. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Good morning, sir. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 [harsh and peremptory) Good morning. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 {taking a little sack of money from his bag) Not 
 much this morning, sir. I have just had the honor 
 of making Dr. Trench's acquaintance, sir. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (looking up from his writings displeased) Indeed ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Yes, sir. Dr. Trench asked his way of me, and 
 was kind enough to drive me from the station. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Where is he, then ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 I left him in the hall, with his friend, sir. I should 
 think he is speaking to Miss Sartorius. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Hm ! What do you mean by his friend } 
 
38 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 There is a Mr. Cokane with him, sir. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I see you have been talking to him, eh ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 As we drove along : yes, sir. 
 Sartorius. 
 (sharply) Why did you not come by the nine 
 o'clock train ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 I thought 
 
 Sartorius. 
 It cannot be helped now ; so never mind what 
 you thought. But do not put off my business again 
 to the last moment. Has there been any further 
 trouble about the St. Giles* property ? 
 Lickcheese. 
 The Sanitary Inspector has been complaining again 
 about No. 13 Robbins*s Row. He says he will 
 bring it before the vestry. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Did you tell him that I am on the vestry ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Yes, sir. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 What did he say to that ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Said he supposed so, or you wouldnt dare to break 
 the law so scand'lous. I only tell you what he said. 
 Sartorius. 
 Hm ! Do you know his name ? 
 
jsc. 2.] Widowers' Houses. 39 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Yes, sir, Speakman. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Write It down in the diary for the day of the next 
 vestry meeting. I will teach Mr. Speakman his 
 duty — his duty to members of the vestry. Let me 
 see the books. (^Lickcheese produces rent hook, and 
 hands it to Sartorius; then makes the desired entry 
 in the diary on the table, watching Sartorius with 
 misgiving as the rent hook is examined, Sartorius 
 frowns terrihly^ and rises, Lickcheese quails,) £i ^' 
 for repairs to No. 13. What does this mean.? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Well, sir, it was the staircase to the third floor. 
 It was downright dangerous : there werent but three 
 whole steps in it, and no handrail. I thought it best 
 to have a few boards put in. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Boards ! Firewood, sir, firewood ! They will 
 burn every stick of it. You have spent twenty-four 
 shillings of my money on firewood for them. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 There ought to be stone stairs, sir : it would 
 be a saving in the long run. The clergyman 
 says 
 
 Sartorius. 
 What ! who says ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 The clergyman, sir, only the clergyman. Not that 
 I make much account of him ; but if you knew how 
 he has worried me over that staircase 
 
40 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I am an Englishman ; and I will suffer no clergy- 
 man to interfere in my business. {Turns suddenly on 
 Lickcheese) Now look here, Mr. Lickcheese ! This 
 is the third time this year that you have brought me 
 a bill of over a pound for repairs. I have warned 
 you repeatedly against dealing with these tenement 
 houses as if they were mansions in a West-end 
 square. I have had occasion to warn you too 
 against discussing my affairs with strangers. You 
 have chosen to disregard my wishes. You are 
 discharged. 
 
 Lickclieese. 
 (dismayed) Oh, sir, dont say that. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {fiercely) You are discharged. 
 Lickcheese. 
 Well, Mr. Sartorius, it is hard, so it is. No man 
 alive could have screwed more out of them poor 
 destitute devils for you than I have, or spent less in 
 doing it. I have dirtied my hands at it until they're 
 not fit for clean work hardly ; and now you turn 
 me 
 
 Sartorius. 
 What do you mean by dirtying your hands ? If 
 I find that you have stepped an inch outside the 
 letter of the law, Mr. Lickcheese, I shall prosecute 
 you myself. The way to keep your hands clean is 
 to gain the confidence of your employers. You will 
 do well to bear that in mind in your next situation. 
 {Annie announces Mr. Trench and Mr. Cokane, who 
 enter y c. Exit Annie,) 
 
sc. 3.] Widowers' Houses. 41 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH, SARTORIUS, LICKCHEESE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 How do you do, Dr. Trench ? Good morning, 
 Mr. Cokane. I am pleased to receive you in my 
 own house. Mr. Lickcheese ; you will place your 
 accounts and money on the table : I will examine 
 them and settle with you presently. {Lickcheese 
 retires to the tahle^ and begins to arrange his accounts^ 
 greatly depressed,) 
 
 Trench. 
 
 I hope we are not disturbing you. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Not at all. I fear you have been kept waiting. 
 
 Trench. 
 By no means : we have only just come. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Charming neighbourhood, Mr. Sartorius. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 The air is excellent. Be seated, gentlemen, {^hey 
 sit,) 
 
 Trench. 
 {pulling out a bundle of letters) • And now, as 
 Mr. Lickcheese knows all about our business, I 
 may as well give you the news at once. I have 
 any amount of letters for you. All my people are 
 delighted to hear that I am going to settle. Aunt 
 Maria wants Blanche to be married from her house. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Aunt Maria.? 
 
42 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Lady Roxdale, my dear sir : he means Lady 
 Roxdale. Do express yourself with a little more 
 taste, my dear fellow. 
 
 Trench. 
 Lady Roxdale, of course. Uncle Harry 
 
 Cokane. 
 Sir Harry Trench. His godfather, my dear sir, 
 his godfather. 
 
 Trench. 
 Just so. The pleasantest fellow for his age you 
 ever met. He offers us his house at St. Andrews 
 for a couple of months, if we care to pass our 
 honeymoon there. It's the sort of house nobody can 
 live in, you know ; but it's a nice thing for him to 
 offer. Dont you think so ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {preoccupied with the letters) No doubt. These 
 seem very gratifying. Dr. Trench. 
 
 Trench. 
 Yes, arent they ? Here's Aunt Maria's letter. 
 You see she guessed I didnt compose the letter I 
 sent her. Neither did I. Cokane did it. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Indeed ? Mr. Cokane evidently did it with great 
 taste. I thank him for my part. 
 
 Cokane. 
 No need to thank me for your part. Dont 
 mention it. 
 
 Trench. 
 Aunt Maria says it was just like an attorney's 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers' Houses. 43 
 
 letter ; and she is thankful I dont mean to charge 
 her six and eightpence for it. Ha ! ha ! Well, 
 what do you say now, Mr. Sartorius ? May we 
 regard the matter as settled at last ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Quite settled. (Rises and offers his hand,) 
 
 Trench. 
 I am extremely obliged to you, really. 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 (crossing in front of 'Trench and standing between them 
 with his hack to the audience) Allow me to con- 
 gratulate you both. (Shakes hands with them both 
 at the same time,) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 And now, gentlemen, I have a word to say to 
 my daughter. Dr. Trench : you will not, I hope, 
 grudge me the pleasure of breaking this news to 
 her : I have had to disappoint her more than once 
 since I last saw you. Will you excuse me for ten 
 minutes .^ 
 
 Cokane. 
 My dear sir ! 
 
 Trench. 
 Certainly. (Exit Sartorius,) 
 
 SCENE IV. 
 
 TRENCH, LICKCHEESE, COKANE. 
 
 Trench. 
 He wont have any news to break, poor old boy : 
 she*s read all the letters already. 
 
44 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Cokane. 
 I must say your behaviour has been far from 
 straightforward, Harry. You have been carrying 
 on a clandestine correspondence. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Gentlemen 
 
 Trench and Cokane. 
 {turning) Hallo 1 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Look here, gentlemen, {^o "Trench) You, sir, I 
 address myself to more particular. Will you say 
 a word in my favor to the governor? He has just 
 given me the sack ; and I have four children looking 
 to me for their bread. A word from you, sir, on 
 this happy day, might get him to take me on again. 
 
 Trench. 
 Well, you see, Mr. Lickcheese, I dont see how I 
 can interfere. Tm very sorry, of course. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Certainly you cannot interfere. It would be in 
 the most execrable taste. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Oh, gentlemen, you are young ; and you dont 
 know what loss of employment means to the like 
 of me. What harm would it do you to help a 
 poor man ? Just listen to the circumstances, sir. 
 
 I only 
 
 Trench. 
 
 No : I had rather not. Excuse my saying plainly 
 that I think Mr. Sartorius is not a man to act hastily 
 or harshly. I have always found him very fair and 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers' Houses. 45 
 
 generous ; and I believe he is a better judge of the 
 circumstances than I am. 
 
 Cokane. 
 {inquisitive) I think you ought to hear the circum- 
 stances, Harry. It can do no harm. Hear the 
 circumstances by all means. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Never mind, sir : it aint any use. When I hear 
 that man called generous and fair — well, never 
 mind. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 If you wish me to do anything for you, Mr. 
 Lickcheese, let me tell you that you are not going 
 the right way about it in speaking ill of Mr. 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Have I said one word against him, sir ? I leave 
 it to your friend : have I said a word } 
 Cokane. 
 
 True, true. Quite true. Harry : be just. 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Mark my words, gentlemen : he'll find what a 
 man he's lost the very first week's rents the new 
 man' 11 bring him. You'll find the difference your- 
 self. Dr. Trench, if you or your children come into 
 the property. I have got money when no other 
 collector alive would have wrung it out. And now 
 you see the thanks I get for it ! Why, see here, 
 gentlemen ! Look at that bag of money, on the 
 table. Hardly a penny of that but there was a 
 hungry child crying for the bread it would have 
 bought. But I got it for him — screwed and worried 
 
46 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 and bullied it out of them. I look here, gentle- 
 men : I'm pretty seasoned to the work ; but there's 
 money there that I couldnt have taken if it hadnt 
 been for the thought of my own children depending 
 on me giving him satisfaction. And because I 
 charged him four-and-twenty shillin* to mend a 
 staircase that three women have been hurt on, and 
 that would have got him prosecuted for manslaughter 
 if it had been let go much longer, he gives me the 
 sack. Wouldnt listen to a word, though I would 
 have offered to make up the money out of my own 
 pocket — aye, and am willing to do it still if you will 
 only put in a word for me, sir. 
 Trench. 
 
 You took money that ought to have fed starving 
 children ! Serve you right! If I had been the 
 father of one of those children, Td have given you 
 something worse than the sack. I would not say 
 a word to save your soul, if you have such a thing. 
 Mr. Sartorius was quite right. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Just listen to this ! Well, you are an innocent 
 young gentleman. Do you suppose he sacked me 
 because I was too hard ? Not a bit of it : it was 
 because I wasnt hard enough. I never heard him 
 say he was satisfied yet — no, nor he wouldnt, not if 
 I skinned 'em alive. I dont say he's the worst land- 
 lord in London : he couldnt be worse than some ; 
 but he's no better than the worst I ever had to do 
 with. And, though I say it, I am better than the 
 best collector he ever done business with. I have 
 screwed more and spent less on his properties than 
 anyone would believe that knows what such pro- 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers' Houses. 47 
 
 perties are. I know my merits, Dr. Trench, and 
 will speak for myself if no one else will. 
 Trench. 
 
 What sort of properties ? Houses ? 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Tenement houses, let from week to week by the 
 room or half room — aye, or quarter room. It pays 
 when you know how to work it, sir. Nothing like 
 it. It's been calculated on the cubic foot of space, 
 sir, that you can get higher rents letting by the room 
 than you can for a mansion in Park Lane. 
 
 Trench. 
 I hope Mr. Sartorius hasnt much of that sort of 
 property, however it may pay. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 He has nothing else, sir ; and he shews his sense 
 in it, too. Every few hundred pound he could 
 scrape together he bought old houses with — houses 
 that you wouldnt hardly look at without holding 
 your nose. He has 'em in St. Giles's: he has 'em 
 in Marylebone : he has 'em in Clerkenwell : he has 
 'em in Wes' minister: he has 'em in Bethnal Green. 
 Just look how he lives himself, and you'll see the 
 good of it to him. And, mind you, it's me that 
 makes it pay him so well. Catch him going down 
 to collect his own rents ! Not likely ! 
 Trench. 
 
 Do you mean to say that all his property — all his 
 means — come from this sort of thing ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Every penny of it, sir. (Trench sits down over- 
 whelmed,) 
 
48 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Ah, my dear fellow, the love of money is the root 
 of all evil. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Yes, sir ; and we*d all like to have the tree 
 growing in our garden. 
 
 Cokane. 
 [revolted) Mr. Lickcheese : I did not address my- 
 self to you. I do not wish to be severe with you ; 
 but there is something peculiarly repugnant to my 
 feelings in the calling of a rent collector. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 It's no worse than many another. I have my 
 children looking to me. 
 
 Cokane. 
 True: I admit it. So has our friend Sartorius. 
 His affection for his daughter is a redeeming point 
 — a redeeming point, certainly. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 She's a lucky daughter, sir. Many another daughter 
 has been turned out upon the streets to gratify his 
 affection for her. That's what business is, sir, you 
 see. Come, sir, I think your friend will say a word 
 for me now that he knows I'm not in fault. 
 
 Trench. 
 {rising angrily) I will not. It's a damnable busi- 
 ness from beginning to end ; and you deserve no 
 better luck for helping in it. I have seen it all 
 among the out-patients at the hospital ; and it used 
 to make my blood boil to think that such things 
 couldnt be prevented. 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers' Houses. 49 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Oh indeed, sir. But I suppose you will take your 
 share when you marry Miss Blanche, all the same. 
 Which of us is the worse, I should like to know — 
 me that wrings the money out to keep a home over 
 my children, or you that spend it and try to shove 
 the blame on to me ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 A most improper observation to address to a 
 gentleman, Mr. Lickcheese. A most revolutionary 
 sentiment. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Perhaps so. But then, Robbins's Row aint a 
 school for manners. You collect a week or two 
 there — you re welcome to my place if I cant keep it 
 for myself — and you'll learn a little plain speaking, 
 so you will. 
 
 Cokane. 
 To whom speak you, my good man ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 I know well enough who I'm speaking to. What 
 do I care for you, or a thousand such .? Vm poor : 
 that's enough to make a rascal of me. No con- 
 sideration for me — nothing to be got by saying a 
 word for me ! (Suddenly cringing to Trench) Just a 
 word, sir. It would cost you nothing. . (Sartorius 
 enters at the c door^ unobserved) Have some feeling 
 for the poor. 
 
 Trench. 
 I am afraid you have shewn very little, by your 
 own confession. 
 
 4 
 
50 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 More than your precious father-in-law, anyhow. 
 I 
 
 SCENE V. 
 
 TRENCH, LICKCHEESE, SARTORIUS, COKANE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 You will come here to-morrow not later than ten, 
 Mr. Lickcheese, to conclude our business. I shall 
 trouble you no further to-day. {LickcheesCy cowedy 
 goes ouiy c, amid dead silence^ 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {continuing^ after an awkward pause) He is one of 
 my agents, or rather was ; for I have unfortunately 
 had to dismiss him for repeatedly disregarding my 
 instructions. Blanche will be down presently, Harry 
 {French recoils) — I may take the liberty of calling 
 you so now. What do you say to a stroll through 
 the garden, Mr. Cokane .? We are celebrated here 
 for our flowers. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Charmed, my dear sir, charmed. Life here is an 
 idyll — a perfect idyll. Mr. Lickcheese was just 
 dwelling on it. Ahem ! 
 
 i^ Sartorius. 
 
