LadyAnnaAtSea 2013 Draft 3 - THE PRODUCTION …€¢...

Lady Anna: all at sea – Part 1 – draft 3 – October 2014 -‐ 1

LADY ANNA: ALL AT SEA – ACT 1

Dramatization by Craig Baxter of the novel Lady Anna by Anthony Trollope and the writing of that novel aboard the SS Great Britain

• Scenes/characters from the novel (which occur for the most part on dry land) are titled in black

• Scenes/characters outside of the action of the novel (mostly aboard the SS Great Britain) are titled in blue

Cast: 7 Actors (3 female; 4 male)

• FREDERIC (the Young Earl) / PEDANT passenger (21) • Lady ANNA / ISABELLA Archer (Rose Trollope’s maid) (20) • COUNTESS Lovel / ROSE Trollope (51) • DANIEL Thwaite (tailor) (20s) / BORE passenger / Anna’s MAID • MR FLICK (solicitor) / RECTOR (Reverend Lovel) / DULLARD passenger (60s) • AUNT JANE / LADY FITZWARREN (60s) • SIR WILLIAM Patterson (the Solicitor General) / THOMAS Thwaite (elderly tailor) /

ANTHONY Trollope (56)

1.1 – THE STRID/JUMPING IN – Rocky chasm near Bolton Abbey Lady ANNA and Earl FREDERIC, stand on one side of a chasm and consider the leap across. Water rushes in the chasm below.

FREDERIC: “The pair have reached that fearful chasm1 How tempting to bestride! For lordly Wharf is there pent in With rocks on either side.”

Growing up in Cumberland, I thought you’d recognise these verses.

ANNA: Southey?

FREDERIC: The other one.

ANNA: Coleridge?

FREDERIC: Wordsworth.

“This striding-‐place is called THE STRID, A name which it took of yore: A thousand years hath it borne that name, And shall a thousand more.”

1 The Force of Prayer by William Wordsworth


ANNA: The ‘Strid’?

FREDERIC: This chasm is the Strid the poet describes.

FREDERIC jumps across from one side to the other. ANNA gasps.

Come. It’s barely a step.

ANNA: I’m sure I should tumble in and be dashed to pieces among the rocks.

FREDERIC: You could jump over twice the distance on dry ground.

ANNA: Then let me jump on dry ground.

FREDERIC: Do you think I’d suggest it if I wasn’t sure?

ANNA: Do they jump across safely in Mr Southey’s poem

FREDERIC: It’s Wordsworth.

“And hither is young Romilly come, And what may now forbid That he, perhaps for the hundredth time, Shall bound across The Strid?

ANNA: My sense is this will not end well.

FREDERIC: “He sprang in glee,-‐-‐for what cared he That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep? But –

ANNA: There must always be a ‘but’

FREDERIC: “But the greyhound in the leash hung back, And checked him in his leap.”

ANNA: And?

FREDERIC: We have no greyhound on a leash.

ANNA: What happened to... ‘Romilly’ was it?

FREDERIC: “The Boy is in the arms of Wharf, And strangled by a merciless force; For never more was young Romilly seen Till he rose a lifeless corse.”

ANNA: “A lifeless corse”! And you use these dreadful old verses to persuade me to jump.

FREDERIC: These are noble and romantic verses based on an old, old legend

ANNA: You want to make another legend of me?


FREDERIC: If you jump the Strid, we would certainly leave Uncle Charles and Aunt Jane behind us.

ANNA: Why are you so set on leaving them behind?

FREDERIC: We have to be so excruciatingly formal around them.

ANNA: I can’t afford to drown myself just that you may escape the inconvenience of your relatives. You can go ahead yourself, and I’ll wait for them here.

FREDERIC: (stretching out his arm across the Strid) I can almost touch you.

ANNA: It’s too far.

FREDERIC: It’s a gap of three feet. I’ll catch you.

ANNA: Do you promise?

FREDERIC: I promise. I will catch you.

ANNA determines then to jump, still anxious...

... but she is halted/interrupted by ROSE TROLLOPE…

1.2. IF BOILED MUTTON THERE MUST BE... ROSE: Ladies and Gentlemen, you might think, perhaps, this method of rushing in, without

prelude or setting of the scene is, of all the ways of beginning a story, the least objectionable.

The rest of the acting company (excepting the actor playing ANTHONY Trollope) assemble to address the audience.

FREDERIC: This device of jumping at once into the middle, or even right to the very end, of a tale has been often tried, and indeed been proved to work seductively enough for a scene or two of bright excitement as characters kiss...

FREDERIC turns expecting to move towards ANNA in order to kiss her but DANIEL THWAITE has appeared and beaten him two it, kissing ANNA briefly on the mouth.

FREDERIC: (put out) ... shoot...

In slow-‐motion, the COUNTESS (played by the actor playing ROSE) draws a pistol from her bag and mimes shooting DANIEL in the back.

DANIEL takes the impact and drops to his knees.

FREDERIC: ... or leap athletically across a chasm.

FREDERIC takes a bow.


ROSE: But, after such a bright start, a certain nebulous darkness gradually envelopes the characters and the incidents.

LADY FITZ: Why is she so attached to him?

DULLARD: Was someone actually shot?

DANIEL: Where is this all in actual fact occurring? In the country? Or in town?

