The Collected Short Plays of Thornton Wilder, Volume II Read online

  ARTHUR: Oh . . . uh . . . what Mrs. Smythe is that?

  LEONORA (Quickly): Oh, I know you’ll like each other enormously when you do meet. There’s no doubt about it.

  (Red and green flicker at half strength.)

  ARTHUR: Mrs. Watson, your husband was telling me that your son William has been having a succession of colds all autumn. I suggested that just after Christmas he could go with my son Jim down to my mother’s house in Florida.

  BELINDA (The blue light starts flickering with the other two): Oh . . . uh . . . uh . . . uh . . .

  LEONORA: Oh, Belinda, it would do him a world of good. I’ve been there; it’s a perfectly beautiful place. They could be out in the sun all day.

  ARTHUR: Of course, I have purely selfish reasons for urging it, since my boy would have so much better a time with another boy along.

  BELINDA (All lights off, but a strong green; rises): Mr. Smythe, I thank you very much, really very much. But our family has made the rule never to be separated. We may be unusual in that; I don’t know. But I couldn’t let William . . . it’s such a distance . . . Thank you very much.

  ARTHUR: That’s as you think best, of course—I must be going now. Leonora, I shall probably be telephoning your house tonight . . . to ask about the weather. I’m glad to have met you, Mrs. Watson. Perhaps Mrs. Rogers and I may hope to meet you—some day.

  (Exit Arthur. All lights off.)

  BELINDA: What did he say “Mrs. Rogers and I”?

  LEONORA: What, dear?

  BELINDA: Who’s Mrs. Rogers? Why did he say “Mrs. Rogers and I”?

  LEONORA: Why not? That’s Arthur Rogers.

  BELINDA: But you said his name was SMYTHE! Leonora!—Arthur Rogers! Why, my husband thinks the world of him. How could you say that he was one of those Smiths?

  LEONORA: Belinda, sit down. I have something to tell you.

  BELINDA: What an awful mistake! Leonora, I might have hurt his feelings.

  LEONORA: You didn’t hurt his feelings; he merely thought you peculiar.

  BELINDA: Leonora!

  LEONORA: Now listen to what I’m saying, Belinda. Everything I’ve told you about the Smiths today is nonsense. Do you hear me?—perfect nonsense.

  BELINDA (Weeping): I shouldn’t have listened to you.

  LEONORA: Exactly! You shouldn’t have believed me. You have no infallible instinct at all. What you call your instinct about people is merely made of listening to nonsense like this.

  BELINDA: Leonora, I don’t know when I’ll forgive you. You’ve made a fool of me in front of a perfectly nice man.

  (Exit Belinda quickly. Leonora turns to the audience.)

  LEONORA: Well, that’s the story. I realize that what you all want to know is whether Belinda profited by this lesson. Maybe not. Only one Belinda in ten ever learns anything. It’s my nieces and nephews that I’m interested in.

  Before bidding you good-bye I wish to ask the forgiveness of all Smiths who were for a moment disparaged in this play—of Kate Smith; of Mary Pickford, born Smith; of Smith College; and of the Smithsonian Institution.

  But I have no apologies to make to those who were—even for a moment—shaken in their good opinion of the Smiths.

  Good night.

  END OF PLAY

  PART

  III

  “The Emporium”

  IN 1948, THORNTON WILDER launched a major drama he titled “The Emporium,” a work Donald Gallup (Wilder’s literary executor for many decades) has described as “Wilder’s attempt to write a play influenced by both Kierkegaard and Gertrude Stein, combining the atmosphere of Kafka’s The Castle with a Horatio Alger theme.” Despite efforts lasting into the mid-1950s, the play remained incomplete, although widely commented upon in the press. In 1948, for example, he told a Connecticut reporter that his new play is to be “a typical American success story and a spine-chilling melodrama . . . a combination of Horatio Alger and Kafka . . . and there‘ll be a little bit of me in it, too.” In 1953, to a German reporter seeking Wilder’s views of Oswald Spengler’s work, The Decline of the West, the playwright responded in part:

  The mysterious divine plan is not accessible to us. Eternity will balance the ledger; we are only agents and sufferers. I am attempting to shape these thoughts in a parareligious form in my new drama “The Emporium.” I have been working on it for three years now, but I am in no hurry. I follow the inner law of maturation without pressure.