 Harry can follow with Blanche. She will be down 
 directly. 
 
 Trench. 
 No. I cant face her just now. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Indeed ! Ha, ha ! 
 
sc. 6.] Widowers' Houses. 51 
 
 Cokane. 
 {aside) What a devilish unpleasant laugh ! It never 
 occurred to me before that he could laugh. (Joins) 
 
 \ Ha! ha! ha! Ho! ho! 
 
 Trench. 
 But you dont understand. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Oh, I think we do, I think we do. Eh, Mr. 
 Cokane ? Ha ! ha ! 
 
 Cokane. 
 I should think we do. Ha ! ha ! ha ! [Enter 
 Blanche, 'Trench, seeing her, gives up the attempt to 
 explain, and collapses i7ito a chair, K. Exeunt Sartorius 
 and Cokane^ r, laughing at him^ without noticing 
 Blanche.) 
 
 SCENE VI. 
 
 I TRENCH, BLANCHE. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Polite of you, Harry, isnt it, to receive me seated ? 
 
 Trench. 
 \ I beg your pardon. {Rises and offers her a chair, 
 L.) I was thinking — Wont you sit down } 
 Blanche. 
 
 Is anything the matter ? {She sits, l. He goes 
 back to his chair and sits, r.) 
 
 Trench. 
 No. Oh no. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Papa has not been disagreeable, I hope. You 
 know, Harry, you must have told him that you 
 
52 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 hadnt seen me ; and he found out from me that that 
 was a story. 
 
 Trench. 
 No : I have hardly spoken to him since he was 
 with you. [Rises; takes over his chair; plants it 
 near hers ; and sits down again) Blanche : are you 
 fond of money ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Very. Are you going to give me any ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Dont make a joke of it : I'm serious. Do you 
 know that we shall be very poor ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Is that what makes you look as if you had 
 neuralgia ? 
 
 Trench. 
 It's no laughing matter. Do you know that I 
 have a bare seven hundred a year to live on ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 How dreadful ! 
 
 Trench. 
 Blanche : it is very serious indeed: I assure you it is. 
 
 Blanche. 
 • It would keep me rather short in my housekeeping, 
 dearest boy, if I had nothing of my own. But papa 
 has promised me that I shall be richer than ever 
 when we are married ; and he gives me ten pounds 
 a week for the house alone now. 
 
 Trench. 
 We must do the best we can with seven hundred. 
 I think we ought to be self-supporting. 
 
sc. 6.] Widowers' Houses. 53 
 
 Blanche. 
 That's just what I mean to be, Harry. If I were 
 to eat up half your ;£700, I should be making you 
 twice as poor ; but I am going to make you twice 
 as rich instead. {He shakes his head) Has papa 
 made any difficulty ? 
 
 Trench. 
 {rising with a sigh and taking his chair hack to its former 
 place ^ R.) No, none at all. {Sits down dejectedly) 
 Blanche. 
 Harry : are you too proud to take money from 
 my father ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Yes, Blanche : I am too proud. 
 Blanche. 
 {after a pause.) That is not nice to me, Harry. 
 Trench. 
 You must bear with me, Blanche. I — I cant 
 explain. After all, it is very natural. 
 Blanche. 
 Has it occurred to you that I may be proud, too ? 
 
 ' Trench. 
 Oh, that is nonsense, dearest. No one will accuse 
 you of marrying for money. 
 
 Blanche. 
 No one would think the worse of me if I did, or 
 of you either. {She rises and begins to walk restlessly 
 about) We really cannot live on seven hundred a 
 year, Harry ; and I dont think it is quite fair of you 
 to ask me merely because you are afraid of people 
 talking. 
 
54 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Trench. 
 It is not that alone, Blanche. 
 
 Blanche. 
 What else is it, then ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Nothing. I 
 
 Blanche. 
 {getting behind him^ and speaking playfully with her 
 hands on his shoulders as she bends over him) Of 
 course it is nothing. Now dont be absurd, Harry : 
 be good ; and listen to me : I know how to settle 
 it. You are too proud to owe anything to me ; and 
 I am too proud to owe anything to you. You have 
 seven hundred a year. Well, I will take just seven 
 hundred a year from papa ; and then we shall be 
 quits. Now, now, Harry, you know you have not 
 a word to say against that. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 It is impossible. 
 Impossible ! 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 Trench. 
 I cannot explain. I wish you would give me 
 credit for being in the right without asking any 
 questions, dear, though I know that's unreasonable. 
 I have resolved not to take any money from your 
 father. 
 
 Blanche. 
 But he will give the money to me : not to you. 
 
 Trench. 
 It*s the same thing. {Insinuatingly) I love you 
 
sc. 6.] Widowers' Houses. 55 
 
 too well to see any distinction. {Puts up his hand^ 
 which she takes over his shoulder^ 
 
 Blanche. 
 That's a very nice way of putting it, Harry ; 
 but I am sure there is something I ought to know. 
 Has papa been disagreeable? 
 
 Trench. 
 
 No : he has been very kind — to me, at least. It 
 is not that. It is nothing that you can guess, 
 Blanche. It would only pain you — perhaps offend 
 you. I do not mean, of course, that we shall live 
 always on seven hundred a year. I will go at m.y 
 profession in earnest, and work my fingers to the 
 bone. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {^laying with his fingers^ still over his shoulder^ But 
 I shouldnt like you with your fingers worked to the 
 bone, Harry. I must be told what the matter is. 
 (He takes his hand quickly away : she recoils) I hate 
 secrets ; and I dont like to be treated as if I were a 
 child. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 There is nothing to tell, my love. I do not 
 choose to trespass on your fathers generosity: that 
 is all. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 You had no objection half an hour ago, when you 
 met me in the hall, and shewed me all the letters. 
 Your family doesnt object. Do you object ? 
 
 Trench. 
 I do not indeed. It is only a question of money. 
 
56 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {imploringly) Harry : there is no use in our fencing 
 in this way. Papa will never consent to my being 
 absolutely dependent on you ; and I dont like the 
 idea of it myself. If you even mention such a thing 
 to him, you will break off the match : you will 
 indeed. 
 
 Trench. 
 I cant help that. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 You cant help ! Oh, I begin to understand. 
 
 I will save you the trouble. I will tell papa that 
 / have broken off the match ; and then there will be 
 no further difficulty. 
 
 Trench. 
 What do you mean, Blanche ^ Are you offended ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Offended ! How dare you ask me ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Dare I 
 
 Blanche. 
 How much more manly it would have been to 
 confess that you were trifling with me that time on 
 the Rhine ! Why did you come here to-day ? Why 
 did you write to your people ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Well, Blanche, if you are going to lose your 
 temper 
 
 Blanche. 
 That is no explanation. You are evading my 
 question. You depended on your family to get you 
 
sc. 7.] Widowers' Houses. 57 
 
 out of your engagement ; and they did not object, 
 but were only too glad to be rid of you. You were 
 not mean enough to stay away, and not manly enough 
 to tell the truth. You thought you could provoke 
 me to break the engagement : that is so like a man — 
 to try and put the woman in the wrong. Well, you 
 have your way. I release you. I wish you had 
 opened my eyes by downright brutality — by striking 
 me — by anything rather than paltering and shuffling 
 as you have done. 
 
 Trench. 
 {enraged) Shuffle ! Palter ! If I had thought you 
 capable of turning on me like this, I should never 
 have spoken to you. I have a good mind never to 
 speak to you again. 
 
 Blanche. 
 . You shall not — not ever. I will take care of that. 
 {Going to the door.) 
 
 Trench. 
 Blanche : are you going ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes. I am going to get your letters — your false 
 letters, and your presents — your hateful presents, to 
 return them to you. I am very glad it is all broken 
 off. 
 
 Trench. 
 What ! {Exit Blanche.) 
 
 SCENE VII. 
 
 TRENCH. 
 
 Trench. 
 " Very glad ! " Then, by George, so am I very 
 
58 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 glad. " Very glad ! " That settles it. I always 
 warned Cokane against women ; and I was right. A 
 woman who could say such a thing to a man who 
 loves her — or who did love her when he was a fool 
 — may be pretty, but she has no heart. Not that I 
 
 care — still . " Very glad ! " It is I who am glad 
 
 to be out of it, and with more reason : just as glad 
 as she. She cannot pretend that I said anything to 
 hurt her feelings. Some day, perhaps, she will find 
 out how much I have spared her, and what an old 
 rascal her father is. Then she will learn the value 
 of the affection — no matter ! I am well out of it : 
 there can be no doubt of that. I had better not see 
 her again : at all events I hope I shant. {Hears 
 some one at the door) Here she is back again. 
 {Enter Cokane) Oh, it's only you ! 
 
 SCENE VIII. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Harry, my boy : there's something up — something 
 the matter with Miss Sartorius. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 You dont mean that she is ill, do you ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 Not ill, but agitated, Harry, agitated. 
 
 Trench. 
 So she ought to be. How do you come to know 
 about it.? 
 
 Cokane. 
 We met her just now ; and Sartorius saw like a 
 
sc. 9.] Widowers' Houses. 59 
 
 shot that something was up. He is a keen old bird, 
 rusCy as the French say, tres ruse. He stopped to 
 ask her questions ; and I, as a matter of good taste, 
 did not listen, but came on here at once to find out 
 all about it from you. If there is anything wrong, 
 Harry, we shall have Sartorius here presently ; and 
 then there will be a row. 
 
 Trench. 
 ' So much the better. I am in the humour for 
 a row. It's all his fault, confound him. (Enter 
 Sartorius.) 
 
 SCENE IX. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH, SARTORIUS. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 {aggressively) Sir 
 
 Trench. 
 (still more aggressively) Well, sir ? . 
 
 Cokane. 
 (getting between them) Gently, my dear boy, gently. 
 Suavity, Harry, suavity. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {restraining himself) If you have anything to say 
 to me, Dr. Trench, I will listen to you patiently. 
 You will then allow me to say what I have to say on 
 my part. 
 
 Trench. 
 (ashamed) I beg your pardon. Of course, yes. 
 Fire away. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Well, sir, I am informed by my daughter that you 
 have refused to fulfil your engagement with her. 
 
6o Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 No : your daughter has refused to fulfil her 
 engagement to me. But the match is broken off, if 
 that is what you mean. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 I should have dismissed this as a lovers* quarrel, 
 Dr. Trench, had not Blanche — who is not wanting 
 in seriousness of character — told me that you have 
 objected on the score of money. 
 Trench. 
 
 It was Miss Sartorius who made that objection. 
 I shouldnt have minded that so much, if it hadnt 
 been for the things she said. She shewed that she 
 does not care that for me. {Snaps his fingers^ and 
 grows much excited^ 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 Dear boy 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Hold your tongue, Billy: it's enough to make 
 a man wish he had never been born. Look here, 
 Mr. Sartorius : I put the matter to her as delicately 
 and considerately as possible, never mentioning a 
 word of my reasons, but just asking her to be content 
 to live upon my own little income ; and yet she 
 turned on me as if I had behaved like a savage. But 
 it doesnt matter now. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Live on your income, sir ! Impossible : my 
 daughter is accustomed to a first-rate establishment. 
 Did I not expressly undertake to gratify the ex- 
 pectations I have brought her up to entertain \ Did 
 she not tell you I promised her to do so ? 
 
sc. 9.] Widowers' Houses. 61 
 
 Trench. 
 Yes, I know all about that, Mr. Sartorius ; and 
 I am greatly obliged to you ; but I had rather not 
 take anything from you except Blanche herself. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 And why did you not say so before ? 
 
 Trench. 
 No matter why. Let us drop the subject. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 No matter ! But it does matter, sir. I insist on 
 an answer. Why did you not say so before ? 
 
 Trench. 
 I did not know before. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {provoked) Then you ought to have known your 
 own mind before entering into such a very serious 
 engagement. {Flings angrily away to the fireplace 
 and back.) 
 
 Trench. 
 I ought to have known ! Cokane : is this reason- 
 able? {Cokanes features are contorted by an air of 
 judicial consideration; but he says nothing; and 'Trench^ 
 again addressing Sartorius^ continues) How the deuce 
 could I have known ? You didnt tell me, 
 
 Sartorius. 
 You are trifling with me, sir. You say that you 
 did not know your own mind before. 
 
 Trench. 
 I say nothing of the sort. I say that I did not 
 know v/here your money came from before. 
 
62 Widowers* Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 You are stating what is not true, sir. I 
 
 Cokane. 
 Gently, my dear sir. Gently, Harry, dear boy. 
 Suaviter in modo : fort 
 
 Trench. 
 Let him begin, then. What does he mean by 
 attacking me in this fashion ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Mr. Cokane : you will bear me out. I was explicit 
 on the point. I said I was a self-made man ; and I 
 am not ashamed of it. 
 
 Trench. 
 You are nothing of the sort. I found out this 
 morning from your man — Lickcheese, or whatever 
 his confounded name is — that your fortune has been 
 made out of a parcel of unfortunate creatures that 
 have hardly enough to keep body and soul together 
 — made by screwing, and bullying, and driving and 
 all sorts of pettifogging tyranny. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (outraged) Sir ! 
 
 Cokane. 
 Rent must be paid, dear boy. I have often tried 
 to find a way out of it ; but in vain : it is inevitable, 
 Harry, inevitable. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (recovering himself — deliberately) I am afraid. Dr. 
 Trench, that you are a very young hand at business ; 
 and I am sorry I forgot that for a moment or so. 
 May I ask you to suspend your judgment until we 
 
sc. 9.] Widowers' Houses. 63 
 
 have had a little quiet discussion of this sentimental 
 notion of yours ? — if you will excuse me for calling it 
 so. ['Takes chair lc, and motions Trench to another^ rc.) 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 Very nicely put, my dear sir. Come, Harry, sit 
 down ; and consider the matter calmly and judicially. 
 Remember that you are descended from a Chancellor 
 of England. Dont be headstrong. 
 Trench. 
 
 I have no objection to sit down and listen ; but I 
 dont see how that can make black white ; and I am 
 tired of being turned on as if I were in the wrong. 
 {Sits down, rc. Cokane sits r.) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I assume, to begin with. Dr. Trench, that you are 
 not a SociaHst, or anything of that sort. 
 
 Trench. 
 Certainly not. I am a Conservative — at least, if 
 I ever took the trouble to vote, I should vote for the 
 Conservative and against the other fellow. 
 
 Cokane. 
 
 True blue, Harry, true blue ! 
 Sartorius. 
 