ANNA: Or are we all at sea?

ROSE: Having started, as it were, in media res, we will soon and inevitably discover that it is impossible to avoid the necessity of doing, sooner or later, that which would naturally be done at first.

LADY FITZ: I for one hold that it is better to have the boiled mutton first, if boiled mutton there must be.2

ROSE: And so...

ALL: Ladies and Gentlemen, we begin this dramatic rendition of the novel Lady Anna at the very beginning....

ROSE: ... Its opening sentences still wet upon the page.

1.3. FORGOT MY HAT -‐ Trollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain Anthony Trollope’s first class cabin aboard the SS Great Britain.

We can here the chug of the ship’s engines.

The actor playing ANNA has become ISABELLA, Rose Trollope’s maid. She clears her throat and speaks...

ISABELLA: It is the 26th day of May in the year 1871 and we are aboard the 4000-‐ton passenger steamship the SS Great Britain, travelling from Liverpool in England, to Melbourne in Australia.

The renowned author, my employer, Mr Anthony Trollope, works at the makeshift desk in his cabin.

The focus is on Anthony’s desk but there is no sign of Anthony: only his hat atop a small pile of papers.

ISABELLA is puzzled not to find him there and then...

Anthony Trollope, a big, bearded, red-‐faced jovial man with a loud voice and a hearty manner, bursts in, full of energy, startling her.

2 Trollopian thoughts on storytelling drawn from The Duke’s Children and Is He Popenjay?


ANTHONY: Forgot my hat.

Is everything quite all right with you, Isabella?

ISABELLA: I’m feeling a little seasick Mr Trollope to tell truth.

ANTHONY: You’ll adjust better to the motion of the ship if you stand like this. (he demonstrates) Keep one leg rigid and the other floppity. Like so. Rigid see? And floppity, yes? Not particularly feminine I’ll admit. But it does the trick.

ISABELLA: Thank you Mr Trollope. I will try that, perhaps when there’s no-‐one else about. Mrs Trollope asked me to check if there was anything you needed. She said to me you’d be writing this morning.

ANTHONY: I can write as quickly here as I could at my desk in Waltham, so I’ve written my nine pages for today. 59-‐day voyage, give or take; nine pages a day equals...?

ISABELLA shakes her head.

ANTHONY: 531 pages by Melbourne equals...?

ISABELLA: I don’t know Mr Trollope.

ANTHONY: One two volume novel. Best to get the serious work of the day out of the way before breakfast I always think. Now I’m off to the saloon to see who is about.

He leaves. Then comes back.

Forgot my hat.

Grabs his hat and goes.

ISABELLA loiters and looks over the pages of the new novel on which Anthony’s hat had previously been resting. Before she can read more than the first couple of words, the solicitor MR FLICK appears and plucks the papers from her hand.

MR FLICK: The story of ‘Lady Anna’ begins, as such stories often do, with a contested will.

1.4 – THE OLD EARL’S WILL -‐ Legal Office

The papers become the will in this scene. FLICK peruses it.

FREDERIC is seated in the offices of Norton and Flick, scratching his head, confused.

FREDERIC: Well Mr Flick, what do you make of it?

MR FLICK: My Lord, there are several matters to consider.

FREDERIC: I have inherited the old fellow’s title…

MR FLICK: Indeed, my Lord, and I take immense pleasure in referring to you now as Earl Lovel.


FREDERIC: ... but none of his estate?

MR FLICK: The Old Earl leaves his entire estate to his “best-‐beloved friend, the Signorina Camilla Spondi”

FREDERIC: And Signorina Spondi is the Italian lady he claims to have married many years ago?

MR FLICK: Possibly. Possibly not. The Old Earl’s marital situation was always somewhat opaque.

FREDERIC: And this other woman, this Murray woman?

MR FLICK: Mrs Josephine Murray.

FREDERIC: Also claims to have been married to him?

MR FLICK: According to all the forms of the Church, indeed, she married him, if...

EARL LOVE: If?

MR FLICK: If, at the time of the ‘marriage’, he had been capable of marrying.

FREDERIC: You mean if he were not already married to the Italian woman?

MR FLICK: He claims here that he was.

FREDERIC: And there is a daughter?

MR FLICK: Mrs Josephine Murray has a daughter named Anna whom the Old Earl acknowledges here as his own – but illegitimate – daughter.

FREDERIC: But if it were proved that the Old Earl had in fact been capable of marrying the mother when he married her, then what?

MR FLICK: If such a thing were proved, why then that would make the daughter, Anna, the legitimate heir to his estate. Though not, of course, to his title, which is irrefutably yours, My Lord.

FREDERIC: So: irrefutably I have inherited the Earl’s title?

MR FLICK: Irrefutably, My Lord.

FREDERIC: And equally irrefutably I have inherited none of his estate? It belongs either to the Italian woman or to the Murrays?

MR FLICK: What is perhaps refutable is the Old Earl’s sanity when he signed this will. If it can be shown that he was of unsound mind when he signed this document and, additionally, that he has no surviving legitimate wife, then you as his heir would inherit all.

FREDERIC: Certainly it would be better for the nation that an irrefutable Earl should be a rich man, fit to do honour to his position, fit to marry the daughter of a duke, fit to uphold the glory of the English peerage.


