The Grace of Mary Traverse [antikvár]

ACT ONEscene oneThe drawing room of a house in the City of London during the late eighteenth century, mary traverse sits elegantly, facing an empty chair. She talks to the chair with animation. giles traverse stands behind and away from her.mary traverse: Nature, my lord. (Pause.) It was here all the time and we've only just discovered it. What is nature? No, that's a direct question. Perhaps we will not exhaust nature as easily as we have other pleasures for it is difficult to imagine with what to replace it. And there's so much of it! No, that's too enthusiastic. (Short pause.) How admirable of you to have shown us the way, my lord, and to have made the grand tour of such a natural place as Wales. I believe there are mountains in Wales. Ah, crags, precipices, what awe they must strike in one's breas- in one's spirit. Yes. And I hear Wales has peasants as well. How you must have admired the austerity of their lives, human nature imitating the land's starkness. Peasants too, I believe, are a new discovery. How delightful is our civilization to shed such light on its dark and savage recesses. Oh dear, is that blue-stockinged or merely incomprehensible? But when you said the other day that when a man is tired of London he is tired of life, did you mean - but how foolish I am. It was Doctor Johnson. Forgive the confusion, you see there are so few men of wit about. (Pause.) You were telling me how we are to know nature. Do we dare look at it directly, or do we trust an artist's imitation of nature, the paintings of Mr Gainsborough. Whirlpools. Trees. Primordial matter. Circling. Indeed. Oh.(mary stops in a panic. giles traverse clears his throat. mary talks faster.)You visited the salt mines? Ah, to hover over the depths in a basket and then to plunge deep down into the earth, into its very bowels. giles traverse: No, no, my dear. Do not mention bowels.