 I am glad to find that so far we are in perfect 
 sympathy. I am, of course, a Conservative ; not a 
 narrow or prejudiced one, I hope, nor at all opposed 
 to true progress, but still a sound Conservative. As 
 to Lickcheese, I need say no more about him than 
 that I have dismissed him from my service this 
 morning for a breach of trust ; and you will hardly 
 accept his testimony as friendly or disinterested. As 
 to my business^ it is simply to provide homes suited 
 
64 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 to the small means of very poor people, who require 
 roofs to shelter them just like other people. Do you 
 suppose I can keep up those roofs for nothing ? 
 Trench. 
 
 Yes : that is all very fine ; but the point is, what 
 sort of homes do you give them for their money ? 
 People must live somewhere, or else go to jail. 
 Advantage is taken of that to make them pay for 
 houses that are not fit for dogs. Why dont you 
 build proper dwellings, and give fair value for the 
 money you take ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 My young friend, these poor people do not know 
 how to live in handsome residences : they would 
 wreck them in a week. You doubt me : try it for 
 yourself. You are welcome to replace all the missing 
 banisters, hand-rails, cistern lids and dusthole tops at 
 your own expense ; and you will find them missing 
 again in less than three days — burnt, sir, every 
 stick of them. I do not blame the poor creatures : 
 they need fires, and often have no other way of 
 getting them. But I really cannot spend pound 
 after pound in repairs for them to pull down, when 
 I can barely get them to pay me four and sixpence a 
 week for a room, which is the recognized fair London 
 rent. No, Dr. Trench : when people are very poor, 
 you cannot help them, no matter how much you may 
 sympathize with them. It does them more harm 
 than good in the long run. I prefer to save my 
 money in order to provide additional houses for the 
 homeless, and to lay by a little for Blanche. And 
 now, putting that aside for the moment, may I ask 
 what your income is derived from } 
 
p 
 
 sc. g.] Widowers' Houses. 65 
 
 Trench. 
 From interest — not from houses. My hands are 
 clean as far as that goes. Interest on a mortgage. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {forcibly^ Yes : a mortgage on my property. When 
 I5 to use your own words, screw, and bully, and 
 drive these people to pay what they have freely 
 undertaken to pay me, I cannot touch a penny of the 
 money they give me until I have first paid you your 
 ^^700 out of it. What Lickcheese did for me, 
 I do for you. He and I are alike intermediaries : 
 you are the principal. And yet. Dr. Trench, you 
 have not hesitated to speak contemptuously of me 
 because I have applied my industry and forethought 
 to the management of our property, and am main- 
 taining it by the same honourable means. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Admirable, my dear sir, excellent ! I felt instinct- 
 ively that Trench was talking ridiculous nonsense. 
 Let us drop the subject, my dear boy : you only 
 make an ass of yourself when you meddle in business 
 matters. I told you it was inevitable. 
 
 Trench. 
 {dumfounded) Do you mean to say that I am just 
 as bad as you are ? 
 
 Cokane. 
 Shame, Harry, shame, shame ! Grossly bad taste ! 
 Be a gentleman. Apologise. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Allow me, Mr. Cokane. (T^o "Trench) If, when 
 you say you are just as bad as I am, you mean that 
 
 5 
 
66 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 you are just as powerless to alter the state of society, 
 then you are unfortunately quite right. 
 
 Trench. 
 I suppose that is all I do mean. Well, people 
 who live in glass houses have no right to throw 
 stones. But, on my honor, I never knew that my 
 house was a glass one until you pointed it out. 
 I beg your pardon. (Offers his hand.) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Say no more, Harry : your feelings do you credit : 
 I assure you I feel exactly as you do, myself. Every 
 man who has a heart must wish that a better state 
 of things was practicable. But unhappily it is not. 
 
 Trench. 
 I suppose not. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Not a doubt of it, my dear sir ; not a doubt of 
 it. The increase of the population is at the bottom 
 of it all. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I trust I have convinced you that you need no 
 more object to Blanche sharing my fortune, than I 
 need object to her sharing yours. 
 Trench. 
 It seems so. We are all in the same swim, it appears. 
 I hope you will excuse my making such a fuss. 
 Sartorius. 
 Not another word. In fact, I thank you for 
 refraining from explaining the nature of your scruples 
 to Blanche : I admire that in you, Harry. Perhaps 
 it will be as well to leave her in ignorance. 
 
sc. 10.] Widowers' Houses. 6 7 
 
 Trench. 
 Very well. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I may rely upon you ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Oh, certainly. I am really greatly relieved to have 
 it all over, and to find that it is I who have been 
 making a fool of myself. 
 
 Cokane. 
 And solely through having disregarded my advice, 
 Harry : remember that. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I think we may drop the subject. [Looks at his 
 watch) Luncheon is overdue, I see. Shall we go 
 and get ready ? 
 
 Trench. 
 Thanks, yes. {All move towards the c door.) 
 
 Cokane. 
 A little discussion always sharpens the appetite. 
 (Exeunt omneSy c.) 
 
 SCENE X. 
 
 BLANCHE. 
 
 {Enter Blanche, r, with letters and presents^ in 
 great distress. She looks round the room for 'Trench ; 
 exclaims Gone ! crosses to the table, r ; and puts 
 down the letters and presents on it. She rings the 
 bell, and then throws herself into her father's chair 
 and buries her face in her hands, Presently she rises 
 impatiently and rings again, twice. She takes up one 
 of the letters, and slowly opens it. At the first glance 
 she tears it up passionately — then begins tearing the 
 others, one after another, with growing rage, Annie 
 
68 Widowers' Houses, [act il 
 
 appears at the c door^ cooly and not pleased at being 
 called at a busy moment,) 
 
 SCENE XI. 
 
 ANNIE, BLANCHE. 
 
 Annie. 
 
 What 
 
 Blanche. 
 {hastily interrupting her in an urgent whisper) Sh-sh ! 
 Come here. I dont want any one to overhear us. 
 
 Annie. 
 (un sympathetic ally ^ advancing about two steps, and not 
 moderating her voice) What is it, Miss ? We shall 
 never have the table ready ; and Master does go on 
 so if lunch is late. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {almost beside herself) Be quiet, I tell you. Will 
 you come here ? 
 
 Annie. 
 {much vexed) Oh, do please say what you want, 
 Miss; and dont keep me waiting. {Half aside, 
 muttering) You're in one of your tantrums again, 
 
 I sup {Blanche flies at her : she runs round the 
 
 table) Oh, Miss Blanche, dont, please dont. I'll 
 
 screa {Blanche seizes her by the throat. She falls 
 
 on her knees, protesting and imploring, but in a care- 
 fully subdued voice) Let me go, Miss Blanche : you 
 know you'll be sorry : you always are. Remember 
 how dreadfully you cut my head last time. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Hold your tongue, I tell you ! Are those two 
 gentlemen gone ? 
 
sc. 12.] Widowers' Houses. 69 
 
 Annie. 
 Lickcheese has gone, Miss Blanche, looking 
 
 dread 
 
 Blanche. 
 Did I ask you about Lickcheese ? Answer me, 
 you white-faced idiot, before I shake your tongue 
 out of your head. Are they gone ? (Shaking her 
 furiously). ARE— THEY— GONE ? 
 
 Annie. 
 {Crescendo) N — n — n — n — No. {Pulling at 
 Blanche's hands) Oh do let me go back to lay the 
 table, Miss Blanche. Master will be so mad ; and 
 those two gentlemen staying to lunch, too. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {relaxing her grasp with a gesture of despair, and 
 standing erect, her eyes wide open in consternation) 
 He has not gone ! {Ajinie picks herself up and settles 
 her cap.) 
 
 Annie. 
 {safe at the door) Now youve set my hands all 
 trembling ; and I shall jingle the things on the tray 
 so that everybody will notice me. You ought to be 
 ashamed of yourself. Miss Blanche, so you ought. 
 
 If your father knew {Enter Sartorius, c. Annie 
 
 instantly becomes demure, and gets out as fast as she can 
 by the same door. Blanche has not moved, and heeds 
 nothing until she hears her father address her.) 
 
 SCENE XII. 
 
 BLANCHE, SARTORIUS. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 My dear, as we shall all meet at luncheon presently, 
 
70 Widowers' Houses, [act it. 
 
 I have run down before them to say that I have 
 arranged that little difficulty with Trench. It was 
 only a piece of mischief made by Lickcheese. 
 Trench is a young fool ; but it is all right now. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I do not want to marry a fool, papa. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Then you will have to take a husband over thirty, 
 Blanche. You must not expect too much, my child. 
 You will be richer than your husband, and, I think, 
 cleverer too. I am better pleased that it should 
 be so. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 So I've been picked up on the Rhine ; dropped 
 here ; and now I am picked up again, because, I 
 suppose, I am too rich to be let slip. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 If I thought that ! No, no, my dear, no. 
 
 Everything is quite smooth now. In this life things 
 never go quite as we wish them. There, my child, 
 you may give him a scolding if you please ; but you 
 must not play fast and loose with your happiness. 
 Most women do it ; but I think you have more 
 sense than most women. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Papa. 
 
 Yes, my dear. 
 
 Blanche. 
 May I do as I like about this marriage ; or must I 
 do as you like.^ 
 
 Sartorius, 
 
sc. 13.] Widowers' Houses. 71. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Blanche! 
 
 Blanche. 
 No, papa : you must answer me. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (moved) You shall do as you like now and always, 
 my beloved child. I only wish to do as my own 
 darling pleases. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Then I will not marry him. He has played fast 
 and loose with me. He thinks us beneath him ; 
 he is ashamed of us; he dared to object to being 
 
 benefited by you as if it were not natural for him 
 
 to owe you everything ; and yet the money tenipted 
 him after all. {Suddenly throwing her arms about 
 his neck) Papa : I dont want to marry : I only 
 want to stay with you and be happy as we have 
 always been. I hate the thought of being married : 
 I dont care for him : I dont want to leave you. 
 (Enter 'Trench and Cokane^ unnoticed.) Only send 
 him away : promise me that you will send him away 
 
 and keep me here with you as we have always 
 
 {seeing Trench) Oh ! (She hides her face on her 
 father s breast), 
 
 SCENE XIII. 
 
 COKANE, TRENCH, BLANCHE, SARTORIUS. 
 
 Trench. 
 I hope we are not intruding here. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Dr. Trench : my daughter has changed her mind. 
 
72 Widowers' Houses, [act ii. 
 
 Trench. 
 It was I that she asked you to send away, then ? 
 {No reply,) 
 
 Cokane. 
 (in his most vinegary manner) I think, Harry, that, 
 under the circumstances, we have no ahernative but 
 to seek luncheon elsewhere. 
 
 Trench. 
 But, Mr. Sartorius, have you explained ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I have explained, sir. Good morning. (Trenck, 
 outraged^ advances a step, Blanche sinks away from 
 her father into a chair, Sartorius stands his ground 
 rigidly) 
 
 Trench. 
 {turning away indignantly) Come on, Cokane. 
 Cokane. 
 Certainly, Harry, certainly. {Exit Trench, c. 
 ^nnie, with a tray jingling in her hands, passes 
 outside). You have disappointed me, sir, very acutely. 
 Good morning. {Exit^ c,^ 
 
 IND OF ACT IL 
 
Act III. 
 
 ^he Drawing-room. Winter evening : curtains 
 drawn and lamps lighted, Sartorius and Blanche 
 sitting glumly near the fire r. Small table between 
 them, Annie has just brought in coffee^ and is placing 
 the things near Blanche, Larger table in centre. 
 Pianoforte at the back^ with photographic portrait 
 of Blanche on miniature easel on the top, Two doors^ 
 one, R, leading to library, the other, l, to lobby. 
 Blanche y rc, has her work-basket on the smaller 
 table before her, but is staring across the table into 
 the fireplace, with her face propped on her elbows, 
 Sartorius, r, at the other side of the table, close to 
 the fire, has a newspaper, and sits a little farther up 
 than Blanche, Annie goes out ; and he looks at Blanche 
 once or twice anxiously before the silence is broken, 
 
 SCENE I. 
 
 SARTORIUS, BLANCHE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Blanche, my love. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yes. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I had a long talk with the doctor to-day about 
 our going abroad. 
 
74 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {impatiently y and at once taking her elbows off the table 
 and changing her attitude) I am quite well ; and I 
 will not go abroad. The very thought of the Con- 
 tinent makes me sick. Why will you bother me so 
 about my health ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 It was not about your health, Blanche, but about 
 my own. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Yours ! Oh, papa, there is nothing the matter 
 with you, I hope? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 There will be — there must be, Blanche, long before 
 fou begin to consider yourself an old woman. 
 
 Blanche. 
 But there is nothing the matter now. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Well, my dear, the doctor says I need change, 
 
 travel, excitement 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 (rising) Excitement ! Tou need excitement ! (Goes 
 
 over and sits at his feet) How is it, papa, that you, 
 
 who are so clever with everybody else, are not a bit 
 
 clever with me ? Do you think I cannot see through 
 
 your little plan to take me abroad ? Since I will not 
 
 be the invalid and allow you to be the nurse, you are 
 
 to be the invalid and I am to be the nurse. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Well, Blanche, if you will have it that you are 
 
 -well and have nothing preying on your spirits, I 
 
 must insist on being ill and having something prey- 
 
sc. 2.] Widowers' Houses. 75 
 
 ing on mine. And indeed, my girl, there is no use 
 in our going on as we have for the last four months. 
 You have not been happy ; and I have been far 
 from comfortable. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 I thought you admired inflexibility, papa : you 
 have always prided yourself on it. 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Nonsense, my dear, nonsense. I have had to give 
 in often enough. And I could shew you plenty of 
 soft fellows who have done as well as I, and enjoyed 
 themselves more, perhaps. If it is only for the sake 
 
 of inflexibility that you are standing out 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 I am not standing out, papa. I dont know what 
 you mean. (^She tries to rise and go away ; but he 
 catches her arm and arrests her on her knees, so that 
 they are face to face,) 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Come, my child : you must not trifle with me as 
 
 if I were a stranger. You are fretting because 
 
 Blanche. 
 {violently twisting herself free and speaking as she 
 rises) If you say it, papa, I will kill myself. It is 
 not true. If he were here on his knees to-night, I 
 would walk out of the house sooner than endure it. 
 (^Exit excitedly, Sartorius greatly troubled,) 
 
 SCENE II. 
 
 SARTORIUS. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Now if I fight it out with her, no more comfort 
 
j6 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 for months : I might as well live with my clerk or 
 my servant. And if I give in now, I shall have to 
 give in always. Well, I cannot help it. I have 
 stuck to having my own way all my life ; but there 
 must be an end to that drudgery some day. She is 
 young : let her have her turn at it. (Enter Jnnie, l.) 
 Yes.? 
 
 SCENE III. 
 
 SARTORIUS, ANNIE. 
 