MR FLICK: Few would dispute that My Lord.

FREDERIC: But the Italian woman would? And the Murray woman and her daughter would?

MR FLICK: Indeed, you find yourself combined in interest with the Murray woman against the Italian woman as regards the will. And with the Italian woman against the Murray women as regards the marriage.

FREDERIC: (massaging his own temples) What then would you advise me to do?

MR FLICK considers the question carefully, but before he can answer, the Earl asks…

FREDERIC Can these wretched women be bought off?

MR FLICK: In all likelihood, they can.

FREDERIC: And how much would it take?

MR FLICK: Perhaps ten thousand pounds or thereabouts.

FREDERIC: (hopefully) Between them?

MR FLICK: Ten thousand each. I believe there is a good chance both would accept such an amount.

FREDERIC: I don’t possess anything approaching twenty thousand pounds.

MR FLICK: That detail can be worked around. There’s great deal of capital bound up with the Old Earl’s estate.

FREDERIC: Even after the lawyers have taken their cut?

MR FLICK: Even after that My Lord.

FREDERIC: My apologies Mr Flick, I did not mean to imply...

MR FLICK: No need for an apology, my Lord. I understand your frustration. It is an expensive and time-‐consuming business taking anything through the courts. But in a case as complicated as this one, I fear a court case is inevitable.

1.5. ANTHONY HOLDS FORTH -‐ Saloon, SS Great Britain

Above the chug of the ship’s engines, ANTHONY holds forth in the saloon, seeming to enjoy his celebrity status among the passengers there assembled.

ANTHONY: ... indeed, the plot is the most insignificant part of it. A good novel is a canvas crowded with portraits of recognisable people in recognisable situations. The plot is but a vehicle for character.3

3 From An Autobiography


LADY FITZ: There must be a good story though Mr Trollope, surely?

ANTHONY: Well, yes, the pursuit of a wife or a husband, a disputed will, a legal case, etcetera etcetera, one must provide a vehicle of some sort; else none of us would get anywhere now would we?

PEDANT: Least of all Australia.

BORE: Your Orley Farm has an excellent plot to my mind Mr Trollope.

ANTHONY: Of course, yes, you are absolutely right. But I’d rather have a decent set of passengers and a leaky vessel than be stuck on ‘the ship of the century’ with a bunch of bores, pedants and dullards. Wouldn’t you?

LADY FITZ: A leaky vessel?

PEDANT: Ain’t sure I would in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, if I’m honest.

Anthony laughs heartily. The other passengers join in rather less convincingly.

To one side...

DULLARD: Mr Trollope seems rather a loud and vulgar person.

LADY FITZ: Not at all like his books.

DULLARD: Can’t say I’ve read ‘em. My lady wife mentioned one to me: ‘He Knew He Could Write’ or somesuch. ‘Can’t We Forget Her?’ Seems to me he’s a man who never uses one sentence when several will do. I wonder what business he has in Australia.

LADY FITZ: He has a son in New South Wales who is marrying a local girl.

DULLARD: Long trip to make just for a wedding.

Back with ANTHONY...

BORE: How many novels have you published in total Mr Trollope?

ANTHONY: Ralph the Heir – currently being serialised in the St Paul’s Magazine – is my twenty-‐sixth.

BORE: Twenty-‐six.

ANTHONY: The Editor of The Fortnightly is preparing my twenty-‐seventh – The Eustace Diamonds – for production. Two more are in a strong box with my bankers. So, even if the Great Britain sinks and goes down with all hands, there’ll be new novels coming out under my name for some years to come.

PEDANT: Though none of us will be reading them, what?

ANTHONY: This consideration, however, does not keep me idle. I began a new novel this very morning. It will be – of this I am certain – my best yet!


LADY FITZ: (to Dullard) I can’t say I like the sound of it at all.

1.6 – TEN THOUSAND POUNDS?! -‐ Legal Office

Now the severe COUNTESS LOVEL is sat with FLICK.

COUNTESS: Ten thousand pounds?

MR FLICK: Ten thousand pounds.

COUNTESS: You think it is for ten thousand pounds I have been fighting?

MR FLICK: The offer is a generous one.

COUNTESS: And has the Italian signorita been offered ten thousand pounds?

MR FLICK: I’m not at liberty to say.

COUNTESS: I would think she has. Allow me to make it clear to you that it is not for ten thousand pounds I have been fighting. But rather that my daughter may have her birth allowed and her name acknowledged. For myself I care little...

MR FLICK: (interrupting) If the amount provided were to be increased...?

COUNTESS: (refusing to be interrupted) ... but my child is the Lady Anna, and I do not intend to barter away her rights.

MR FLICK: ... to thirty thousand pounds?

The COUNTESS stares at MR FLICK witheringly. Then stands...

COUNTESS: Good day, Mr Flick.

... and departs...

1.7 – COUNTESS & ANNA, THEIR STRUGGLE – House on Wyndham Street

The COUNTESS sits with ANNA. ANNA is bored.

ANNA: Daniel said he would call on us this afternoon.

COUNTESS: It would be better if you referred to him as ‘Mr Thwaite’

ANNA: (laughing at the idea of calling her friend something so formal) But it has always been ‘Daniel’, since I could speak.