  The publication of Wilder’s private journals in 1985 by Yale University Press, selected and edited by Donald Gallup, threw new light on the author’s struggles with “The Emporium.” As appendices to that volume, Mr. Gallup added two scenes from “The Emporium” that Wilder had declared “solid and good,” as well as a special portion of the author’s journal entries dealing with the play. This material is republished here as an example of how the author used his journal as a tool for thinking and meditating about his work in progress.

  “The Emporium”

  A PLAY IN [] SCENES AND A PROLOGUE

  CHARACTERS

  STAGE HANDS

  MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE

  MR. FOSTER, superintendent of the orphanage

  MRS. FOSTER, his wife

  MR. CONOVER, a janitor

  MRS. GRAHAM, a farmer’s wife, played by the same actor as Mrs. Foster

  JOHN, the Grahams’ adopted son

  MR. GRAHAM, a farmer, played by the same actor as Mr. Foster

  SETTING

  The Amanda Gregory Foster Orphanage. The Graham Farm.

  The curtain of the stage is not used in this play.

  Members of the audience arriving early will see the stage in half light. The six screens and the furniture and properties will be seen stacked about it at random.

  Two Stage Hands dressed in light blue jumpers, like garage mechanics, will enter ten minutes before the beginning and will remove these properties and set the stage for Scene One.

  The six screens are about six-and-a-half by twelve. They are like the movable walls of a Japanese house and are on rollers. They are all slightly off white, one faintly bluish, another toward buff, or green, and so on.

  There is a light chair on the left front of the stage (from the point of view of the actors), by the proscenium pillar.

  A few minutes before the play begins the Member of the Audience enters from the wings at the left, looks about a little nervously and seats himself in this chair, turning it toward the center of the stage. He affects to be at ease, glances occasionally at the arriving audience, and studies his program. He is a modest but very earnest man of about fifty. He will be on the stage throughout the play and, except at the moments indicated, he will remain motionless, fixing an absorbed attention on the action before him.

  A screen has been placed far front in the center of the stage, parallel with the footlights. The other screens are placed as though casually at the back of the stage though masking the entrances at the right and left. In front of the central screen is an old-fashioned “deacon’s” chair. Beside it is a stand on which lies a vast Bible.

  A bell starts ringing at the back of the auditorium.

  SCENE ONE

  The Amanda Gregory Foster Orphanage

  Enter Mr. Foster, superintendent of the orphanage. He is an excitable man of late middle age dressed in an old, faded and unpressed cutaway. He looks like a deacon or a small-town undertaker.

  He dashes out a few steps from the right and shakes his hand imperiously at the back of the auditorium, calling out loudly:

  MR. FOSTER: Ring the bell, Mr. Conover. Ring it again. Ring it louder. I want every child in this orphanage to be in this auditorium in four minutes.

  (He disappears as rapidly as he came.

  Enter from the same entrance Mrs. Foster, a worn woman of her husband’s age, dressed in faded blue gingham. She also calls to the back of the auditorium:)

  MRS. FOSTER: Come in, children. Come in quietly. Take your places quietly, girls. —Boys, behave yourselves! —Girls here
on my left, as usual. Mr. Conover, are they ringing the bell out in the vegetable garden, too? Thank you. —I wonder if the girls in the laundry can hear it, with all that machinery going.

  Henry Smith Foster, is that you? Will you run over to the laundry and tell all the children that Mr. Foster wants them—all of them—here in the Assembly Hall.

  Boys! Boys! —Don’t play now. Just take your places quietly.

  (Exit Mrs. Foster. A second alarm bell starts ringing in dissonance. Enter Mr. Foster.)

  MR. FOSTER: That’s right, Mr. Conover. Ring all the bells.