 Annie. 
 Please, sir, Mr. Lickcheese wants to see you very 
 particular. On important business — your business, 
 he told me to say. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Mr. Lickcheese ! Do you mean Lickcheese who 
 used to come here on my business ? 
 
 Annie. 
 Yes, sir. But indeed, sir, you'd scarcely know him. 
 Sartorius. 
 {frowning) Hm ! Starving, I suppose. Come to 
 beg. 
 
 Annie. 
 {intensely repudiating the idea) O-o-o-o-h no, sir. 
 Quite the gentleman, sir ! Sealskin overcoat, sir ! 
 Come in a hansom, ail shaved and dean ! Tm sure 
 he's come into a fortune, sir. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Hm ! Shew him up. {Exit Annie.) Now what 
 does this mean, I should like to know.f* {threateningly) 
 
 If he has come here to beg 
 
 {Enter Lickcheese^ l, shewn in by Annie^ who goes 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers^ Houses* 77 
 
 out again. New hat^ new gloves^ overcoat with 
 astrakan collar^ heavy gold chain : he has shaved his 
 whiskers and grown a moustache^ the ends of which 
 are waxed and pointed, Sartorius stares speechless at 
 him : he enjoys the effect he produces and stands smiling 
 to he admired,^ 
 
 SCENE IV. 
 
 SARTORIUS, LICKCHEESE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {bracing himself — hostile) Well ? 
 Lickcheese. 
 Quite well, Sartorius, thankee. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I was not asking after your health, sir, as you 
 know, I think, as well as I do. What is your 
 business ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Business that I can take elsewhere if I meet with 
 less civility than I please to put up with, Sartorius. 
 You and me is man and man now. It was money 
 that used to be my master, and not you, dont 
 think it. Now that I'm independent in respect of 
 
 money 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (crossing determinedly to the l door, and holding it 
 open) You can take your independence out of my 
 house then. I wont have it here. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Come, Sartorius, dont be stifFnecked. I come here 
 as a friend to put money in your pocket. No use in 
 your lettin' on to me that youre above money. Eh ? 
 
78 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {hesitates y and at last shuts the door, saying guardedly) 
 How much money ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 {crossing to Blanche's chair) Ah ! there you speak 
 like yourself, Sartorius. Now suppose you ask me 
 to sit down and make myself comfortable. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {coming from the door to lc) I have a mind to put 
 you downstairs by the back of your neck, you infernal 
 blackguard. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 {not a bit ruffled y takes off his overcoat and hangs it 
 on the hack of Blanche's chair , fulling a cigar case out 
 of one of the pockets as he does so) You and me is 
 too much of a pair for me to take anything you 
 say in bad part, Sartorius. 'Ave a cigar? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 No smoking here : this is my daughter's room. 
 However, sit down, sit down. {T^hey sit.) 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 I've bin gettin' on a little since I saw you last. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 So I see. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 I owe it partly to you, you know. Does that 
 surprise you ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 It doesnt concern me. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 So you think, Sartorius, because it never did con- 
 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers' Houses. 7^ 
 
 cern you how / got on, so long as I got you on by- 
 bringing in the rents. But I picked up something 
 for myself down at Robbins's Row. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Oh, have you come to make restitution then ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Ha ! ha ! You always would have your joke, 
 Mr. Sartorius. No : what I picked up was a know- 
 ledge of the great public question of the Housing 
 cf the Working Classes, that a Royal Commission 
 is now holding an inquiry into. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Oh, I see. You have been giving evidence, have you.^^ 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Giving evidence! Not me. What good would 
 that do me? Only my expenses ; and that not on 
 the professional scale, neither. No : I gave no evi- 
 dence. But I'll tell you what I did. I kep* it back, 
 jest to oblige one or two people whose feelings would 
 have been hurt by seeing their names in a blue book 
 as keeping a fever den. Their Agent got so friendly 
 with me over it that he put his name on a bill of 
 
 mine to the tune of well, no matter : it gave me 
 
 a start ; and a start was all I ever wanted to get 
 myself on. But that parson went on cruel about 
 Robbins's Row. I've got a copy of the first report 
 of the Commission in the pocket of my overcoat. 
 (Rises and gets at his overcoat^ from a 'pocket of 
 which he takes a blue book) I turned down the page 
 to shew you : I thought you would like to see it. 
 {Doubles the book back at th^ place indicated, and 
 hands it to Sartorius^ 
 
8o Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {put ting the book on the table without looking at ity and 
 striking it emphatically with his fist) I dont care that 
 for my name being in blue books. My friends dont 
 read them ; and I'm neither a Cabinet Minister nor 
 a candidate for Parliament There is nothing to be 
 got out of me on that lay. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Oh, Mr. Sartorius, do you think I would let out 
 a word about your premises ? Round on an old pal I 
 no : that isnt Lickcheese*s way. Besides, they know 
 all about you already. Them stairs that you and me 
 quarrelled about^ they was a whole afternoon ex- 
 amining the clergyman that made such a fuss — you 
 remember ? — about the women that was hurt on it. 
 He made the worst he could of it, in an ungentle- 
 manly, unchristian spirit. I wouldnt have that 
 clergyman's disposition for worlds. Oh no, that's 
 not what was in my thoughts. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Come, come, man : what was in your thoughts ? 
 Out with it 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 {with provoking deliberation^ smiles and looks mysteri- 
 ously at him) You aint spent a few hundreds in 
 repairs since we parted, have you? [Movement of 
 impatience from Sartorius : Lickcheese goes on sooth- 
 ingly) Now, dont fly out at me. I know a landlord 
 that owned as beastly a slum as you could find in 
 London, down there by the Tower. By my advice 
 that man put half the houses into first-class repair, 
 and let the other half to a new Company — the North 
 
sc. 4.] Widowers' Houses. 8t 
 
 Thames Iced Mutton Depot Company, of which 
 I held a few shares — promoter's shares. And what 
 was the end of it, do you think ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Smash, I suppose. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Smash ! not a bit of it. Compensation, Mr. Sar- 
 tor kis, compensation. Do you understand that ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Compensation for what ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Why, the land was wanted for an extension of the 
 Mint ; and the Company had to be bought out, and 
 the buildings compensated for. Somebody has to 
 know these things beforehand, you know, no matter 
 how dark they re kept. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 {interested^ hut cautious) Well? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Is that all you have to say to me, Mr. Sartorius .? 
 " Well " ! as if I was next door's dog ! Suppose Fd 
 got wind of a new street that would knock down 
 Robbins's Row and turn Burke's Walk into a front- 
 age worth thirty pound a foot — and I may know of 
 such a thing for all you guess — would you say no 
 more to me than {mimicking) " Well " ^ {Sartorius 
 rises; hesitates; and looks at him in great doubt: 
 Lickcheese watches him cunningly^ Come, look at 
 my get-up, Mr. Sartorius. Look at this watch- 
 chain ! Look at the corporation IVe got on me ! 
 
 6 
 
82 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Do you think all that came from keeping my mouth 
 shut ? No, it came from keeping my ears and eyes 
 open. (Enter Blanche with Annie, who has a silver 
 tray on which she collects the coffee cups.) 
 
 SCENE V. 
 
 ANNIE, LICKCHEESE, SARTORIUS, BLANCHE. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Sh ! We must talk this over in the study. There 
 is a good fire there ; and you can smoke. Blanche : 
 an old friend of ours. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 And a kind one to me. I hope I see you well. 
 Miss Blanche. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Why, it's Mr. Lickcheese ! I hardly knew you. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 I find you a little changed yourself, Miss. 
 
 Blanche. 
 {histily) Oh, I am the same as ever How are 
 Mrs. Lickcheese and the chil 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {impatiently) We have business to transact, Blanche. 
 You can talk to Mr. Lickcheese afterwards. Come 
 on. (^Exeunt Sartorius and Lickcheese into library^ r. 
 Blanche is a little surprised at her father s abruptness. 
 She looks after them for a moment. Then, seeing 
 Lickcheese s overcoat on her chair, she takes it upy 
 amused, and looks at the fur.) 
 
sc. 7.] Widowers' Houses. 83 
 
 SCENE VI. 
 
 BLANCHE, ANNIE. 
 
 Annie. 
 Oh, we are fine, aint we. Miss Blanche ? I think 
 Mr. Lickcheese must have come into a legacy. 
 [Seeing the blue book) Is this Master's, Miss Blanche? 
 I suppose rd best leave it where it is. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 No, it must be Mr. let me see. {Bends over 
 
 the open book) There's something about papa in it. 
 (^Sits down and begins to read,) 
 
 Annie. 
 He looks ever so much younger. Miss Blanche, 
 dont he ? I couldnt help laughing when I saw him 
 with his whiskers shaved off: it do look so silly 
 when you're not accustomed to it. {No answer from 
 Blanche) You havent finished your coffee, Miss : 
 I suppose I may take it away. {No answer) Oh, 
 you are interested in Mr. Lickcheese's book. Miss. 
 i^lanche stands up, staring — terrible — the book hanging 
 in her hands, Annie looks round her up into her face^ 
 and instantly hurries out of the room on tiptoe with 
 her tray.) 
 
 SCENE VII. 
 
 BLANCHE. 
 
 Blanche. 
 So that was why he would not touch the money. 
 
 {She tries to tear the book across ; but that is 
 impossible; and she throws it down violently into 
 the fireplace. It falls into the fender) He left me 
 
84 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 because of my father's business — because I was not 
 good enough for his family. Oh, if only a girl 
 could have no father, no family, just as I have 
 no mother! I suppose he read that book. That 
 miserable clergyman ! " The worst slum landlord 
 in London." "Slum landlord." Oh ! {Covers her 
 face with her hands and sinks shuddering into the 
 chair on which the overcoat lies. Hearing the door 
 open^ she snatches a half^hemmed handkerchief from 
 her work-basket and sits erect and quiet, stitching at 
 it. Enter Sartorius and Lickcheese, r.) 
 
 SCENE VIII. 
 
 SARTORIUS, LICKCHEESE, BLANCHE. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 By your leave, Miss Blanche. (Tulling gently at 
 his overcoat.) 
 
 Blanche, 
 (rising) I beg your pardon. I hope I havent 
 crushed it. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 {with the coat on) YouVe welcome to crush it again, 
 Miss Blanche. Dont say good evening to me, Miss: 
 Tm coming back presently — me and a friend or two. 
 Ta ta, Sartorius : I wont be long. (Exit, l.) 
 
 SCENE IX. 
 
 SARTORIUS, BLANCHE. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I thought we were done with Lickcheese. {Sartorius 
 is looking about for the blue book,) 
 
sc. 9.] Widowers' Houses. 85 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Not quite yet, I think. He left a book here 
 for me to look over — a large book in a blue 
 paper cover. Has Annie put it away ? {Sees it 
 in the fender ; Looks at her ; and adds) Have you 
 seen it.? 
 
 Blanche. 
 No. Yes. [angrily) No : I have not seen it. 
 What have I to do with it ^ {Sartorius picks the 
 book up and dusts it; then sits down quietly and 
 begins to read, 
 
 Sartorius. 
 It is a curious thing, Blanche, that the Parliamentary 
 gentlemen who write such books as these, should be 
 so ignorant of practical business. One would suppose, 
 to read this, that we are the most grasping, grinding, 
 heartless pair in the world, you and I. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Then it is not true — about the state of the houses, 
 I mean? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (calmly) Oh, quite true. Quite true. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Then it is not our fault ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 My dear, if we made the houses any better, the 
 rents would have to be raised so much that the poor 
 people would be unable to pay, and would be thrown 
 homeless on the streets. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Well, turn them out and get in a respectable class 
 
86 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 of people. Why should we have the disgrace of 
 harbouring such wretches ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {opening his eyes) That sounds a little hard on them, 
 doesnt it, my child ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Oh, I hate the poor. At least, I hate those dirty, 
 drunken, disreputable people who live like pigs. If 
 they must be provided for, let other people look 
 after them. How can you expect any one to think 
 well of us when such things are written about us in 
 that infamous book ^ 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (wistfully) I see I have made a real lady of you, 
 Blanche. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Well, are you sorry for that.? 
 Sartorius. 
 No, my dear, of course not. But do you know, 
 Blanche, that my mother was a very poor woman, 
 and that her poverty was not her fault .? 
 Blanche. 
 I suppose not ; but the people we want to mix 
 with now do not know that. And it was not my 
 fault ; so I do not see why I should be made to 
 suffer for it. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {enraged) Who makes you suffer for it, Miss ? 
 What would you be now but for what your grand- 
 mother did for me when she stood at her wash-tub 
 for thirteen hours a day and thought herself rich 
 when she made fifteen shillings in a week? 
 
sc. 9.] Widowers' Houses. 87 
 
 Blanche. 
 {angrily) I suppose I should have been down on 
 her level, instead of raised above it, as I am now. 
 Would you like us to go and live in that place in 
 the book for the sake of grandmamma ? I hate the 
 idea of such things. I dont want to know about 
 them. I love you because you brought me up to 
 something better. {Half aside, as she turns away 
 from him) I should hate you if you had not. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {giving in) Well, my child, it is natural for you 
 to feel that way, after your bringing up. It is the 
 ladylike view of the matter. So dont let us quarrel, 
 my girl. You see, you think of me only as a father ; 
 but I am a man as well, Blanche ; and it is not 
 always the same thing. You dont understand that, 
 do you, my dear ? However, you shall not be 
 made to suffer any more. I have made up my mind 
 to improve the property, and get in quite a new class 
 of tenants. There ! does that satisfy you ? I am 
 only waiting for the consent of the ground landlord, 
 Lady Roxdale. 
 
 Blanche. 
 
 Lady Roxdale ! 
 
 Sar:crius. 
 
 Yes. And I shall expect the mortgagee, who 
 professes to feel strongly on the subject of the 
 housing of the working classes, to take his share of 
 the risk. His mortgage makes him practically my 
 sleeping partner in the ownership. 
 
 Blanche. 
 I never knew there was any other owner. Who is he } 
 
88 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Harry Trench. 
 
 Blanche. 
 What ! He ! And he is responsible too, for all 
 that in the book — as responsible as we are ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Equally responsible with me, dear. You are not 
 responsible at all. Master Harry had not thought 
 of that until I pointed it out to him. That is why 
 he first wanted to support you on his own money 
 alone, and then apologized to me for his folly. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Why did you not tell me this before ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 You told me, Blanche, that you did not want him — 
 that you preferred to stay with me. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Neither do I want him. He insulted us. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 He apologized, my girl. And if he consents to 
 join me in my scheme, I shall have to be friends 
 with him. 
 
 Blanche. 
 And to ask him to the house ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 Only on business. You need not meet him unless 
 you like. But there is no time to be lost ; and I 
 could not help asking him to call here to-night. 
 
 Blanche. 
 Tonight 1 To-night I ! I 
 
sc. lo.] Widowers' Houses. 89 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Lickcheese has gone to ask him to come round. 
 Blanche. 
 