COUNTESS: You are not and cannot be his equal. He has been born to be a tailor, and you are the daughter and heir of an Earl.

ANNA thinks.


ANNA: Was Papa truly as everyone says he was?

COUNTESS: He was evil.

ANNA: He treated us cruelly Mamma, I know that is true.

COUNTESS: He was wholly evil.

ANNA: Then why marry him?

COUNTESS: If an Earl asks for your hand in marriage, you do not refuse.

ANNA: But surely you loved him, also?

The COUNTESS is saved from having to answer by DANIEL’s arrival on the doorstep and him knocking on their door.

ANNA: That will be Daniel.

COUNTESS: ‘Mr Thwaite’

ANNA: I cannot think of him as ‘Mr Thwaite’.

COUNTESS: You must.

ANNA: But we owe Daniel and his father everything we have. How should we have done without them?

COUNTESS: They have helped us to struggle for that which is our own. But it would mar their generosity if we put a taint on that which they have endeavoured to restore to us.

DANIEL knocks again at the door. ANNA is torn between answering the door and finishing the conversation with her mother.

ANNA: “Put a taint”!?

COUNTESS: A taint would rest upon your rank if you, as Lady Anna Lovel, were familiar with Daniel Thwaite as though he were your equal.

ANNA: I’m certain he’ll be angry if I call him ‘Mr Thwaite’.

COUNTESS: Then he will be unreasonable. I will not have you call him Daniel anymore.

An increasingly impatient DANIEL knocks. At last ANNA goes to the door and opens it.

ANNA: (very formal) Mr Thwaite, good afternoon.

DANIEL: Did you not hear my knocking?

ANNA bursts out laughing. DANIEL is humourless, bemused.

DANIEL: Anna?


COUNTESS: ‘Lady Anna’ I beg you.

DANIEL: What?

ANNA: (playful) Pray, Mr Thwaite, you call me ‘Lady Anna’.

ANNA curtsies. Neither DANIEL nor the COUNTESS are amused.

COUNTESS: Anna!

DANIEL: I suppose the Lady Anna ought to be treated with deference by a tailor, even though the tailor may have spent his last farthing in her service.

COUNTESS: Be assured: there is no limit to the gratitude we owe your father Mr Thwaite.

DANIEL: And me. Had my father not spent what he has spent on behalf of the Countess Lovel and the Lady Anna, then I would already by now be a master tradesman and not a tailor’s foreman in Wigmore Street for 35 shillings a week.

COUNTESS: We are grateful, Mr Thwaite, to the both of you. And, for myself, there is no service, however menial, I would not do for you. But Lady Anna is the daughter of an Earl and she is almost now of age. If this burden of rank and wealth is to be hers, it is proper that she and you and I do honour to it.

ANNA: I’ve heard so much of my father’s rank and wealth, which were always to be mine but which have never as yet reached me, and which have been a perpetual trouble to me and a crushing weight upon me that I have learned to hate the title and the claim.

COUNTESS You must not say so Anna.

DANIEL: I suppose I am to be grateful to have been kept waiting on the doorstep?

ANNA: What if my father was wealthy? What if he was an Earl? His character was evil. You have said it.

COUNTESS: Precisely because some who bear noble titles have behaved in dereliction of their duty, there is all the more reason why the rest of us must behave in accordance with our station. There must, after all, be earls and there must be countesses.

DANIEL: I see no must in it. There are earls and countesses as there used to be mastodons and other senseless, over-‐grown brutes roaming miserable and hungry through the undrained woods. Cold, comfortless, unwieldy things, which have perished in the general progress.

Both ANNA and the COUNTESS are shocked at DANIEL’s words.

COUNTESS: Mr Thwaite! I will not tolerate such radical nonsense in this house.

ANNA tries unsuccessfully to suppress a giggle. Dropping his sulky countenance, DANIEL casts a smirk in her direction. The COUNTESS spots it.


COUNTESS: I have seen the way you look at Anna, Mr Thwaite.

ANNA’s and DANIEL’s eyes flick away from one another in guilty fashion.

I have said this before, to you and to your father: you should not look to Anna for your sweetheart. Do you understand me?

ANNA and DANIEL look once more at one another...

1.8 – SIR WILLIAM PATTERSON ON THE CASE -‐ Legal Office

SIR WILLIAM PATTERSON, a successful and powerful barrister, is in consultation with MR FLICK but at the start of the scene sits, deep in thought.

SIR WILLIAM: (thinking) Mmm.

(remembering Mr Flick is with him) What was it you said Flick?

MR FLICK: I’ve said nothing Sir William. Not for eight or nine minutes.

SIR WILLIAM: Well, what was the last thing you said? Eight and a half minutes ago?

MR FLICK: I said: “What if the Young Earl and the Lady Anna were united in holy wedlock?”

SIR WILLIAM: Yes, and what else?

MR FLICK: And “Might that not be the solution to all our difficulties?”

SIR WILLIAM: But might it not also be an acknowledgement of the weakness of our case against this self-‐proclaimed ‘Countess’?

MR FLICK: It would bring the fortune to the Earl’s family.

SIR WILLIAM: So you do not believe the ‘Countess’ to be an impostor?

MR FLICK: What I believe is not strictly relevant.

SIR WILLIAM: Come now, Flick.

