Major Barbara: Adolphus Cusins Lines

Lady Britomart: … I don’t in the least know what you are laughing at, Adolphus. I am surprised at you, though I expected nothing better from Charles Lomax.

Cusins: Barbara has been trying to teach me the West Ham Salvation March.

Lady Britomart: I see nothing to laugh at in that; nor should you if you are really converted.

Cusins: You were not present. It was really funny, I believe.

Lady Britomart: Adolphus: you are a professor of Greek. Can you translate Charles Lomax’s remarks into reputable English for us?

Cusins: If I may so, Lady Brit, I think Charles has rather happily expressed what we all feel.

Lady Britomart: Not since she was a little kid, Charles, as you express it with that elegance of diction and refinement of thought that seem never to desert you. Accordingly — er —. Now I have forgotten what I was going to say. That comes of your provoking me to be sarcastic, Charles. Adolphus: will you kindly tell me where I was.

Cusins: You were saying that as Mr. Undershaft has not seen his children since they were babies, he will form his opinion of the way you have brought them up from their behavior tonight, and that therefore you wish us all to be particularly careful to conduct ourselves well, especially Charles.

Undershaft: Happy to make your acquaintance, Mr. Stephen. Then you must be my son. How are you, my young friend? He is very like you, my love.

Cusins: You flatter me, Mr. Undershaft. My name is Cusins: engaged to Barbara. This is Major Barbara Undershaft, of the Salvation Army. That is Sarah, your second daughter. This is Stephen Undershaft, your son.

Lomax: Nobody’d know it, I assure you. You look all right, you know.

Cusins: Let me advise you to study Greek, Mr. Undershaft. Greek scholars are privileged men. Few of them know Greek; and none of them know anything else; but their position is unchallengeable. Other languages are the qualifications of waiters and commercial travelers: Greek is to a man of position what the hallmark is to silver.

Lomax:: Would you mind saying that again? I didn’t quite follow it.

Cusins: It’s quite simple. As Euripides says, one man’s meat is another man’s poison morally as well as physically.

Bill: I’ve only ad to stand it for a mornin: e’ll av to stand it for a time.

Cusins: That’s a frightful reflection, Mr. Walker. But I can’t tear myself away from her.

Bill: I didn’t ast you. Cawn’t you never keep your mahth shut? I ast the genlmn.

Cusins: Yes: I think you’re right, Mr. Walker. Yes: I should do it. It’s curious: it’s exactly what an ancient Greek would have done.

Barbara: But what good will it do?

Cusins: Well, it will give Mr. Farmile some exercise; and it will satisfy Mr. Walker’s soul.

Bill: … You take my tip, mate. Stop er jawr; or you’ll dire afore your time. Wore aht: thets wot you’ll b: wore aht.

Cusins: I wonder.

Barbara: Dolly!

Cusins: Yes, my dear, it’s very wearing to be in love with you. If it lasts, I quite think I shall die young.

Barbara: Should you mind?

Cusins: Not at all. [Kiss over the drum.]

Undershaft: I fancy you guess something of what is in my mind, Mr. Cusins. Exactly so. But suppose Barbara finds you out!

Cusins: I am quite genuinely interested in the views of the Salvation Army. The fact is, I am sort of a collector of religions; and the curious thing is taht I find I can believe them all. By the way, have you any religion?

Undershaft: Yes.

Cusins: Anything out of the common?

Undershaft: Only that there are two things necessary to Salvation.

Cusins: Ah, the Church Catechism: Baptism and —.

Undershaft: No. Money and gunpowder.

Cusins: That is the general opinion of our governing classes. The novelty in hearing any man confess it.

Undershaft: Just so.

Cusins: Excuse me: is there any place in your religion for honor, justice, truth, love, mercy, and so forth?

Undershaft: Yes: they are the graces and luxuries of a rich, strong, and safe life.

Cusins: Suppose one is forced to choose between them and money and gunpowder?

Undershaft: Choose money and gunpowder; for without enough of both you cannot afford the others.

Cusins: That is your religion?

Undershaft: Yes.

Cusins: Barbara won’t stand that. You will have to choose between your religion and Barbara.

Undershaft: So will you, my friend. She will find out that that drum of yours is hollow.

