(More) Terence Rattigan: Deep Blue Sea pt 2 and The Browning Version

This may sound familiar to some of you, though it may require multiple readings before it sinks in/makes sense. It comes from Act III of "The Deep Blue Sea" by Terence Rattigan, first performed March 6, 1952 (ht PZ):

HESTER (wildly) How do I know what's true. I only know that after tonight I can't face life any more....

How can anyone live without hope?

MILLER. Easily. To live without hope can mean to live without despair.

HESTER. Those are just words.

MILLER. ... (He twists her roughly round to face him. Harshly) Your Freddie has left you. He's never going to come back again. Never in the world. Never.

(HESTER wilts at each word as if it were a physical blow)

HESTER (wildly) I know. I know. That's what I can't face. (She breaks away from Miller, falls on her knees across the downstage end of the sofa in a paroxysm of grief, burying her head in her arms)

MILLER (with brutal force) Yes, you can. (He moves above Hester and stands over her) That word "never". Face that and you can face life. Get beyond hope. It's your only chance.

HESTER. What is there beyond hope?

MILLER (after a pause) Life....

Damn. On a slightly less intense note, I finally got around to watching Rattigan's The Browning Version (1951), on the strong recommendation of trusted contributors to this blog (ahem, John Stamper, ahem, JAZ, ahem, Browder). I had seen the David Mamet-directed(!) version of Rattigan's Winslow Boy many years ago, and it has always been one of my favorites. But The Browning Version blows it out of the water - people, put this film on your Netflix queue now! To say that it illustrates pretty much all of the themes that we love to explore on this site - death and resurrection, judgment and love, grace in relation to human bondage/suffering, yes even Law and Gospel - would be reductive. This is a beautiful and profound work of art, from top to bottom. Michael Redgrave gives an astonishing performance. And if the final scene does not leave you in tears, I'm not sure I want to know you...

Terence Rattigan's "A Bequest To The Nation" (1970): A Lesson In The Understanding Of Adult Emotions

Terence Rattigan's late play "A Bequest to the Nation" reflects on the love affair of Lord Nelson with Emma Hamilton.  This is well covered material both on stage and screen.  Rattigan, however, chooses to focus on Lady Nelson's relation to her husband's affair, and especially on the quality and impact of the forgiveness she extends to her husband.

What I did not know about this dramatic business of the year 1801 and before, is that Nelson was a child of the rectory, and his brother a clergyman, as well.  What Horatio (Lord Nelson) did in leaving Frances (Lady Nelson) for Emma (Lady Hamilton) was extremely acute and notorious.  It also afflicted his conscience in classic Christians terms.

In Scene II of Act Two, Nelson unburdens himself in the presence of his nephew, George Matcham.  What is at issue is a letter, very disturbing to Nelson, that he has received from his wife.  He has memorized the letter.

GEORGE.  What kind of person do you think I am?

NELSON. ... A nephew I am proud to have...  Very well, George.  Here it is.  Now you may begin your lesson in the understanding of adult emotions.

(Nelson begins to recite from memory the contents of the letter.)

'The eighteenth of December, eighteen hundred and one.  My dearest husband, it is some time that I have written to you.  The silence you have imposed is more than my affection will allow me --

GEORGE stares at him with wide eyes.

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Other Than A Knave Or A Fool: Cozzens, Rattigan & Frankenstein

James Gould Cozzens, who knew so many clergy, and right up close, remarked in a letter to his mother that he didn't think he had met a 'professional Christian who was other than a knave or a fool' (23 July 1935). The 'fool' part got this reader's attention, and I wondered.

For some reason, the first image that came into my head was Frankenstein's Monster as portrayed in the overwrought Hollywood melodrama from 2004, Van Helsing. In that long, long movie, there is a surprising moment, an arresting moment -- if you weren't asleep already, so over-filled with action the movie is -- when Frankenstein's Monster is being wheeled in on a gurney to be tortured by yet more 'Mad Scientist' surgery and he begins to recite The Twenty-Third Psalm! This moment was noted not so long ago in a Mockingbird post, and I filed it away. Thus when the arresting moment came on the screen recently, I was moved. It comes so from out of the blue in that CGI zoo of a cinematic 'video game', that it is most impressive. Like all Christian witnesses when they are real witnesses, the scene catches you off-guard. It also seems sincere. The Monster is affirming his confidence in the sustaining of God.

In other words, to go back to Cozzens, Frankenstein's Monster is neither a knave nor a fool.

For the same reason, the real hero of Terence Rattigan's last play, "A Bequest to the Nation" (1970), is a Christian witness who is neither a knave nor a fool. Let's look at her. She is Frances, Lady Nelson, whose maiden name was Frances Nisbet. She has been thrown over for almost five years now, in favor of Emma Hamilton, mistress now of Lady Hamilton's husband, Lord Horatio Nelson, naval hero, 'Divine Hero', and Champion of all England.

In Act One, Scene I of "Bequest to the Nation", Lady Nelson is shown being contemptuously avoided by Lord Nelson's family, for whom she had only recently been the 'beloved' Aunt Frances. Yet she is able to have a conversation with her nephew, George Matcham, who sees, because he is young and not yet fully formed for prejudice, the woman's quality:
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PZ's Podcast This Week: The British Invasion

Today two new talks have been published on "PZ's Podcast" (Subscribe free on iTunes.)

The first is entitled The Browning Version and concerns a 1951 movie starring Michael Redgrave and written by Terence Rattigan, which is based on Rattigan's 1948 play.

It is about a man who must lose his life in order to gain it. The material connects directly with the 25th Chorus of "Mexico City Blues":

Is my own, is your own,

Is not Owned by Self-Owner

but found by Self-Loser --

Old Ancient Teaching

This podcast is dedicated to David Browder.