MR FLICK: She swears she was the old Earl’s wife. There is no doubt as to the formality of the marriage ceremony itself. There are several witnesses. All the people around her refer to her as the Countess. The late Earl, until the very end, spoke of her as the Countess. Her claim is strong and, from what I have observed of her, she will hold firm in it.

SIR WILLIAM: I have to confess, Flick, my entire purpose in taking this case was to cross-‐examine this false Countess off her legs, out of her claim and into her grave, if necessary.

MR FLICK: And if anyone can do it, you can, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM: “If anyone can do it.”


MR FLICK: If.

SIR WILLIAM: You are a model of pragmatism, Flick.

MR FLICK: If we can secure the income that is at stake for the Earldom, I say: let her call herself Countess Lovel. It will break no bones.

SIR WILLIAM: When does this ‘Lady’ Anna come of age?

MR FLICK: Within the year.

SIR WILLIAM: And is she a lady, or could she pass for a lady?

MR FLICK: Her mother, certainly, is a handsome woman.

SIR WILLIAM: So, tell me Flick if I am correct: you wish me to recommend to the Young Lord that he marry an underbred, illegitimate girl who claims – possibly spuriously – to be his cousin? And to support my proposition on the grounds of her mother’s looks?

MR FLICK: You are correct, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM: What you propose would need delicate handling.

MR FLICK: The Countess’s legal representatives...

SIR WILLIAM: (interrupting) No no. This friend of the Countess, the tailor...?

MR FLICK: Thwaite.

SIR WILLIAM: Yes Thomas Thwaite. Let’s talk to him. And on the Earl’s side, are there not ladies in the family? A matter such as this is much better managed through the ladies.

MR FLICK: Since the Old Earl’s death, the Young Earl has been staying with the Yoxham branch of the Lovel family, at the Rectory there. His Aunt Jane -‐-‐

SIR WILLIAM: (interrupting) Aunt Jane: she’s the one.

1.9 – AUNT JANE -‐ Legal Office

The astute AUNT JANE now sits mid-‐interview with SIR WILLIAM and MR FLICK.

SIR WILLIAM: Miss Lovel, you can hardly perhaps conceive how great a load of responsibility lies upon a lawyer's shoulders when he has to give advice in such a case as this, in which the prosperity of a whole family may turn upon his words.

AUNT JANE: It is impossible to think that my nephew, the Young Earl Lovel, should be swindled out of his noble fortune by the intrigues of these Murray women. A lawyer must do his work, Sir William, and the truth will prevail.


SIR WILLIAM: The truth of the matter, Miss Lovel, has yet to be determined. But may I share with you my own strengthening impression that the two ladies you mention are genuine?

AUNT JANE: They are swindlers. And as such I should not describe them as ladies.

SIR WILLIAM: It is natural that you and your family should be prejudiced against them.

AUNT JANE: And you do not suffer from any prejudice at all, I suppose?

SIR WILLIAM I am expressing, of course, merely my own opinion and I beg you to believe me that, in forming it, I have used all the experience and all the caution which long practice in these matters has taught me. Your nephew is entitled to my best services, and at the present moment I can perhaps do my duty to him most thoroughly by asking you to listen to me.

AUNT JANE: Very well, Sir William. I am all ears.

SIR WILLIAM: (proceeding cautiously) It is my considered belief that Mrs Murray, as hitherto we have called her, was the legal wife of the late Earl Lovel and, as such, is the Countess Lovel. Furthermore, I believe her daughter Anna is the legitimate child and heir to the late Earl.

AUNT JANE: The legitimate heir!?

SIR WILLIAM: My opinion has been formed on highly conflicting evidence but: yes. And thinking, as I do, with a natural bias towards my own client, what will a jury think, who will have no such bias?

AUNT JANE: You are saying that a jury would find in favour of this girl?

SIR WILLIAM: Most likely. Flick?

MR FLICK: Most likely, Sir William, I’m afraid I agree.

AUNT JANE: And what of the Italians?

SIR WILLIAM: An English jury will be naturally averse to appeals from across the water. The Italians are no longer in the game.

AUNT JANE: So it’s a ‘game’?

SIR WILLIAM: No, it is deadly serious. I don’t doubt that for a moment. A judgement in favour of the Murrays would leave your nephew a distressingly impoverished man. Beyond that, it would be a thousand pities for so noble a property to pass out of a family which, by its very splendour and ancient nobility, is placed in need of ample means.

AUNT JANE: I fail to see what you are offering my nephew and our noble family, Sir William, beyond what you seem to believe is a hopeless case and your thousand pities?

SIR WILLIAM: The case is not ‘hopeless’ by any means. We are told this girl is very lovely, is that not so Mr Flick?


MR FLICK: Very lovely, yes indeed, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM: And pains have been taken with her education, (to Flick) yes?

MR FLICK: Very great pains, indeed.

SIR WILLIAM: Her mother was well-‐born and well-‐bred and a handsome woman in her own right.

FLICK nods in agreement. SIR WILLIAM proceeds cautiously.

SIR WILLIAM: If I may plant this seed of an idea.

Were the girl and the Earl, your nephew, to marry, why then the whole difficulty of which we have been speaking would be cleared away. The one would bring the title, the other the wealth.

There is a long pause while AUNT JANE considers the proposal. SIR WILLIAM and FLICK wait patiently.