Cusins: Father Undershaft: you are mistaken: I am a sincere Salvationist. You do not understand the Salvation Army. It is the army of joy, of love, of courage: it has banished the fear and remorse and despair of the old hell ridden evangelical sects: It picks the waster out of the public house and makes a man of him: it finds a worm in a back kitchen, and lo! A woman! Men and women of rank too, sons and daughters of the Highest. It takes the poor professor of Greek, the most artificial and self-suppressed of human creatures, from his meal of roots, and lets loose the rhapsodist in him; reveals the true worship of Dionysos to him; send him down the public street drumming dithyrambs.

Undershaft:You will alarm the shelter.

Cusins: Oh, they are accustomed to these sudden ecstasies of piety. However, if the drum worries you—.

Undershaft: Thank you.

Cusins: You remember what Euripides says about your money and gunpowder?

Undershaft: No.

Cusins: One and another. In money and guns may outpass his brother; But whoe’er can know, As the long days go, That to live is happy, has found his heaven.

My translation: what do you think of it?

Undershaft: I think, my friend, that if you wish to know, as the long days go, that to live is happy, you must first acquire enough money enough for a decent life, and power enough to be your own master.

Cusins: You are damnably disgusting.

Undershaft: May I ask — as Barbara’s father — how much a year she is to be loved forever on?

Cusins: As Barbara’s father, that is more your affair than mine. I can feed her by teaching Greek: that is about all.

Undershaft: Do you consider it a good match for her?

Cusins: Mr. Undershaft: I am in many ways a weak, timid, ineffectual person; and my health is far from satisfactory. But whenever I feel that I must have anything, I get it, sooner or later. I feel that way about Barbara. I don’t like marriage: I feel intensely afraid of it; and I don’t know what I shall do with Barbara or what she will do with me. But I feel that I and nobody else must marry her. Please regard this as settled. — Not that I wish to be arbitrary; but why should I waste your time in discussing what is inevitable?

Undershaft: You mean that you will stick at nothing: not even the conversion of the Salvation Army to the worship of Dionysos.

Cusins: The business of the Salvation Army is to save, not to wrangle about the name of the pathfinder. Dionysos or another: what does it matter?

Undershaft: Professor Cusins you are a young man after my own heart.

Cusins: Mr. Undershaft: you are, as far as I am able to gather, a most infernal old rascal; but you appeal very strongly to my sense of ironic humor.

Undershaft: And now to business.

Cusins: Pardon me. We were discussing religion. Why go back to such an uninteresting and unimportant subject as business?

Undershaft: Religion is our business at present, because it is through religion alone that we can win Barbara.

Cusins: Have you, too, fallen in love with Barbara?

Undershaft: Yes, with a father’s love.

Cusins: A father’s love for a grown-up daughter is the most dangerous of all infatuations. I apologize for mentioning my own pale, coy, mistrustful fancy in the same breath with it.

Undershaft: Keep to the point. We have to win her; and we are neither of us Methodists.

Cusins: That doesn’t matter. The power of Barbara wields here — the power that wields Barbara herself — is not Calvinism, not Presbyterianism, not Methodism —

Undershaft: Not Greek Paganism either, eh?

Cusins: I admit that. Barbara is quite original in her religion.

Undershaft: Aha! Barbara Undershaft would be. Her inspiration comes from within herself.

Cusins: How do you suppose it got there?

Undershaft: It is the Undershaft inheritance. I shall hand on my torch to my daughter. She shall make my converts and preach my gospel.

Cusins: What! Money and gunpowder!

Undershaft: Yes, money and gunpowder; freedom and power; command of life and command of death.

Cusins: This is extremely interesting, Mr. Undershaft. Of course, you know that you are mad.

Undershaft: And you?

Cusins: Oh, mad as a hatter. You are welcome to my secret since I have discovered yours. But I am astonished. Can a madman make cannons?

Undershaft: Would anyone else than a madman make them? And now question for question. Can a sane man translate Euripides?

Cusins: No.

Undershaft: Can a sane woman make a man of a waster or a woman of a worm? Are there two made people or three in this Salvation shelter today?

Cusins: You mean Barbara as mad as we are!

Undershaft: Let us call things by their proper names. I am a millionaire; you are a poet; Barbara is a savior of souls. What have we three to do with the common mob of slaves and idolaters?

Cusins: Take care! Barbara is in love with the common people. So am I. Have you never felt the romance of that love?

Undershaft: … We three must stand together above the common people: how else can we help their children to climb up beside us? Barbara must belong to us, not to the Salvation Army.

Cusins: Well, I can only say that if you think you will get her away from the Salvation Army by talking to her as you have been talking to me, you don’t know Barbara.