 Then he will be here in a few minutes. What 
 shall I do ? 
 
 Sartorius. 
 
 I advise you to receive him as if nothing had 
 happened, and then go out and leave us to our 
 business. You must meet him sooner or later. 
 You are strong-minded enough for that, are you 
 not, my dear ? You are not afraid to meet him ? 
 Blanche. 
 
 Afraid ! No, most certainly not. But 
 
 (^Lickcheese' s voice is heard without) Here they 
 are. Dont say Tm in, papa. (^Rushes off, r. Enter 
 Lickcheese, l, with 'Trench and Cokane. Cokane shakes 
 hands with Sartorius ; 'Trench, who is sulky, merely 
 bowing. They all sit round the large table, Trench 
 R, Cokane l, the other two between them, with 
 Lickcheese next Cokane.) 
 
 SCENE X. 
 
 TRENCH, SARTORIUS, LICKCHEESE, COKANE. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Here we are, all friends round St. PauFs. You 
 remember Mr. Cokane : he does a little business for 
 me now, and gives me a help with my correspondence 
 — sekketary we call it. IVe no litery style, and 
 that's the truth ; so Mr. Cokane kindly puts it into 
 my letters and draft prospectuses and advertisements 
 and the like. Dont you, Cokane } Of course you 
 do : why shouldnt you } He's been helping me 
 
Qo Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 to-night to persuade his old friend, Dr. Trench, 
 about that matter we were speaking of. 
 
 Cokane. 
 No, Mr. Lickcheese, not trying to persuade him. 
 No : this is a matter of principle with me. I say 
 it is your duty, Henry — your duty — to put those 
 abominable buildings into proj:>er and habitable repair. 
 As a man of science you owe it to the community to 
 perfect the sanitary arrangements. In questions of 
 duty there is no room for persuasion, even from the 
 oldest friend. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 (Jo Trench) I certainly feel, as Mr. Cokane puts it, 
 that it is our duty — one which I have perhaps too long 
 neglected out of regard for the poorest class of tenants, 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Not a doubt of it, gents, a duty. I can be as 
 sharp as any man when it's a question of business ; 
 but duty is another thing. 
 
 Trench. 
 Well, I dont see that it is any more my duty now 
 than it was four months ago. I look at it simply as 
 a question of so much money. 
 Cokane. 
 Shame, Harry, shame ! Shame ! 
 
 Trench. 
 Oh, shut up, you fool. {Cokane springs up, 
 Lickcheese catches his coat and holds him,) 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Steady, steady, Mr. Sekketary. Dr. Trench is 
 only joking. He dont do himself justice. 
 
sc. lo.] Widowers' Houses. 91 
 
 Cokane. 
 I insist on the withdrawal of that expression. 
 {Lickcheese^ reassured^ releases him,) I have been 
 called a fool. 
 
 Trench. 
 So you are a fool. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Then you are a damned fool. Now, sir ! 
 
 Trench. 
 
 All right. Now we've settled that. {Cokane, with 
 a snort y sits down) What I mean is this. Dont let 
 us have any nonsense about the job. As I understand 
 it, we have got a straight tip from Mr. Lickcheese 
 that Robbins's Row is to be pulled down to make 
 way for the new street into the Strand ; and that, if 
 we dont look out, this confounded meddling County 
 Council will swindle us out of our proper compensation 
 on the ground that it's against public policy to 
 recognize vested interests in squalor and filth and 
 poverty and all the rest of it. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I should not put it exactly in that way ; but — 
 
 Cokane. 
 Quite right, Mr. Sartorius, quite right. The case 
 could not have been stated in worse taste or with 
 less tact. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Sh — sh — sh — sh ! 
 
 Sartorius. 
 I do not quite go with you there, Mr. Cokane. 
 I {^d that there is much to be said for the view 
 
92 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 taken by the County Council. We live in a pro- 
 gressive age ; and humanitarian ideas are advancing 
 and must be taken into account. I should hardly feel 
 justified in making a large claim for compensation 
 under existing circumstances. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Of course not ; and you wouldnt get it if you did. 
 You see, it*s like this, I>r. Trench. There's no doubt 
 that the Vestries has legal powers to play old Harry 
 with slum properties, and spoil the houseknacking 
 game if they please. That didnt matter in the good 
 old times, because the Vestries used to be us ourselves. 
 Nobody ever knew a word about the election ; and 
 we used to get ten of us into a room and elect one 
 another, and do what we liked. Well, that cock 
 wont fight any longer ; because the tag rag and 
 bobtail are beginning to meddle in the elections ; 
 and the County Council is full of red radical republican 
 revolutionists that wants to cut us out by building 
 what they calls municipal dwellings ; while even the 
 respectable party — actually people that calls themselves 
 gentlemen — wants to make us put our properties 
 into repair ! That County Council is a curse to 
 property owners all over London. However, there 
 It is hanging over our heads ; and, to put it short, 
 the game is up for men in the position of you and 
 Mr. Sartorius. My advice to you is, take the present 
 chance of getting out of it. Spend a little money 
 on the block at the Cribbs Market end — enough to 
 make it look like a model dwelling ; and let the 
 other block to me on fair terms for a depot of the 
 North Thames Iced Mutton Company. They'll be 
 knocked down inside of two years to make room for 
 
sc. lo.] Widowers' Houses. 93 
 
 the new north and south main thoroughfare ; and 
 you'll be compensated to the tune of double the 
 present valuation, with the cost of the improvements 
 thrown in. Leave things as they are ; and you 
 stand a good chance of being fined, or condemned, 
 or pulled down before long. Now's your time. 
 Cokane. 
 
 Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Hear, hear! Admirably 
 put from the business point of view. I recognize 
 the uselessness of putting the moral point of view to 
 you. Trench; but even you must feel the cogency 
 of Mr. Lickcheese's business statement. 
 Trench. 
 
 But why cant you act without me ? What have 
 I got to do with it ^ I am only a mortgagee. 
 Sartorius. 
 
 There is a certain risk in this compensation 
 investment. Dr. Trench. The County Council may 
 alter the line of the new street. If that happens, the 
 money spent in improving the houses will be thrown 
 away — simply thrown away. But you will expect 
 your seven per cent, as usual. 
 Trench. 
 
 Certainly. I find it hard enough to get on as it is. 
 Hang it all, a fellow must live. 
 Cokane. 
 
 Je rien vols pas la necessite. 
 Trench. 
 
 Shut up, Billy, or else speak some language that 
 you understand. No, Mr. Sartorius : I should be 
 very glad to stand in with you if I could afford it ; 
 but I cant; so there's an end of that. 
 
94 Widowers* Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Lickcheesc. 
 Well, all I can say is that youre a very foolish 
 young man. 
 
 Cokane. 
 What did I tell you, Harry? 
 Trench. 
 I dont see that it's any business of yours, Mr. 
 Lickchecse. 
 
 Lickchcese. 
 It's a free country : every man has a right to 
 his opinion. (Cokane cries Hear hear !) Come, 
 where*s your feelings for them poor people. Dr. 
 Trench ? Remember how it went to your heart 
 when I first told you about them. What ! are you 
 going to turn hard .' 
 
 Trench.' 
 No : it wont do : you cant get over me in that 
 way. You proved to me before that there was no 
 use in being sentimental over that slum shop of 
 ours ; and it's no good your turning round on 
 the opposite tack now that you want to get me to 
 put my capital into your speculation. I've had my 
 lesson ; and Tm going to stick to my present income. 
 It's little enough for me as it is. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 It really matters nothing to me, Dr. Trench, how 
 you decide. I can easily raise the money elsewhere 
 and pay you off. Then, since you are resolved to 
 run no risks, you can invest your j^ic,ooo in Consols 
 and get ^^250 a year for it instead of jCjoo, 
 
 Cokane. 
 This is what comes of being avaricious, Harry. 
 
sc. lo.] Widowers' Houses. ^5 
 
 Two-thirds of your income gone at one blow. And 
 I must say it serves you right. 
 Trench. 
 
 That's all very fine; but I dont understand it. If 
 you can do this to me, why didnt you do it long ago? 
 Sartorius. 
 
 Because, as I should probably have had to borrow 
 at six per cent, I should only have saved j^ioo a 
 year, which is a trifle to me; whereas you would 
 have lost over ;£400 — a very serious matter for you. 
 I had no desire to be unfriendly ; and even now I 
 should be glad to let the mortgage stand, were it not 
 that the circumstances mentioned by Mr. Lickcheese 
 force my hand. Besides, Dr. Trench, 1 hoped for 
 some time that our interests might be joined by 
 closer ties even than those of friendship. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 {jumping upy relieved) There ! Now the murder's 
 out. Excuse me, Dr. Trench. Ex-cus^ me, Mr. 
 Sartorius, excuse my freedom. Why not Dr. Trench 
 marry Miss Blanche, and settle the whole affair that 
 way } {Sensation, Lickcheese sits down, triumphant,) 
 Cokane. 
 
 You forget, Mr. Lickcheese, that the young lady, 
 whose taste has to be considered, decisively objected 
 to him. Trench quite mistook the situation at that 
 time. The young lady was attracted in another 
 quarter. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Oh ! In your quarter, I suppose ? 
 Cokane. 
 
 I do not say so. Trench. No man of any delicacy 
 
96 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 would suggest such a thing. I said another quarter. 
 You have an untutored mind, Trench, an untutored 
 mind. 
 
 Trench. 
 Well, Cokane, IVe told you my opinion of you 
 already. 
 
 Cokane. 
 (rising wildly) And I have told you my opinion of 
 you. I will repeat it if you wish. I am ready to 
 repeat it. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Come, Mr. Sekketary, you and me, as married 
 men, is out of the hunt as far as young ladies is 
 concerned. I know Miss Blanche : she has her 
 father's eye for business. Explain this job to her ; 
 and she'll make it up with Dr. Trench. Why not 
 have a bit of romance in business when it costs 
 nothing ? We all have our feelings : we aint mere 
 calculating machines. 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {revolted) Do you think, Lickcheese, that my 
 daughter is to be made part of a money bargain 
 between you and these gentlemen ? 
 Lickcheese. 
 Oh come, Sartorius : dont talk as if you was the 
 only father in the world. I have a daughter too ; 
 and my feelings in that matter are just as fine as 
 yours. I propose nothing but what is for Miss 
 Blanche's advantage and for Dr. Trench's. I take 
 their feelings for granted : they aint our business. 
 Cokane. 
 Lickcheese expresses himself roughly, Mr. Sartorius; 
 
sc. lo.] Widowers' Houses. 97 
 
 but his is a sterling nature ; and what he says is to 
 the point. If Miss Sartorius can really bring herself 
 to care for Harry, even as a last resource, I am 
 far from desiring to stand in the way of such an 
 arrangement. 
 
 Trench. 
 
 Why, what have you got to do with it ? 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 Easy, Dr. Trench, easy. We want your opinion. 
 Are you still on for marrying Miss Blanche if she is 
 agreeable ? 
 
 Trench. 
 (shortly) I dont know that I am. (Sartorius rises 
 indignantly.) 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Easy one moment, Mr. Sartorius. (to 'Trench) 
 Come, Dr. Trench : you say you dont know that 
 you are. But do you know that you aint: that's 
 what we want to know ^ 
 
 Trench. 
 (sulkily) I wont have the relations between Miss 
 Sartorius and myself made part of a bargain. (Rises 
 to leave the table) 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 (rising) That's enough : a gentleman could say no 
 less. Now, would you mind me and Cokane and the 
 gov'nor steppin' into the study to arrange about the 
 lease to the North Thames Iced Mutton Company ? 
 That doesnt interest you, you know. You wont 
 mind us leaving you alone a bit just to think over 
 whether you can see your way to stand in after all. 
 
 7 
 
98 Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 Trench. 
 But I may as well go home now if you have 
 business. There's nothing else to say. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 No, dont go. Only just a minute: me and 
 Cokane will be back in no time to see you home. 
 You'll wait for us, wont you ? there's a good fellow. 
 
 Trench. 
 Oh, if you wish, yes. 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 Didnt I know you would ! 
 
 Sartorius. 
 {at the doovy r, to Cokane) After you, sir. (Cokane 
 bows formally and goes into the study,) 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 {at the dooTy aside to Sartorius) You never had 
 such a managing man as me, Sartorius. {Goes out 
 chucklingy followed by Sartorius,) 
 
 SCENE XL 
 
 TRENCH, BLANCHE. 
 
 {Trench y left alone ^ takes to prowling rcund the room 
 in search of relics of Blanche^ who presently appears at 
 the door^ l, and stands watching him. Finding the 
 handkerchief in her work-basket ^ he picks it up^ and is 
 raising it to his lips when he perceives the needle 
 sticking in it. He carefully removes this, and is again 
 about to kiss the handkerchief when he suddenly changes 
 his mind and throws it angrily away^ Blanche following 
 the whole process intently. He wanders to the piano- 
 forte and finds the photograph on the miniature easel 
 
sc. II.] Widowers' Houses. 99 
 
 there. He contemplates it ; snaps his fingers at it ; 
 raises it to his lips ; checks himself and is about to 
 throw it away like the handkerchief ; then breaks down 
 and kisses it passionately, 'Triumph in Blanche's face. 
 At last he turns l, and^ finding himself face to face 
 with Blanche^ stares at her without the least presence 
 of mind,) 
 
 Blanche. 
 {contemptuously) Well ? So you have come back 
 here. You have had the meanness to come into this 
 house again. What a poor-spirited creature you 
 must be ! Why dont you go ? [He starts huffly 
 for the door : she deliberately gets in his way, so that 
 he^ has to stop) /dont want you to stay. (Taking 
 a sudden resolution, he walks straight back to his chair, 
 RC, and plants himself doggedly in it, arms folded. 
 She comes down to l.c. after him) But I forgot: 
 you have found that there is some money to be made 
 here. Lickcheese told you. Tou, who were so dis- 
 interested, so independent, that you could not accept 
 anything from my father! {At the end of every 
 sentence she waits to see what execution she has done) 
 I suppose you will try to persuade me that you have 
 come down here on a great philanthropic enterprise 
 — to befriend the poor by having those houses re- 
 built, eh ? (Trench sits tight and makes no sign,) 
 Yes, when my father makes you do it. And when 
 Lickcheese has discovered some way of making it 
 profitable. Oh, I know papa ; and I know you. 
 And for the sake of that, you come back here — into 
 the house where you were refused — ordered out. 
 {Trench's face darkens) Do you remember that I 
 You know it is true : you cannot deny it. (She sits 
 
lOO Widowers' Houses, [act hi. 
 
 dcwriy and softens her tone a little as she affects to 
 fity him) Ah, let me tell you that you cut a poor 
 figure, a very, very poor figure, Harry. [At the 
 word " Harry " he relaxes the fold of his arms ; his 
 eye lights up ; and a faint grin of anticipated victory 
 rppears on his face) And you, too, a gentleman ! — 
 so highly connected ! — with such distinguished rela- 
 tions ! — so particular as to where your money comes 
 from I I wonder at you. I really wonder at you. 
 I should have thought that if your family brought 
 you nothing else, it might at least have brought you 
 some sense of personal dignity. Perhaps you think 
 you look dignified at present, eh? [No repl\) 
 Well, I can assure you that you dont : you look most 
 ridiculous — as foolish as a man could look — you 
 dont know what to do ; and you dont know what 
 to say. But after all, I really do not see what 
 anyone could say in defence of such conduct — such 
 manly, chivalrous conduct. (He looks vaguely straight 
 in front of him^ and purses his lips as if whistling. 
 She becomes exquisitely polite) 1 am afraid I am in 
 your way. Dr. Trench. (Rising) I shall not intrude 
 on you any longer. You seem so perfectly at home 
 that I need make no apology for leaving you to 
 yourself. (She sweeps to the l doer; opens it; and 
 looks round to see if he has budged : then^ seeing that 
 he has not, she shuts the door and comes down r behind 
 himy stopping a little way off) Harry. {He does not 
 turn. She comes a step nearer) Harry : I want you 
 to answer me a question. (Earnestly ^ stooping over 
 him) Look me in the face. (No reply) Do you 
 hear? (Putting her hand on his shoulder) Look — 
 mc — in — the — face. (He still stares straight in front 
 
sc. 12.] Widowers' Houses. loi 
 
 of him. She suddenly kneels down beside him with her 
 breast against his right shoulder ; takes his face in 
 her hands : and turns it towards her) Harry : (jww 
 most tenderly) why did you kiss my photograph just 
 now, when you thought you were alone ? {His face 
 writhes, as he tries hard not to smile ; but he is evidently 
 vanquished ; and his arm slips round her. She adds, 
 playfully) How dare you touch anything belonging 
 to me ? 
 