AUNT JANE: Marry her?

SIR WILLIAM: There could be no more rational union, Miss Lovel.

Another long pause, while AUNT JANE considers the proposal some more. Finally, she stands....

AUNT JANE: I will have to speak to my brother and my nephew about this quite extraordinary proposal.

SIR WILLIAM: Quite right, Miss Lovel.

AUNT JANE: Good morning to you.

SIR WILLIAM Good morning.

MR FLICK: Good morning, Miss Lovel.

And AUNT JANE departs.

MR FLICK: You went farther than I thought you would, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM: We must go farther yet if we mean to save any part of the property for the young Earl. Now whose is the next appointment?

MR FLICK: Thomas Thwaite the tailor.

SIR WILLIAM writes down Mr Flick’s words as he repeats them...

SIR WILLIAM: “Thomas Thwaite the tailor.”

SIR WILLIAM takes up the papers on which he has just written and...

1.10. BEESWAX POMADE – Tollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain


... becomes ANTHONY and entering the cabin, where ROSE is sitting while ISABELLA dresses her hair.

ANTHONY: Today’s quota for you my dearest.

ROSE: Nine pages?

ANTHONY: Precisely. Much obliged.

ROSE: I’ll look over them when Isabella has finished dressing my hair.

ANTHONY: (to Isabella) Mrs Trollope is always first to read my efforts, Isabella. Her approval is essential. I‘ve never known her to be wrong about a book, least of all one of mine.

ANTHONY places the manuscript down on the desk.

ANTHONY: I’ll be in the saloon.

ANTHONY leaves, returning briefly for his hat which by now ROSE has ready for him.

ANTHONY: Forgot my...

ROSE: hat?

ANTHONY gives ROSE a peck on the cheek, grabs his hat and departs.

ISABELLA works ROSE’s hair.

ISABELLA: What is Mr Trollope’s novel about Mrs Trollope, if you don’t mind my asking?

ROSE: It’s a love story about a Lady and an Earl.

ISABELLA: Love stories are my favourites. I should like to read it myself one day.

ROSE: Do please, Isabella, pay attention to my braids.

ISABELLA: Of course, Mrs Trollope.

ISABELLA concentrates on ROSE’s hair.

ROSE: Mrs Beeton says that hairdressing is the most important part of the lady’s maid’s office.

ISABELLA: She’s not wrong Mrs Trollope. Get the hair right and the rest follows.

ROSE: The men do very well by themselves on board ship. Drinking, smoking, playing cards. But it is a bad time for ladies if we cannot secure their attention. We must assume indifference but be all the time hard at work with our usual weapons.4

ISABELLA: The beeswax pomade Mrs Trollope?

ROSE: The beeswax, yes. 4 Adapted from John Caldigate


ISABELLA applies the pomade to ROSE’s hair.

ROSE reaches for the manuscript Anthony left with her.

1.11. PUNCHING THE OLD EARL TO THE GROUND

ANTHONY: Thomas Thwaite the tailor was a Radical. A tender-‐hearted, generous and impulsive man who had hated the Old Earl of Lovel with all his heart. He took the Countess and her daughter Anna into his own house and provided for them and fought for them in the courts. He made himself a poor man in their cause and on one occasion, on account of his mistreatment of the Countess, Thomas Thwaite had struck the late Earl to the ground.

ANTHONY, possessed by the character of THOMAS, punches an imaginary Earl before him...

1.12 – THOMAS AND THE COUNTESS – House on Wyndham Street

... THOMAS is relating the story of his visit to Mr Flick to the COUNTESS and punching the imaginary Earl once more.

THOMAS: ... I told him that to oppose an Earl – even though it might be on behalf of a Countess – is a joy to me.

COUNTESS: Whom?

THOMAS: To set wrong right and to put down cruelty and to relieve distressed women is the pride of my heart.

COUNTESS: Whom did you tell?

THOMAS: The lawyer fella. Flick.

COUNTESS: I don’t understand what you were doing talking to Mr Flick?

THOMAS: He sent for me, Lady Lovel. When the lawyers bid you come, I’ve learned ‘tis best to do as they say.

COUNTESS: Why did he send for you? What did he say?

THOMAS: T’was the other fellow, Sir William Summat-‐or-‐other, who did do most of the talking. He did bid me come to your ladyship and ask your ladyship whether you might consent to a marriage twixt the two young persons.

COUNTESS: Which two young persons?

THOMAS: Anna and the Young Earl.


If you agree, he said, and the marriage goes ahead, they and all the world will own you as Countess Lovel. With one third of the property as your own. They’ll swear your marriage was good enough. Well they know that already, and have made this offer because they know it. I take it you will consent?

He assumes from her air of triumph a ‘yes’, though she doesn’t voice it.

When this comes to pass, I’ll be superfluous to requirements I do suppose.

COUNTESS: Has the Young Earl agreed to it?

THOMAS: They didn’t tell me that, my lady.

COUNTESS: I’m sure he must have agreed. Don’t you think so, Mr Thwaite?

THOMAS: I don’t claim to know much about the ways of earls and countesses and solicitors and barristers, my lady.

COUNTESS: Oh Mr Thwaite, do not talk to me in that way.

THOMAS: What way is that, my lady?