Undershaft: My friend: I never ask for what I can buy.

Cusins: Do I understand you to imply that you can buy Barbara?

Undershaft: No; but I can buy the Salvation Army.

Cusins: Quite impossible.

Undershaft: You shall see. All religious organizations exist by selling themselves to the rich.

Cusins: Not the Army. That is the Church of the poor.

Undershaft: All the more reason for buying it.

Cusins: You really are an infernal old rascal.

Barbara: Yes, isn’t it?

Cusins: Mephistopheles! Machiavelli!

Mrs. Baines: Lord Saxmundham gives us the money to stop — to take his own business from him.

Cusins: Pure self-sacrifice on Bodger’s part, clearly! Bless dear Bodger!

Undershaft: Yet I give you this money to help you to hasten my own commercial ruin.

Cusins: The millennium will be inaugurated by the unselfishness of Undershaft and Bodger. Oh be joyful!

Jenny: Oh dear! How blessed, how glorious it all is!

Cusins: Let us seize this unspeakable moment. Let us march to the great meeting at once. Excusem just an instant.

Mrs. Maines: Barbara shall tell them that the Army is saved, and save through you.

Cusins: You shall carry the flag down the first street, Mrs. Baines. Mr. Undershaft is a gifted trombonist: he shall intone an Olympian diapason to the West Ham Salvation March. Blow, Machiavelli, blow.

Undershaft: The trumpet in Zion!

Cusins: We have converted everything good here, including Bodger.

Barbara: Dolly: you are breaking my heart.

Cusins: What is a broken heart more or less here? Dionysos Undershaft has descended. I am possessed.

Barbara: I can’t bear anymore. Quick march!

Cusins: Off we go. Play up, there! Im menso guiblio.

Undershaft: “My ducats and my daughter”!

Cusins: Money and gunpowder!

Barbara: I expected you this morning, Dolly. Didn’t you guess that?

Cusins: I’m sorry. I have only just breakfasted.

Barbara: Have you had one of your bad nights?

Cusins: No: I had a rather good night: in fact, one of the most remarkable night I have ever passed.

Barbara: Are you joking, Dolly?

Cusins: No. I have been making a night of it with the nominal head of this household: that is all.

Lady Brit: Andrew made you drunk!

Cusins: No: he only provided the wine. I think it was Dionysos who made me drunk. I told you I was possessed.

Lady Brit:: You’re not sober yet. Go home to bed at once.

Cusins: I have never before ventured to reproach you, Lady Brit; but how could you marry the Prince of Darkness?

Lady Brit: … This is a new accomplishment of Andrew’s, by the way. He usen’t to drink.

Cusins: He doesn’t now. He only sat there and completed the wreck of my moral basis, the rout of my convictions, the purchase of my soul. He cares for you, Barbara. That is what makes him so dangerous to me.

Barbara: That has nothing to do with it, Dolly. There are larger loves and diviner dreams than the fireside ones. You know that, don’t you?

Cusins: Yes: that is our understanding. I know it. I hold to it. Unless he can win me on that holier ground he may amuse me for a while; but he can get no deeper hold, strong as he is.

Barbara: Keep to that; and the end will be rihgt. Now tell me what happened at the meeting.

Cusins: It was an amazing meeting. Mrs. Baines almost died of exhaustion. Jenny Hill went stark mad with hysteria. The Prince of Darkness played his trombone like a madman: its brazen roarings were like the laughter of the damned. 117 conversion took place then and there. They prayed with the most touching sincerity and gratitude for Bodger, and for the anonymous donor of the £5000. Your father would not let his name be given.

Lomax: That was rather fine of the old man, you know. Most chaps would have wanted the advertisement.

Cusins: He said all the charitable institutions would be down on him like kites on a battlefield if he gave his name.

Lady Brit: That’s Andrew all over. He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

Cusins: He convinced me that I have all my life been doing improper things for proper reasons.

Lady Brit: Adolphus: now that Barbara has left the Salvation Army, you had better leave it too. I will not have you playing that drum in the streets.

Cusins: Your orders are already obeyed, Lady Brit.

Barbara: Dolly: were you every really earnest about it? Would you have joined if you had never seen me?

Cusins: Well — er — well, possible, as a collector of religions —

Undershaft: Quite well after last night, Euripides, eh?

Cusins: As well as can be expected.

Lomax: I say, Dolly old chap: do you really mind the car?

Cusins: I prefer it.