  George Washington Foster, are you there? Form them into lines, two by two. They’re all pushing and crowding. Girls on this side (Left); boys over here (Right). All children over eleven down here in front. Very young children in the back. The blind children and the lame children in the last rows. Children eight to eleven up in the balconies.

  (He shades his eyes and seems to be peering up to fourth, fifth, and sixth balconies. Then again to the back of the auditorium:)

  Now what’s all that group late for? Oh, you’ve been working in the dairy. Very well, take your places.

  (Enter Mrs. Foster. She goes up to her husband and says in his ear:)

  MRS. FOSTER: Now you mustn’t get excited! You remember what the doctor said.

  MR. FOSTER: Stragglers! Stragglers!

  Yes. —Edgar Allan Poe Foster! Late as usual. Always trying to be different.

  MRS. FOSTER: Remember your asthma! Remember your ulcers! You only hurt yourself when you get so excited. Remember, this has happened before and it will very certainly happen again.

  (Suddenly in irritation to a girl apparently coming down the aisle) Sarah Bernhardt Foster! Stop making a show of yourself; sit down and take your place quietly among the other girls!

  MR. FOSTER: I want you all to come to attention. James Jones Foster! —You may assist George Washington Foster in closing the doors.

  (Impressive pause.)

  Wards of the Amanda Gregory Foster Orphanage! Of William County, Western Pennsylvania! Another of our children has attempted to run away! That makes the twelfth since Christmas!

  (He has a moment’s convulsion of asthmatic coughing and sneezing into an enormous red-checked handkerchief. During this, his eyes fall on the Member of the Audience seated on the stage at his left. He stares at him a moment, then dropping his characterization, he says:)

  Who are you?

  MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE: I?

  MR. FOSTER: Yes, you—who are you? What are you doing up here on the stage?

  (To the audience) Excuse me a moment. There’s—there’s something wrong here.

  (To the Member of the Audience) What are you doing—sitting up here on stage?

  MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE: Euh—the management sold me this seat—I told them I was a little hard of hearing.

  MR. FOSTER: What? What’s that? I can’t hear you.

  MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE: The management sold me this seat. I won’t be in the way. I told them I was a little hard of hearing and they sold me this seat here.

  MR. FOSTER: You certainly will be in the way. I never heard of such a thing.

  (He turns to Mrs. Foster) We can’t go on with this man here.

  MRS. FOSTER: Perhaps. Anyway, we’d better not stop now. We’ll try to do something about it at the intermission.

  MR. FOSTER: At the intermission. —I must say I never heard of such a thing. —Anyway, while you’re here—draw your chair back against the wall. You’re preventing those people from seeing the stage.

  (The Member of the Audience draws his chair back.)

  I hope you know enough not to distract the audience’s attention in any way. It’s important to us that you be as quiet as possible.

  MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE: Yes, oh, yes.

  (Mr. Foster glares at him and resumes his role.)

  MR. FOSTER: Wards of the Amanda Gregory Foster Orphanage! Of William County, Western Pennsylvania! Another of our children has attempted to run away. That makes the twelfth since Christmas. He will be found. He will be brought back to us any moment now. I have brought you together this morning to talk this over. You run away: to what? to whom? Last fall you ran away (Fixing an orphan in the audience), George Gordon Byron Foster! You were brought back after a week, but what kind of week was it? You slept in railroad stations; you fed yourself out of refuse cans, or from what you could beg at the back door of restaurants. We asked you why you ran away and you said you wanted to live—to live, to live, impatience to live.

  Joan Dark Foster, will you stop throwing yourself about in your seat! I shall not keep you long.

  And you said you wanted to be free. Every lost dog and cat is free. The horse that has run away from the stable and wanders in the woods is free.

  —Do I hear talking up there—in the fourth and fifth balconies? Surely you nine year olds can understand what I’m saying! The five year olds down here are quiet enough!

  Gustav Froebel Foster! —Can’t you keep order among the children up there?

  (He waits a moment in stern silence.)

  This orphanage was founded by a noble Christian woman, Amanda Gregory Foster, and here—for a time—you are taken care of. You have all been given the name of Foster, in memory of our foundress, and some of you have been given names of eminent—of great and useful—men and women. But you are all foundlings and orphans. These are facts. Do not exhaust your minds and hearts by trying to resist these things which are.