 Trench. 
 I hear some one coming. {She regains her chair 
 with a bound, and pushes it back as far L as possible. 
 Voices outside. Re-enter at r door Cokane, Lickcheese 
 and Sartorius, Sartorius and Lickcheese come down 
 R to French. Cokane crosses to Blanche l in his most 
 killing manner^ 
 
 SCENE XII. 
 
 - SARTORIUS, TRENCH, LICKCHEESE, COKANE, BLANCHE. 
 
 Cokane. 
 How do you do, Miss Sartorius, how do you do ? 
 Nice weather for the return of V enfant prodigue, eh ? 
 
 Blanche. 
 Capital, Mr. Cokane. So glad to see you. {Give^ 
 her hand, which he kisses with gallantry,) 
 
 Lickcheese. 
 
 {on 'Trenches left, in a low voice) Any noos for us, 
 Mr. Trench? 
 
 Trench. 
 {to Sartorius, on his right) I'll stand in, compensation 
 or no compensation. {Shakes Sartorius' s hand, Annie 
 has just appeared at the door,) 
 
I02 Widowers' Houses, [act iik 
 
 Blanche. 
 {calling from near l door to r) Supper is ready, 
 papa. 
 
 Cokane. 
 Allow me. 
 
 {Exeunt otnnes : Blanche on Cokane' s arm ; 
 Lickcheese jocosely taking Sartorius on one arm, and 
 Trench on the other,) 
 
 CURTAIN, 
 
Appendix I. 
 
 The Author to the Dramatic Critics. 
 
 Fellow-Critjcs 
 
 It is one of my advantages that I can discuss 
 criticism, not merely as an author, but as a critic. 
 I have no illusions about critics being authors who 
 have failed. I know, as one who has practised both 
 crafts, that authorship is child's play compared to 
 criticism ; and I have, you may depend upon it, my 
 full share of the professional instinct which regards 
 the romancer as a mere adventurer in literature, and 
 the critic as a highly skilled workman. Ask any 
 novelist or dramatist whether he can write a better 
 novel or play than I ; and he will blithely say Yes. 
 Ask him to take my place as critic for one week ; 
 and he will blench from the test. The truth is that 
 the critic stands between popular authorship, for 
 which he is not silly enough, and great authorship, 
 for which he has not genius enough. It is certainly 
 true that the status of popular author is much 
 coveted by critics ; but that is because the popular 
 author is much better paid for much easier work. 
 Thackeray, like many other eminent authors, coveted 
 a government sinecure ; but nobody therefore sup- 
 poses that authors are merely unsuccessful sinecurists. 
 
I04 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 or that a well paid post in the civil service would 
 have been intellectually a promotion for Thackeray. 
 He who publishes a critical essay well knows how 
 few care to read such things ; whereas some donkey 
 of an author, with the imagination of a schoolboy, 
 or some sentimental young lady perhaps, will turn 
 out a story too absurd to be thinkable by an 
 ordinarily competent critic, and yet have it bought 
 by scores and hundreds of thousands of readers of 
 fiction. It is the natural desire to wallow in the 
 profits of romantic make-believe instead of toiling 
 for the scanty wages of " the intolerable fatigue of 
 thought " that drives the critic to envy the author. 
 
 You will now feel, fellow-critics, that in turning 
 dramatist I have not turned traitor. It is for the 
 honor of our guild that I venture to suggest that 
 even in the intellectual department the authors are 
 getting ahead of us. I do not wish to rake up the 
 case of Ibsen and his Ghosts again : I think it will be 
 admitted now that the most old-fashioned school for 
 young ladies in the country would have made almost 
 as good a job of that discussion as we did. It was 
 not a question of our liking Ibsen or not liking 
 him, agreeing with him or not agreeing with him. 
 Whichever way our bias lay it was our business 
 to analyse his position skilfully and pronounce on it 
 coolly. Under no circumstances should we have 
 forgotten ourselves so far as to scold at him and cry 
 Fie ! hke a bevy of illiterate prudes. This, how- 
 ever, is what too many of us did ; and now, since 
 what is done cannot be undone, we had better 
 put up a few posts to warn future critics ofF the 
 dangerous places where we come to grief oftenest. 
 
Widowers' Houses. 105 
 
 The first warning I propose is : Do not let us raise 
 the cry of " Ibsen " whenever we find a modern idea 
 in a play. See what it has led to in the following 
 passages culled from criticisms — some of them friendly 
 and able ones — of Widowers' Houses, 
 
 "As an ardent admirer of Ibsen's methods, he has not scrupled 
 to follow the method of that writer to extremes." — Daily Tele- 
 graph. " The lesson is trite in the case of creeds that the disciple 
 not seldom distances the master. Ibsen has justly been charged, 
 etc., etc." — Athenaeum. " The London Ibsen [ironical]. One 
 can see that all this is meant to be exceedingly Ibsenesque." — 
 Sunday Sun. " I really think it is time the Independent Theatre 
 Society made an effort to secure a play that is not moulded on 
 the lines laid down by the great and only Ibsen." — Pelican, 
 " Mr. Shaw is a zealous Ibsenite." — Weekly Dispatch. " A rather 
 silly play by a rather clever man, which may be either worship 
 or satire of Ibsenius the Great." — Saturday Review. " Mr. Shaw 
 is the high priest, one may say, of Ibsenism." — Piccadilly. 
 " Like all the Ibsenians he ruins his argument," etc. — Modern 
 Society. " Mr. Shaw is an Ibsenite and is consequently quite up 
 to date." — Freeman's Journal. " A promising young tigress of 
 a daughter, who is drawn on the severest principles of Ibsenite 
 heredity." — Western Mercury. 
 
 Now the first two acts of Widowers^ Houses were 
 written in 1885, when I knew nothing about Ibsen ; 
 and I must add that the authors of the lines quoted 
 above should have guessed this, because there is not 
 one idea in the play that cannot be more easily re- 
 ferred to half a dozen English writers than to 
 Ibsen ; whilst of his peculiar retrospective method, 
 by which his plays are made to turn upon events 
 supposed to have happened before the rise of the 
 curtain, there is not a trace in my work. The 
 subjects which seem most strongly to suggest Ibsen 
 to modern critics are (i) Heredity, (2) the Emanci- 
 pation of Woman, (3) any adverse criticism whatever 
 
io6 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 of our marriage laws and customs, and (4) any 
 mixture of wickedness and goodness in the same 
 character. It is therefore necessary to remind our- 
 selves that modern English culture was saturated 
 with the conception of heredity by Herbert Spencer, 
 Dan^n, Huxley, Tyndall, and Galton before Ibsen's 
 name was known here ; that the Married Women's 
 Property Act, the result of a long and strenuous 
 crusade against what I may call the anti-Ibsenite 
 ideal of marriage, was passed in England before A 
 DolVs House was written ; that the two most famous 
 works on the subject of Women's Rights are Mary 
 Wollstonecraft*s Vindication and John Stuart Mill's 
 Subjection of Women y dated respectively 1792, and 
 1869; and that those who may never have studied 
 the complex characters in the fiction of Balzac, George 
 Eliot, George Meredith, and other well-known 
 modern writers, may at least be presumed to have 
 read the history of King David in the Bible, and to 
 have learnt from it that Nature does not keep heroism 
 exclusively for one set of men and villainy exclu- 
 sively for another, merely to enable us all to become 
 dramatists and "paint character" with a bucket of 
 whitewash and a jar of lampblack. These things 
 are the more important for a critic to observe, be- 
 cause matters have taken such a course in England 
 for the last fifty years that the man who has neither 
 the culture of the Bible nor that of the Evolutionist 
 school is in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a man 
 with no culture at all — a suspicion not to be lightly 
 incurred by anyone whose calling it is to bring 
 culture to bear on dramatic literature. Be warned 
 therefore ; for it is hard to see how a critic who has 
 
Widowers' Houses. 107 
 
 dipped into modern English literature even to the 
 modest extent of reading one of Mr. Grant Allen's 
 novels, could write as if every idea in physics and 
 morals that is not to be found in Chambers' Vestiges 
 of Creation and Dr. Watts' poems must necessarily 
 be a recent Norwegian importation. 
 
 The second warning is: Let us not try to en- 
 courage the hypocrisy of the theatre, already greater 
 than that of the conventicle, by being more austere 
 in our judgment of dramatis persons than of real 
 men and women. Imitate that excellent critic of 
 mine (known to me only through his very agreeable 
 notice of my play) the London correspondent of the 
 Glasgow Herald^ who says: — 
 
 "The characters are depicted naturally, and not in the 
 glorified form so common upon the conventional stage. . . . 
 It was a treat for once to see a hero (like one of Thackeray's) 
 no better than one of his fellow-men ; to listen to the worldli- 
 ness of the slum landlord and his clerk; and particularly to 
 v/elcome a heroine who shows her temper to her betrothed, 
 and still more to her father, and who, like other estimable 
 womankind whom we frequently meet in real life, though 
 rarely on the stage, is always ready to quarrel on a point of 
 feminine dignity, but when * cornered' is always anxious to 
 forgive and to make friends again." 
 
 That is what I call a reasonable criticism. Now 
 listen to some of the others : — 
 
 *' There can hardly be said to be a single estimable personage 
 in the whole play." — Times. "All his dramatis personal are 
 entirely selfish and despicable." — Daily Telegraph. "Revolting 
 picture of middle-class life. . . . Remorselessly the eccentric 
 one [the author] laid bare his idealized essence of snobbish- 
 ness compressed from all the worst specimens of his fellow-men, 
 and bade us believe that he was painting from life. . . . The 
 abominable Blanche appears in a worse light than ever; and 
 the eccentricity ends with the smothering of what small spark 
 
io8 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 of decency remained in the heart of the only person of the 
 whole bunch who ever had any." — Morning Leader. " It is 
 already impossible, we should hope, to find a set of people so 
 peculiar and unsympathetic as those introduced in this play." — 
 Morning Advertiser. ** In such a world what is to be done but 
 to show hands all round and caper to the tune of * rogues all ' ? " 
 — Globe. *' Mr. Gilbert possesses an uncanny habit of turning 
 up the seamy side of life's robe ; but Mr. Shaw's world has 
 not rags enough to cover its nudity. He aims to show with 
 Zolaesque exactitude that middle-class life is foul and leprous. 
 The play means that the middle class, even to its womanhood, 
 is brutal at heart, or it means nothing." — Athenceum. ** A 
 set of blood-suckers. Every one is ill-conditioned, quarrelsome, 
 fractious, apt to behave, at a moment's notice, like a badly- 
 brought-up child." — World. "The mere word 'mortgage' 
 suffices to turn hero into rascal Mr. Shaw will say that is 
 his point — scratch a middle-class hero and you find a rascal." 
 — Speaker, " Revelation of a distorted and myopic outlook on 
 society." — Sunday Sun. " Very disagreeable heroine ... all 
 the other characters in the play — the poor parlormaid alone 
 excepted — are as hateful as that heroine." — Era. " Mr. Shaw 
 devotes all his energies to making his characters unsym- 
 pathetic, sordid, soulless — ending even worse than they 
 began." — Stage. ** Heartless young lady . . . cads of diverse 
 temperaments." — Weekly Dispatch. "He goes further than 
 Ibsen, whose characters are a mixture of knaves and fools; 
 whereas in Widowers* Houses they are all knaves." — Modem 
 Society, " Mr. Shaw starts with a total disbelief in human 
 nature." — Freeman* s Journal. " All the characters were villains 
 except a pretty parlormaid." — Western Mercury. "The moral 
 seems to be the utter selfishness of human nature outside 
 a progressive County Council." — Umpire. "I could not help 
 noticing that the only thoroughly decent character in the 
 play was a sort of Mrs. Harris in the shape of the parson, 
 who was only allowed to be talked about, but who did not 
 appear." — Mr. Ben. Greet, addressing the Church and Stage Guild. 
 
 I remember once hearing Mr. Moody the Evan- 
 gelist preach on the text, "All have sinned and 
 fallen short of the glory of God." He declared 
 strenuously that in morals a miss is as good as a 
 
Widowers' Houses. 109 
 
 mile, and that the most venial sin damns as efFectually 
 as the most atrocious crime. To have fallen short 
 of the glory of God is enough, whether by an inch 
 or a league does not matter. I must say that from 
 any other point of view than Mr. Moody's, the 
 passages set forth above appear to me to be ludicrous 
 exaggerations. Even after making all allowance for 
 the effect on the writers of the way in which, for 
 the first time on the stage (as far as I know) they 
 saw the citizen with his share in the guilt of our 
 industrial system brought home to him, I still think 
 that they might have paused to ask themselves in 
 what respect Trench, Sartorius, Blanche, Cokane and 
 Lickcheese are any worse, I will not say than them- 
 selves, but than the characters in any of the comedies, 
 ancient or modern, to which they have taken no ex- 
 ception on this score. I certainly had no intention 
 of spoiling the moral of my play by making the 
 characters at all singular; and I suggest that the 
 following considerations will explain my apparent 
 cynicism. 
 
