Valsin. Imbecile, she's as well known as the Louvre! They're off on their honeymoon! She'll take him now! She will! She will, on the soul of a prophet! [He rushes to the window and leans far out, shouting at the top of his voice:] Quits with you, Louis! Quits! Quits! [He falls back from the window and relapses into a chair, cackling ecstatically.]
Dossonville [hoarse with astonishment]. You've let him go! You've let 'em all go!
Valsin [weak with laughter]. Well, you're not going to inform. [With a sudden reversion to extreme seriousness, he levels a sinister forefinger at his companion.] And, also, take care of your health, friend; remember constantly that you have a weak throat, and don't you ever mention this to my wife! These are bad times, my Dossonville, and neither you nor I will see the end of them. Good Lord! Can't we have a little fun as we go along? [A fresh convulsion seizes him, and he rocks himself pitiably in his chair.]
[THE CURTAIN.]
THE PIERROT OF THE MINUTE
A DRAMATIC FANTASY IN ONE ACT
By
ERNEST DOWSON
Performance Free
Ernest Christopher Dowson, now generally known simply as Ernest Dowson, was born at the Grove, Belmont Hill, Lee, Kent, August 2, 1867, and died in London thirty-three years later. His schooling, because of his delicate health, was irregular, and he spent too short a time at Queen's College, Oxford, to take a degree. He lived abroad much, but during his sojourns in London in the 'nineties belonged to the Rhymer's Club[26] that met in an upper room of Johnson's own "Cheshire Cheese." His death from consumption brought to a close a life marred by waste and sordid associations.
The Pierrot of the Minute, Ernest Dowson's only dramatic attempt, is touched like the preceding play with the glamour of the old régime. Its charming artificiality suggests the pastoral games to which the ladies and gentlemen of Louis XV's circle may have turned for relief after the formalities and extravagances of their life at court.
Dowson's play, written in 1892, is mentioned in one of his letters, dated October twenty-fourth of that year: "I have been frightfully busy," he wrote, "having rashly undertaken to make a little Pierrot play in verse ... which is to be played at Aldershot and afterwards at the Chelsea Town Hall: the article to be delivered in a fortnight. So until this period of mental agony is past, I can go nowhere." Anyone who has ever had to write something that had to be ready on a certain date will understand the quality of Dowson's emotion in this letter.
A recent critic who has studied the literary fashions of the group to which Dowson belonged and found that the members were addicted to the frequent use of the adjective, white, says: "Ernest Dowson was dominated by a sense of whiteness.... The Pierrot of the Minute is a veritable symphony in white. He calls for 'white music' and the Moon Maiden rides through the skies 'drawn by a team of milk-white butterflies,' and farther on in the same poem we have a palace of many rooms:
"'Within the fairest, clad in purity,
Our mother dwelt immemorially:
Moon-calm, moon-pale, with moon-stones on her gown,
The floor she treads with little pearls is sown....'"