  Prometheus Foster! Ludwig van Beethoven Foster! Sit down, both of you! Glaring and shaking your fists at me cannot change these matters one iota. What has to be, has to be.

  But that is not the only thing which you must patiently accept in life. There is also much about each one of you which cannot be changed: your self. Your eyes and nose and mouth. Your color. Your height—when you have finally gained your growth. And your disposition. Some of you are timid. Some of you are proud. We know which ones of you are lazy and which of you are ambitious. In addition, each of you has a different store of health. Your sum of health—yours!

  (Mrs. Foster rises quickly and points to audience, left.)

  MRS. FOSTER: What’s that? John Keats Foster has fainted.

  MR. FOSTER: Lower his head between his knees, boys; he will come to himself.

  MRS. FOSTER: Who’s sitting beside him? Joseph Severn Foster and Percy Shelley Foster—carry him out into the open air, boys. You’d better take him to the Infirmary.

  MR. FOSTER: And what’s that noise I hear in the back row?

  MRS. FOSTER: It’s—it’s the blind children. Where’s Helen Keller Foster? —Oh, there you are! —Will you comfort the—? Yes.

  (She returns to her seat.)

  MR. FOSTER: There is no greater waste of time—and no greater enemy of character—than to wish that you were differently endowed and differently constituted. From these things you cannot run away.

  Now one of our number, John Vere Foster, has again tried to change all this. For the third time he has tried to run away. Ah, there he is! Mr. Conover, will you bring John Vere Foster right down here, please. To the front row so that we can all see him.

  (Mr. Conover, a shuffling old janitor, leads a boy, invisible to us, holding him by the ear, to a seat in the front row of the theatre aisle. Mr. Foster rises, steps forward, and fixes his eyes on the boy.)

  Now, young man, will you tell us—tell all of us—why it is that you tried to run away?

  (Pause.)

  What! You’re going to be stubborn and silent?

  (Pause.)

  You all have enough to eat. You have suitable clothing. The work is not difficult. Many of you enjoy your classes and we hear all of you playing very happily among yourselves in your recreation hours. Mrs. Foster and I make every effort to be just. There is very little punishment here and what there is is light. Many visitors tell us that this is the best orphanage in the country.

  (Again he has an asthmatic convulsion.)

  MRS. FOSTER:
Take a glass of water. Sit down a moment and take a glass of water.

  (He sits down, his shoulders heaving.

  Mrs. Foster comes to the front of the stage and addresses John—more gently but unsentimentally:)

  John, tell us—tell us why you have tried to run away. I can’t hear you. Oh—you want to belong.

  MR. FOSTER: What did he say? What did he say?

  MEMBER OF THE AUDIENCE (Helpfully): He said he wanted to belong.

  MR. FOSTER: Oh—to belong.

  Children! —I am going to give John Vere Foster his wishes. He wishes—as you all say you do—to live and to belong.

  A farmer and his wife called on me this morning. They wish to adopt a boy. Mr. Graham seems to me to be a just man. We do not usually place you—you, children—in homes until you are sixteen. John is only fourteen, but he is strong for his age—and, as you see, he is impatient.

  John, go to Mrs. Hoskins: she will give you a new pair of shoes and a new overcoat; and she will pack your box. You are leaving with your father and mother—Mr. and Mrs. Graham—on the railway train this afternoon.

  Belong!—to belong!

  All of you have one thing in common: you do not belong to parents; you do not belong to homes; you do not belong to yourselves. You all belong.

  Thousands of children have passed through this school—thousands of schools. The names of many of them you find on tablets in the corridor. The names of many of them are forgotten. The very ink has faded on our school records.

  The generations of men are like the generations of leaves on the trees. They fall into the earth and new leaves are grown the following spring. The world into which you have been born is one of eternal repetitions—already you can see that.

  But there is something to which you can belong—you do belong: I am not yet empowered to tell you its name. It is something which is constantly striving to bring something new into these repetitions, to lift them, to color them, to—