The second cast for this week is called "'Man Gave Names to All the Animals' (Bob Dylan) and he named them Eric Burdon, Alan Price, Chas Chandler, Hilton Valentine, and John Steel." The subject is the legendary "British Invasion" group The Animals. PZ surveys The Animals' career, recalling two personal encounters with them, one in 1966 and then again in 1992. He concludes with a reflection on fun.

Six Best Books on Clergy (That Are Also Sympathetic to Them)

Another year-end list from PZ:

1) Father Sergius by Leo Tolstoy. This is the grand-daddy of them all, in my opinion. Father Sergius begins his ministry, within the Russian Orthodox Church, with all the right ingredients: a broken disappointed heart, an excellent education, and an appealing personality. He then becomes a saint! (But for all the wrong pelagian reasons) Later, he trips himself up, very badly, and flees his calling. Even later, however, most unusually, he finds it again.

I taught this once and first-time readers fell tumbled over into the snow. We all exist in this book, which is actually a long short-story.

2) Janet's Repentance by George Eliot. There's only one better tale of an Anglican Evangelical clergyman (see (3) below). In this novella, which is found in Eliot's first novel, entitled Scenes of Clerical Life, The Rev. Alex Tryan, a recent Cambridge graduate and Simeonite (i.e., disciple of The Rev. Charles Simeon), comes to a village church in the English Midlands with a view to bringing the Gospel to the place. He succeeds, after encountering furious and unremitting resistance. He succeeds best of all, however, in helping Mrs. Janet Dempster escape from an abusive marriage. Needless to say, what sometimes happens in such cases, happens here, tho' Mr. Tryan acquits himself with complete honor.

This is a sad story and a most perceptive one. I don't believe there is a more sympathetic account in English literature of an Evangelical Church of England minister.

3) "Catherine Furze" by William Hale White (aka "Mark Rutherford"). This one is better than the Eliot, though exactly parallel to it. Here, The Rev. Theophilus Cardew, also a Simeonite like Mr. Tryan, seeks to bring the Gospel to a Midlands parish, where he also serves as chaplain to a local school. The hero of the book, Catherine Furze, falls in love with him -- he is married, obtusely, to a fine loving woman -- and it is all out of joint. Catherine and 'Theo' carry on a completely unacknowledged Platonic affair, until things heat up, just.

William Hale White is able to get inside his clerical 'hero', in order to understand how wrong a sincere man can be. The denouement is beyond powerful because it is also true to life. Moreover, a non-self-deceived evangelical character joins the scene towards the end, and redeems the Gospel message from its all-too-human carriers otherwise.

My friend Nick Wilde, the "Mark Rutherford" expert of the planet, regards "Catherine Furze" as the one of his novels that is most film-able. People have even written the "Beeb", but so far no good.

4) Morning Noon and Night by James Gould Cozzens. Here the portrayal of "Canon Baker", a doctrinaire Anglo-Catholic of the Episcopal Church, is both sympathetic, realistic, and devastating. Cozzens knows about clergy who are 'making plans for Nigel', that is, clergy who have an ideological agenda when they enter a parish. In this case, Canon Baker is all about taking a 'Low Church' small-town Episcopal church and making it 'High Church'. That is his whole idea. Trouble is, Canon Baker, being a wholly committed 'spike', feels guilty about having a daughter, not to mention being married. So his odd and eclectic "Catholicism" has a confusing effect upon his teenage daughter. (You'll see.)

James Gould Cozzens understood the Episcopal Church better than any writer I know of, even though he was himself an agnostic bordering on atheism. I think we can learn a lot from him. I wonder sometimes why Cozzens' descriptions of Episcopal Church parish life are little known among church people. This is a great book, which needs more study.
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Announcing PZ's PODCAST!

We are proud to announce another very cool new resource, our first foray into podcasting: "PZ's Podcast"! A weekly transmission from the world of, you guessed it, Paul Zahl. To subscribe (and listen to the first three installments), click here.  But first, a word of, um, introduction from the man himself:

This will be a series of talks, most of them about 35 minutes in length, which try to bridge the gap between Old Ancient Teaching (the phrase is from an epic religious poem entitled "Mexico City Blues") and popular culture.

“PZ's Podcast” is the voice of a lost Space-Child, who, it turns out, is broadcasting live from the New York World's Fair of 1964. PZ ventures out weekly from Flushing Meadows to find answers from various heroes of his, beginning with the American playwright Thornton Wilder; then the 'Beat' writer Jack Kerouac; then the English muse Terence Rattigan; then to the misanthropic and now forgotten philosopher-novelist James Gould Cozzens. Each of these people gives to PZ whatever he can.

At one point, our Space-Child, almost demented by loss, is reduced to reflecting on giant crab movies, so desperate has become his search.

PZ seems to travel from the ridiculous to the sublime in no time at all, and doesn't always know which is which. He has to trust that Ancient Teaching, too, as he circles back each week in search of antidotes for human miscreance and mourning.

Initially, PZ will publish three of his reports. Then, on a weekly basis, he will publish new pages from his Diary of a Madman (de Maupassant and Vincent Price). We have high hopes for these ecrits. We'd bet they'll be lively, maybe even worth telling someone else about.

Luckily, it's "Only the beginning, only the beginning, only the beginning" (The Phantom Planet, 1961).


"PZ's Podcast" is brought to you proudly by Mockingbird. The podcast is free, of course, but if you wish to make a much-needed contribution in support of it,  please go here. And to obtain one of our last few copies of his New Persuasive Words DVD, go here.