 Formerly, a man was responsible only for his 
 private conduct and for the maintenance of his own 
 household. To-day, as an inevitable consequence 
 of Democracy, he is responsible for the state of 
 the whole community which he helps to govern as 
 a citizen and a voter. Now a man may discharge 
 his private responsibility very well, and yet not even 
 realize that his public responsibility exists. Just as 
 Charles I. was an excellent private gentleman and 
 an intolerable king, so most men to-day are reason- 
 ably good friends and fathers, but execrable citizens, 
 Sartorius is the ordinary man of business, .voting 
 
no Widowers' Houses. 
 
 for the candidate who promises to keep down the 
 rates, and getting on the vestry solely to prevent the 
 vestry from interfering with his property. And 
 he does so in a hypocritical way only because that 
 is the custom — not in the least because he is a 
 Pecksniff. I have drawn him as a man of strong 
 and masterful character, unscrupulous but not a law- 
 breaker, a kind and unselfish father, and much more 
 reasonable and even magnanimous with Trench than 
 the typical villa owner, who is a comparatively 
 spiteful and huffy person. He is, in short, distinctly 
 an exceptional and superior specimen of the middle- 
 class man whose business it is to deal directly with 
 the poor. His rascality — for from the social poiit 
 of view he certainly is a callous rascal — does not lie 
 in his refusing to spend money on his rookeries, 
 since his plea that his tenants would burn his 
 improvements* is perfectly well founded. It lies 
 altogether in his indifference to defects in our social 
 system which produce a class of persons so poor 
 that they are driven by constant physical privation 
 to turn everything they can lay hands on into more 
 fuel and more food. When we find a castaway at 
 sea chewing his boots to appease his hunger, we 
 do not stigmatize him as a creature too degraded 
 to appreciate the right use of boots : we take him 
 aboard and relieve his hunger, after which he wears 
 his boots as appreciatively as a West End gentleman. 
 But Sartorius is not ashamed to explain the dis- 
 appearance of his banisters and cistern lids on the 
 absurd ground that "these people do not know how 
 to live in handsome houses." He has found out 
 that there is no use in treating them goodnaturedly ; 
 
Widowers' Houses. 
 
 Ill 
 
 and he has not enough social conscience to proceed 
 to ask why there is no use, and to find out how, 
 as a citizen and an elector, to remedy the abject 
 poverty which makes a woman willing, for the sake 
 of having a good warm, to burn the handrail that 
 is put up to save her and her neighbors from falling 
 downstairs. The point may not be obvious at once 
 to a critic w^ho has only to ring the bell for another 
 scuttle of Wallsend when his fire runs low, any 
 more than it was obvious to Sartorius. Conse- 
 quently, in every denunciation of Sartorius as a 
 monster, we may see the hand of Sartorius himself.* 
 I now come to a string of remonstrances partly 
 brought on me by a passage in an interview pub- 
 lished in the Star newspaper (November 29th, 
 1892), in which I declared that I wished to appeal 
 to the audience " on the solid ground of political 
 economy," and to have a blackboard on the stage 
 with diagrams to illustrate my points, with much 
 more chaff of the same kind. Here is the result : — 
 
 " A kind of leading article of the slashing type." — Morning. 
 " An exposition in dialogue of the New Economics. . . . 
 What has this farrago of newspaper leaders and Fabian 
 essays to do with the play?" — Star. "Undramatic attempt 
 to cut up a Parliamentary Report into uneven stage lengths. 
 . . . Published as one of the dialogues sometimes given in 
 the Fortnightly Review it would be effective." — Echo. "A 
 discussion, with open doors, of the pros and cons of slum 
 landlordism ... a good sermon." — Black and White. " A 
 new form of didactic Socialistic demonstration, like the practic- 
 able laundries with the poor washerwomen at work which 
 
 ' * On this subject of current middle-class morality, see also 
 the letters I have addressed to the Press in ansv^^er to my 
 critics, extracts from which will be found in the second 
 appendix. 
 
112 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 figured in a recent procession in Hyde Park." — Sunday Sun. 
 ** It would be readable and might be useful as a Fabian 
 pamphlet." — Weekly Dispatch. "In no sense a drama, but a 
 succession of dialogues in which the author sets forth his 
 views concerning Socialist questions." — Lloyds. " Not a play 
 — a pamphlet." — Encore. " The exposure of certain social sins 
 connected with the letting of tenement houses afforded the 
 sole raison d'etre of Mr. Shaw's feeble little play." — Observer. 
 " His propaganda — I beg pardon, his new play." — Penny 
 Illustrated Paper. " Merely a lecture." — Financial Observer. 
 *' Mr. Shaw wishes to utter a tirade against certain abuses ; 
 and he thinks the theatre a suitable pulpit for his utterances.*' 
 — Colonies and India. "The play is a pamphlet in dramatic 
 form." — Western Mercury. " The whole of the three acts is 
 occupied with a dreary discussion of the ethics of slum 
 property." — Birmingham Post. "Three acts of dreary dis- 
 sertation on the familiar text that 'rent is robbery.'" — York- 
 shire Post. Mr. Bernard Shaw is an amiable Fabian who 
 believes that * rent is robbery.'" — Yorkshire Evening Post. 
 
 Now I think it must be evident at this rate to 
 all who have read the play, that if I had written 
 TAe Merchant of Venice it would have been de- 
 nounced as a dissertation on the Jewish question, 
 complicated by a crude exposition of the peculiar 
 views of the Fabian Society on the law of contract. 
 All I need say on the Fabian point is that any person 
 who would like to see the difference between an essay 
 on rent and Widowers' Houses can buy Fabian 
 Essays^ containing just such an essay by me, for 
 ninepence. Fabian pamphlets, in which I have had 
 a hand, can be obtained for a penny ; and a com- 
 parison of them with this play will shew how little 
 the critics quoted above know how merciful I have 
 been to them. Let me say, however, that it is im- 
 possible for any fictionist, dramatic or other, to make 
 true pictures of modern society without some know- 
 
Widowers' Houses. 113 
 
 ledge of the economic anatomy of it. And since 
 what the dramatist ought to know the critic ought 
 to know, a course of Fabian literature would most 
 unquestionably do incalculable good to both drama- 
 tists and critics, if they could be persuaded to go 
 through it. For all that, I see that it would be useless 
 to blame a critic to-day for not being an economist, 
 or even an ordinarily competent politician and man 
 of business. Nobody expects it from him ; and he 
 himself benightedly ridicules the idea. But what I 
 do expect him to know is that " bluebook plays " 
 hold the stage far better than conventionally idealist 
 dramas. I need only mention the irrepressible Never 
 too Late to Mend to prove that Widowers' Houses, far 
 from being a play of so new a sort that its very title 
 to tlie name of drama is questionable, is, on its blue- 
 book bide, a sample (whether good or bad is not here 
 in question) of one of the most familiar, popular, 
 and firmly established genres in English dramatic 
 literature. It is a matter of experience that the 
 dramatized or novelized bluebook or Fabian Essay 
 (so to speak) has ten times as much chance of 
 success as the mere romance, though it is also, of 
 course, a much more difficult job for the writer. My 
 warning therefore is against the folly of assuming 
 that the reverse is the case, and that a play is handi- 
 capped by a basis of bluebook. A wary critic, if he 
 wished to "slate" Widowers' Houses^ would begin 
 somewhat in this fashion : *' Not even with all the 
 advantages of his profound economic knowledge 
 and his complete acquaintance with the wealth of 
 dramatic material stored in our national bluebook 
 literature was Mr. Shaw able to produce a tolerable 
 
 8 
 
114 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 play." It is mere perversity to assume that the 
 less a dramatist knows and cares about real life, tlie 
 better his plays are likely to be. 
 
 There are a dozen other warnings that I could 
 formulate for the sake of our younger and weaker 
 brethren, who are being severely tested by the 
 dramatic revival now beginning. But as I very 
 much doubt whether they have read thus far into 
 what must be to them a piece of heavy literature, 
 I will indulge myself by laying down a just now 
 rather weary pen, confident that the really able 
 brothers of the craft will forgive my preaching, 
 seeing that they best know how much the rest stand 
 in need of a sermon. My sole object is to knock on 
 the head a few empty formulas which take up the 
 space in dramatic criticism which should be occupied 
 by real live ideas, and which have been trotted out 
 in the last few years whenever a play has been 
 produced with any pretension to represent modern 
 life as it is really lived. 
 
Appendix II. 
 
 The following extracts from letters addressed by 
 the author to the press after the performance of 
 Widowers Houses are reprinted here to give the 
 reading public some idea of the commotion which 
 can be made in a theatre by a work which, if 
 published as a novel, would surprise no one. First, 
 as to the extent of the commotion, hear "The Era 
 of the 24th December, 1892: — 
 
 " Hardly any recent play has provoked so much newspaper 
 and other controversy as Mr. Bernard Shaw's Widower^ 
 Houses. At least two of the daily papers, on the day after 
 its production, devoted leading articles to its consideration, 
 besides special criticisms of almost unprecedented length. 
 We should be afraid to say how many journals gave two long 
 columns to it. Then all last week a controversy on its merits 
 and demerits raged in a morning paper ; and it was held up 
 as an example of the kind of play the Lord Chamberlain did 
 not object to by Mrs. Aveling in her lecture to the Playgoers ; 
 and, finally, it was one of the subjects of an interesting lecture 
 delivered last Sunday night to the Socialists of Hammersmith. 
 The last fact, however, becomes less surprising when we find 
 that the lecturer was Mr. Bernard Shaw." 
 
 This account is not exaggerated. The play 
 occupied the press for weeks after its production to 
 an extent which, in a really healthy and active phase 
 of dramatic art, would have been absurd. The 
 discussion raged chiefly round matters of fact, most 
 
1 1 6 Widowers' Houses, 
 
 of the writers seeming to have no definite idea of the 
 sources of the revenues enjoyed by the propertied 
 classes under our industrial system. In replying to 
 these criticisms the author carefully abstained from 
 confusing issues of fact with the artistic issues alluded 
 to in the preface to the present volume ; and it 
 should be noted that whereas in that preface the 
 play is defended as a work of art, here it is justified 
 mainly as a document. To the editor of The Star 
 the author is indebted for the publication, on the 
 19th December, 1892, of a letter of which the 
 following is an abridgment : — 
 
 " Sir, — ^The critics of my play Widowers* Houses have now 
 had their say. Will you be so good as to let the author have 
 a turn ? I have gone through every criticism I could get 
 hol4 of; and I think it is now clear that ' the m.'v/ drama ' has 
 no malice to fear from the serious critics. The care with 
 which every possible admission in my favor has been made, 
 even in the notices of those who found the play intolerably 
 disagreeable and the author intolerably undramatic, shews 
 that the loss of critical balance produced by the first shock of 
 Ibsen's Ghosts was only momentary, and that the most uncon- 
 ventional and obnoxious agitator-dramatist, even when he has 
 gone out of his way to attack bis critics, need not fear a Press 
 vendetta. 
 
 ** However, the fairness of criticism is one thing, its 
 adequacy quite another. I do not hesitate to say that many 
 of my critics have been completely beaten by the play simply 
 because they are ignorant of society. Do not let me be 
 misunderstood : I do not mean that they eat with their knives, 
 drink the contents of their finger-bowls, or sit down to dinner 
 in ulsters and green neckties. What 1 mean is that they do 
 not know life well enough to recognize it in the glare of 
 the footlights. Ttvey denounce Sartorius, my house-knacking 
 widower, as a monstrous libel on the middle and upper class, 
 because he grinds his money remorselessly out of the poor. 
 But they do not (and cannot) answer his argument as to the 
 impossibility of his acting otherwise under our social system ; 
 
Widowers' Houses. 117 
 
 nor do they notice the fact that though he is a bad landlord he 
 is not in the least a bad man as men go. Even in his economic 
 capacity I have made him a rather favorable specimen of his 
 class. I might have made him a shareholder in a match 
 factory v^^here avoidable * phossy jaw ' is not avoided, or in 
 a tram company vt^orking its men seventeen and a half hours 
 a day, or in a railway company with a terrible death-roll 
 of mangled shunters, or in a whitelead factory or chemical 
 works — in short, I might have piled on the agony beyond the 
 endurance of my audience, and yet not made him one whit 
 worse than thousands of personally amiable and respected 
 men who have invested in the most lucrative way the savings 
 they have earned or inherited. I will not ask those critics 
 who are so indignant with my ' distorted and myopic outlook 
 on society ' what they will do with the little money their 
 profession may enable them to save. I will simply tell them 
 what they must do with it, and that is follow the advice of 
 their stockbroker as to the safest and most remunerative 
 investment, reserving their moral scruples for the expenditure 
 of the interest, and their sympathies for the treatment of the 
 members of their own families. Even in spending the interest 
 they will have no alternative but to get the best value they 
 can for their money without regard to the conditions under 
 which the articles they buy are produced. They will take a 
 domestic pride in their comfortable homes, full of furniture 
 made by ' slaughtered ' {i.e. extra-sweated) cabinet makers, 
 and go to church on Sunday in shirts sewn by women who 
 can only bring their wages up to subsistence point by prostitu- 
 tion. What will they say to Sartorius then ? What, indeed, 
 can they say to him now ? — these * guilty creatures sitting at 
 a play,' who, instead of being struck to the soul and presently 
 proclaiming their malefactions, are naively astonished and 
 revolted at the spectacle of a man on the stsge acting as we 
 are all acting perforce every day. The notion that the people 
 in Widowers' Houses are abnormally vicious or odious could 
 only prevail in a community in which Sartorius is absolutely 
 typical in his unconscious villainy. Like my critics, he lacks 
 conviction of sin. Now, the didactic object of my play is to 
 bring conviction of sin — to make the Pharisee who repudiates 
 Sartorius as either a Harpagon or a diseased dream of mine, 
 and thanks God that such persons do not represent his class, 
 
ii8 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 recognize that Sartorius is his own photograph. In vain will 
 the virtuous critic tell me that he does not own slum pro- 
 perty : all I want to see is the label on his matchbox, or 
 his last week's washing-bill, to judge for myself whether he 
 really ever gives a second thought to Sartorius's tenants, 
 who make his matchboxes and wash his stockings so 
 cheaply. 
 