COUNTESS: As if you are about to desert me.

THOMAS: There'll be no reason for not deserting now. You'll have friends by the score more fit to see you through this than old Thomas Thwaite. Tailors should consort with tailors, and lords and ladies with each other. To own the truth, now the matter is coming to an end, I’m weary of it. I'd best return to Keswick to tend to my business.

COUNTESS: You speak daggers to me.

THOMAS: There is something sad in the parting of old friends.

COUNTESS: Old friends need not be parted, Mr. Thwaite.

THOMAS: When your ladyship was good enough to point out my boy's improper manner of speech to Lady Anna, I knew how it must be.

COUNTESS: Daniel told you of our conversation?

THOMAS: I can’t say he were happy about it, but you were quite right, my lady. There can be no becoming friendship between such as you and such as we. Lords and ladies, earls and countesses, are our enemies, and we are theirs. We humble tailors may make your robes and take your money, but we cannot eat with you or drink with you.

COUNTESS: How often have I eaten and drank at your table, when no other table was spread for me? How often did Anna lay in your arms as a baby, and been quieter there than she would be even in mine?

THOMAS: Other arms will be open to receive her now your battle is won.

COUNTESS: Our battle Mr Thwaite. I would have lost it many years ago without you.


THOMAS: I was glad to fight it but I am gladder still the fighting is now done.

COUNTESS: It will be well for her, will it not, to be the wife of her cousin?

THOMAS: If he be a good man. A woman will not always make herself happy by marrying an Earl. As you yourself have found. I leave for Cumberland in the morning.

Thomas turns to go.

COUNTESS: Will you not shake my hand before you go?

THOMAS: I fear that would be too painful, my lady.

COUNTESS : I have no friend like you, Mr. Thwaite. Thomas. None whom I love as I do you. There is no limit to the gratitude I owe you. And Daniel of course.

THOMAS nods to acknowledge this but finds he cannot speak. He leaves. When he is out of sight of the COUNTESS, once more he punches the imaginary Earl.

1.13. ROSE’S CORRECTIONS – Tollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain The COUNTESS has returned to the cabin as ROSE. She has Anthony’s manuscript in front of her and sets about transcribing it.

ROSE is pausing for thought when ANTHONY returns to the cabin and disturbs her.

ANTHONY: Are you not done yet?

ROSE: Not yet.

ANTHONY: Only I had hoped we could lunch together today.

ROSE: You’ll have to be patient.

ANTHONY: My stomach is rumbling.

ROSE: I was thinking of Fred.

ANTHONY: The Young Earl?

ROSE: (irritated) The shepherd. Our son Fred. The reason we’ve sold our home, uprooted ourselves for 18 months and are travelling to the far side of the world.

ANTHONY: Ah yes, that Fred. I must say I’m looking forward to seeing him among his sheep.

ROSE: And with his betrothed. This magistrate’s daughter of whom we are obliged to approve despite never having met. Most likely he’ll have no time for us.

ANTHONY: It’s natural that a mother should yearn for her son, while the son’s feeling for the mother is of a weaker nature...


ROSE: That does not sound natural at all.

ANTHONY: ... While a husband’s feeling for his wife remains strong, provided that she regularly lunches with him.

ROSE: Don’t interrupt me then.

ANTHONY: (sighs)

ANTHONY: It takes you longer to copy out the pages than it takes me to write them in the first instance.

ROSE: Because you make so many mistakes.

ANTHONY: (grunts)

ROSE: And you have asked me to make suggestions.

ANTHONY: Yes yes, about the ladies’ dresses, etcetera, etcetera. But this chapter’s about Thomas Thwaite.

ROSE: Thomas Thwaite is a tailor. The clothes have to be correct. You lunch without me. I can’t concentrate with you thundering around in here in any case. You run along. Perhaps you can find an attractive American lady to sit with.

ANTHONY winces.

ROSE: I’ll ask Isabella to bring me something to the cabin.

ANTHONY: If you insist.

ROSE: I do.

ANTHONY: Where exactly have you got to?

ROSE AND ANNA: “Impossible!”

1.14 – IMPOSSIBLE! – House on Wyndham Street

ANNA sits with the COUNTESS in the drawing room.

ANNA: [Impossible!]... That would be impossible!

COUNTESS: But what could be more fitting than a marriage between you two? Your rank is equal to his, higher even, in that your father – unlike his – was himself an Earl. In fortune you will be much more than his equal. In age you are exactly suited.

ANNA: It’s impossible.

COUNTESS: Why impossible?


ANNA: We have never seen each other...

COUNTESS: That state of affairs can be easily and quickly rectified

ANNA: ... And we have always been his enemies.

COUNTESS: This is their wish. It comes from them. There can be no more proper way to put our enmities asides. You would be the Countess Lovel and all will have been conceded to us.

ANNA: It is quite quite impossible!

ANNA leaves. The COUNTESS is stunned.

1.15 – ANNA IS INVITED TO YOXHAM – Yoxham and Wyndham Street drawing rooms The stuffy and conservative RECTOR writes a sermon. He reads out passages from a large Bible at his side, then makes notes as ideas occur to him.

RECTOR: “Charity suffereth long, and is kind;...

He writes a note, then returns to the Bible

... charity envieth not;...”