 *' As to the highly connected young gentleman, naturally 
 straightforward and easygoing, who bursts into genuine 
 indignation at the sufferings of the poor, and, on being shewn 
 that he cannot help them, becomes honestly cynical and 
 throws off all responsibility whatever, that is nothing but the 
 reality of the everyday process known as disillusion. His 
 allowing the two business men to get his legs under their 
 mahogany, and to persuade him to * stand in' with a specula- 
 tion of which he understands nothing except that he is 
 promised some money out of it, will surprise no one who 
 knows the City, and has seen the exploitation of aristocratic 
 names by City promoters spread from needy guinea-pig 
 colonels, and lords with courtesy titles, to eldest sons of the 
 noblest families. If I had even represented Harry Trench as 
 letting himself in for eighteen months' hard labour for no 
 greater crime than that of being gambler enough to be the too 
 willing dupe of a swindler, the incident would be perfectly 
 true to life. As to the compensation speculation in the third 
 act being a fraud which no gentleman would have counte- 
 nanced, that opinion is too innocent to be discussed. I can 
 only say that as the object of the scheme is to make a haul at 
 the expense of the ratepayers collectively, it is much less cruel 
 and treacherous in its incidence than the sort of speculation 
 which made the late Mr. Jay Gould universally respected 
 during his lifetime. I shall be told next that Panama is a 
 dream of mine. 
 
 " There is a curious idea in the minds of some of my critics 
 that I have given away my case by representing the poor 
 man, Lickcheese, as behaving, when he gets the chance, 
 exactly as the rich man does. These gentlemen believe that, 
 according to me, what is wrong with society is that the rich, 
 who are all wicked, oppress the poor, who are all virtuous. 
 I will not waste the space of The Star by dealing with such 
 a misconception further than to curtly but good-humouredly 
 
Widowers' Houses. 119 
 
 inform those who entertain it that they are fools. I administer 
 the remark, not as an insult, but as a tonic. 
 
 " Now comes the question, How far does all this touch the 
 merits of the play as a work of art ? Obviously not at all ; 
 but it has most decidedly touched the value of the opinions of 
 my critics on that point. The evidence of the notices (I have 
 sheaves of them before me) is irresistible. With hardly an 
 exception the men who find my sociology wrong are also the 
 men who find my dramatic workmanship bad ; and vice versa. 
 Even the criticism of the acting is biassed in the same way. 
 The effect on me, of course, is to reassure me completely as 
 to my own competence as a playwright. The very success 
 with which I have brought all the Philistines and sentimental 
 idealists down on me proves the velocity and penetration 
 with v/hich my realism got across the footlights. I am well 
 accustomed to judge of the execution I have done by the cries 
 of the wounded. 
 
 " On one point, however, I heartily thank my critics for 
 their unanimous forbearance. Not one of them has betrayed 
 the licenses I have taken in the political and commercial 
 details of the play. Considering that I have made a resident 
 in Surbiton eligible as a St. Giles* vestryman ; that I have 
 made the London County Council contemporary with the 
 1885 Royal Commission on the Housing of the Working 
 Classes ; that I have represented an experienced man of 
 business as paying 7 per cent, on a first mortgage — con- 
 sidering, in short, that I have recklessly sacrificed realism to 
 dramatic effect in the machinery of the play, I feel, as may 
 be well imagined, deeply moved by the compliments which 
 have been paid me on my perfect knowledge of economics 
 and business." 
 
 Before giving the rest of the letter, it is con- 
 venient to refer here to a very funny discussion 
 which arose over the scene in the second act in 
 which Blanche assaults the servant. Although 
 nothing is commoner on the stage than bodily 
 violence threatened or executed by indignant heroes, 
 heroines have hitherto been excluded by convention 
 from this method of displaying their prowess. The 
 
I20 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 author resolved to redress this injustice to Woman 
 by making his heroine attack her servant much as 
 Othello attacks his ancient. The resultant sensation 
 testified to the hardihood of the experiment. The 
 critics were highly scandalized ; and their view of 
 the incident was expressed in the following passage 
 from a notice which appeared the day after the 
 performance : — 
 
 " What a ludicrous incident I How we all shrieked with 
 laughter I What has such a scene to do with the play ? Why 
 did Mr. Shaw introduce it ? I will tell you why. Because 
 Mr. Shaw wishes to present Blanche as a type, a type of 
 the modern middle-class Englishwoman (as he sees her), the 
 woman who will not hear about the poor wretches in their 
 tenement houses because it is so unpleasant, and who, in her 
 own drawing-room, can, in a fit of temper, use brutal violence 
 to her own dependants." 
 
 It was not possible for the author to seriously 
 discuss the notion that he regarded temper and 
 violence as class characteristics. He was only able 
 to say, in a letter to The Speaker^ " Some people 
 think that ladies with tempers are never personally 
 violent. I happen to know that they are ; and so 
 I leave the matter." It is true that the ideal lady — 
 the " typical " lady if that term be preferred — never 
 strikes, never swears, never smokes, never gambles, 
 never drinks, never nags, never makes advances 
 to inept wooers, never, in short, does anything 
 " unladylike," whether " in her own drawing-room " 
 or elsewhere. Just so the ideal clergyman never 
 hunts, never goes to the theatre, and regards the 
 poorest laborer as his equal and his brother by their 
 common Father, God. The author confesses to having 
 
Widowers' Houses. 121 
 
 jilted the ideal lady for a real one. He did it inten- 
 tionally; and he will probably do it again, and yet 
 again, even at the risk of having the real ones mis- 
 taken for counter-ideals. Why Blanche should be 
 held to indicate any belief on his part that all ladies 
 are hot-tempered, any more than Hamlet is held to 
 indicate a belief on Shakespear*s part that all princes 
 are philosophers, is not apparent to him. 
 
 Here is a final extract from the letter to T^he Star 
 on the subject of Blanche : — 
 
 *^0n another point in her conduct one critic makes an 
 objection which, I confess, amazed me. Sartorius, as the son 
 of a very poor woman, knows that the poor are human beings 
 exactly like himself. But his daughter, brought up as a lady, 
 conceives them as a different and inferior species. ' I hate the 
 poor,' she says — 'at least, I hate those dirty, drunken, dis- 
 reputable people who live like pigs.' The critic in question, 
 whose bias towards myself is altogether friendly, cannot con- 
 ceive that a young lady would avow such inhuman sentiments: 
 hypocrisy, he contends, would prevent her if her heart did 
 not. I can only refer him, if he has really never heard such 
 sentiments boasted of by ladies, to the comments of the Times 
 and the St. James's Gazette (to name no other papers written 
 by gentlemen for gentlemen) on the unemployed, on the 
 starving Irish peasants whose rents have since been reduced 
 wholesale in the Irish land courts, or on the most heavily 
 sweated classes of workers whose miserable plight has been 
 exposed before Parliamentary Committees and Royal Com- 
 missions, to prove that the thinkers and writers of Blanche 
 Sartorius's party vie with each other in unconscious — nay, 
 conscientious — brutality, callousness, and class prejudice when 
 they speak of the proletariat. Hypocrisy with them takes the 
 shape of dissembling sympathy with the working class when 
 they really feel it, not of affecting it when they do not feel it. 
 My friend and critic must remember the savage caricatures of 
 William Morris, John Burns, Miss Helen Taylor, Mrs. Besant, 
 etc., in which Punch once indulged, as well as the outrageous 
 calumnies which were heaped on the late Charles Bradlaugh 
 
122 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 during his struggle to enter Parliament, not to mention the 
 cases of unsocial conduct by county gentlemen and magistrates 
 exposed every week in the 'Pillory' columns of Truth. Am I 
 to be told that the young ladies who read these papers in our 
 suburban villas are less narrow and better able to see across 
 the frontiers of their own class than the writers whom their 
 fathers support ? The fact is that Blanche's class prejudices, 
 like those of the other characters in the play, are watered 
 down instead of exaggerated. The whole truth is too mon- 
 strous to be told otherwise than by degrees." 
 
 To this a writer in The Ladfs Pictorial (24th 
 December, 1892) retorts: — 
 
 " So it comes to this, that Mr. Shaw's defence for drawing 
 a middle-class English girl as a virago who batters her maid 
 and vilifies the starving poor, is that in professedly political 
 papers (written by men for men — women not entering into 
 the question at all), the other side is held up to ridicule by 
 mud being flung upon their humble allies ! as though the 
 political game played by political journals has anything what- 
 ever to do with the attributes of humanity common to the 
 average woman and the average man I " 
 
 It only remains for the author to meet this defence 
 by citing the journalism written by women for 
 women, and by denying most strenuously that the 
 indifference of women to political journalism can be 
 interpreted in any other way than as a selfish and 
 narrow insensibility to the social questions which 
 form the real substance of politics. 
 
 The only other utterance of the author's which 
 need be quoted is from a letter to The Speaker 
 (31st December, 1892). It is not a defence of the 
 artistic value of the play, which cannot be established 
 or disestablished by argument, but a renewal of the 
 author's insistence on the impossibility of appreciating 
 
Widowers' Flouses. 123 
 
 a work of art without adequate knowledge of its 
 subject-matter : — 
 
 " I now approach the question which is really the most 
 interesting from the critical point of view. Is it possible to 
 treat the artistic quality of a play altogether independently of 
 its scientific quality ? For example, is it possible for a critic 
 to be perfectly appreciative and perfectly incredulous and half 
 insensible at the same time ? I do not beheve it for a 
 moment. No point in a drama can produce any effect at all 
 unless the spectator perceives it and accepts it as a real point ; 
 and this primary condition being satisfied, the force of the 
 effect will depend on the extent to which the point interests 
 the spectator — that is, seems momentous to him. The spectacle 
 of Hamlet fencing with an opponent whose foil is ' unbated ' 
 produces its effect because the audience knows the danger ; 
 but there are risks just as thrilling to those who understand 
 them, risks of cutting arteries in surgical operations, risks of 
 losing large sums by a momentary loss of nerve in the money 
 market, risks of destroying one's whole character by an appar- 
 ently trifling step, perils of all sorts which may give the most 
 terrible intensity to a scene in the eyes of those who have the 
 requisite technical knowledge or experience of life to fathom 
 the full significance of what they are witnessing, but which 
 would produce as little effect on others as the wheeling 
 forward of a machine gun would on a hostile tribe of savages 
 unacquainted with the * resources of civilization.' 
 
 " It has long been clear to me that nothing will be done for 
 the theatre until the most able dramatists refuse to write down 
 to the level of that imaginary monster the British Public. We 
 want a theatre for people who have lived, thought, and felt, 
 and who have some real sense that women are human beings 
 just like men, only worse brought up, and consequently worse 
 behaved. In such a theatre the merely literary man who has 
 read and written instead of living until he has come to feel 
 fiction as experience and to resent experience as fiction, would 
 be as much out of place as the ideal British Public itself. 
 Well, let him sit out his first mistaken visit quietly and not 
 come again; for it is clear that only by holding the mirror 
 up to literature can the dramatist please him, whereas it is 
 by holding it up to nature that good work is produced. In 
 
124 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 such a theatre Widowers^ Houses would rank as a trumpery 
 farcical comedy ; whereas to-day it is excitedly discussed as a 
 daringly original sermon, political essay, satire, Drapier letter 
 or what not, even by those who will not accept it as a play on 
 any terms because its hero did not, when he learnt that his 
 income came from slum property, at once relinquish it (i.^., 
 make it a present to Sartorius without benefiting the tenants) 
 and go to the goldfields to dig out nuggets with his strong 
 right arm, so that he might return to wed his Blanche after a 
 shipwreck (witnessed by her in a vision), Justin time to rescue 
 her from beggary, brought upon her by the discovery that 
 Lickcheese was the rightful heir to the property of Sartorius, 
 who had dispossessed and enslaved him by a series of forgeries 
 unmasked by the faithful Cokane. Was it really lack of 
 capacity that led me to forego all this 'drama' by making 
 my hero do exactly what he would have done in real life — 
 that is, apologize like a gentleman (in the favorable sense) for 
 accusing another man of his own unconscious rascality, and 
 admit his inability to change a world that will not take the 
 trouble to change itself?" 
 
 The reader will now be in a position to understand 
 the sort of controversy which has so magnified the 
 importance of fVidowers^ Houses, 
 
Appendix III. 
 
 The following is an item of news from 'The Star 
 newspaper of the 2nd January, 1893 : — 
 
 *' A dangerous staircase has proved fatal to Elizabeth H , 
 
 aged 40, a charwoman, of X Buildings. The evidence at St. 
 Giles's Coroner's Court on Saturday showed that the deceased 
 was found lying at the bottom of the stairs at her lodgings 
 on Tuesday morning, at half-past twelve, in an insensible 
 condition. She was carried upstairs and put to bed, but died 
 the same day. 
 
 '^ The Coroner's officer : ' The stairs are very dangerous at 
 night. They are insufficiently lighted.' 
 
 "Dr. Brennan deposed that death was due to extensive 
 fracture of the skull. He said he found the stairs dark and 
 slippery. A handrail was needed. 
 
 "The Coroner: 'There is, I understand, no resident landlord 
 on the premises.' Over a hundred families live at these 
 buildings. The jury, in returning a verdict of 'Accidental 
 death,' "added the subjoined rider: 'The jurors, having heard 
 in evidence that the staircases leading to X Buildings are 
 insufficiently lighted, and that there are no handrails, would 
 call the attention of the landlord to this condition of things, 
 with a view to their immediate improvement.'" 
 
 The report of the Royal Commission of 1885 on 
 the Housing of the Working Classes, alluded to in 
 the third act of the play, may also be consulted as 
 to the ordinary rent and condition of a single -room 
 tenement in London. 
 
126 Widowers' Houses. 
 
 Finally, it may not be amiss to observe that the 
 author has himself made collections of weekly rents 
 from very poor tenants, and is conversant with the 
 attitude of the middle-class proprietor towards the 
 laborer tenant 
 
 TH B END 
 
 Printed by Harell, Watson, & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury. 
 
THE 
 INDEPENDENT THEATRE SERIES. 
 
 Edited by J. r. GREIN, 
 
 \/l ESSRS. HENRY & CO. beg to announce that they have made 
 •*•'■*■ arrangements for the publication of a selection of the most notable 
 plays in the repertory of the Independent Theatre. The Series, under the 
 editorship of Mr. J. T. Grein, the founder and director of the Independent 
 Theatre, will be uniform with the present volume ; and the price will be 
 half-a-crown nc^. It is hoped that the Authors' Prefaces will form an 
 interesting feature in the Series. 
 
 The First Volume of the Series will consist of 
 
 WIDOWERS' HOUSES, 
 
 by G. Bernard Shaw, with a Preface by the Author, and an Appendix 
 dealing with the discussion raised by the performance. 
 
 The Second Volume will contain 
 
 ALAN'S WIFE, 
 
 A Study in Three Scenes. Anonymous. With a Preface by J. T. Grein. 
 The Third Volume will contain 
 
 A VISIT. 
 
 by Edward Brandes, Translated by William Archer, who will 
 contribute a Prefatory Note on the alterations made by the Lord Chamber- 
 lain in the Acted Version of the Play, and an Article upon the Danish 
 Drama. 
 
 Of^r Volumes will be announced in due course. 
 
 HENRY AND CO., 6, BOUVERIE STREET, E.C. 
 
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
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