Makes another note

... charity vaunteth not itself, is not -‐-‐”

FREDERIC and AUNT JANE arrive and interrupt him.

FREDERIC: Uncle?

RECTOR: “... puffed up.” Mmm?

FREDERIC: Might we invite Lady Anna to stay with us here at Yoxham?

The RECTOR would rather avoid the subject.

RECTOR: I’m working on my sermon.

FREDERIC: Of course. My apologies. But Aunt Jane and I thought that...

AUNT JANE: ... if the girl comes to Yoxham, Charles, with the privilege of being called Lady Anna by the inhabitants of the rectory, she will of course do so with the understanding that she may be offered and may accept her cousin’s hand.

FREDERIC: Though she might not like me!

AUNT JANE: Not like you! Don’t be ridiculous!

FREDERIC: And I might not like her, Aunt Jane?


RECTOR: But if she comes here with privileges, I shall have to speak to her and address her as Lady Anna. And I don’t know if I can bring my tongue to do that.

FREDERIC: Should we send the invitation through her mother?

RECTOR: Then we would be forced to acknowledge the countess-‐ship of the mother as well!

FREDERIC: If we call the girl Lady Anna, then we would be obliged to call the mother Countess Lovel, that is true, but –

RECTOR: I would rather not call either of them anything.

AUNT JANE: It would be as well to be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

RECTOR: I would rather not be hung at all and to call both of them fraudsters.

AUNT JANE: It needs to be clear that the girl is invited, and not the mother.

RECTOR: Definitely not the mother.

FREDERIC: On that we are agreed.

RECTOR: Now, might I please return to 1 Corinthians?

AUNT JANE: I shall write directly to Lady Anna.

AUNT JANE writes a letter and passes it to...

... the RECTOR, who cannot bear to read it, but folds and seals it and passes it to...

... FREDERIC, who nods with approval and then passes it to...

... MR FLICK, who passes it, with a raised eyebrow, to...

... the COUNTESS who – insulted that it is not addressed to her – passes it to...

... Lady ANNA sitting next to her mother at Wyndham Street

COUNTESS: It’s addressed to you. I suppose conquerors cannot be conquerors all at once. Nor can the vanquished be expected to submit themselves with grace.

ANNA: What should I do with it?

COUNTESS: I suggest you read it, my dear.

ANNA: I will not read it if you are insulted.

COUNTESS: Read it.

ANNA: Would you prefer to read it?

COUNTESS: It is addressed to you and you alone.

Without enthusiasm, ANNA opens and reads the brief letter.


COUNTESS: They are weak and petty and imagine they can acknowledge you, and yet continue to deny me my rights. But it matters little.

When ANNA is finished reading...

ANNA: I’ll not go.

COUNTESS: Of course you’ll go, you ridiculous girl.

The COUNTESS practically snatches the letter from ANNA in order to pour over its every detail

ANNA: But I have such a headache Mamma.

COUNTESS: If he were such a one as your father. If he were drunken, cruel, false or merely foolish or deformed, I could understand your reticence. But we hear only that he is an excellent young man who has endeared himself to all who know him. Such a one that all the girls of his own standing in the world would give their eyes to win him.

ANNA: Let some girl win him then who cares for him.

COUNTESS: But he wishes to win you, my dearest.

ANNA: Only because he would get the money.

COUNTESS: You would both get the money.

ANNA: Not because he loves me.

COUNTESS: Would you not wish that your own son –

ANNA: (interrupting) I’ve not met him and we have a son already!?

COUNTESS: Would you not wish that your own son should come to be Earl Lovel, with wealth sufficient to support the dignity of his position?

ANNA: (clutching at straws) The letter says I may bring my maid with me.

COUNTESS: Then you will take a maid.

ANNA: I don’t have a maid.

COUNTESS: Then we’ll find you one.

ANNA: We can’t afford to pay a maid.

COUNTESS: You’ll be attended as your rank demands.

ANNA: But Mamma, I don’t want a maid.

COUNTESS: Nevertheless you shall take one. You’ll have to make other changes besides that. And the sooner you begin to make them, the easier they’ll be to you.

ANNA: I don’t want to go.


COUNTESS: You will go.

ANNA crosses her arms and refuses to budge.

1.16. ANTHONY SINGS – Saloon and corridor, SS Great Britain

The SS Great Britain moves through choppier waters and the passengers in the saloon steady themselves against the furnishings.

Accompanied on an out-‐of-‐tune piano by one of his fellow passengers, ANTHONY, slightly the worse for wear with drink, sings vigorously (to the tune of ‘Cheer up Sam’5).

Some of his fellow passengers attempt to join in (they know the tune if not the words); others look on appalled (LADY FITZ for example covers her ears)

ANTHONY: WE’RE BOUND FOR GREAT AUSTRALIA, WHERE THE MONEY GOES SO FREE,

IN THE NOBLE SHIP GREAT BRITAIN, THE MISTRESS OF THE SEA;

WITH HER THOUSAND YARDS OF CANVAS, AND MEN SO STOUT AND BRAVE,

AS EVER WENT ALOFT, OR SAILED UP THE ATLANTIC WAVE,

THEN CHEER UP ALL, AND DON’T LET YOUR SPIRITS GO DOWN,

FOR THERE’S MANY A GIRL THAT WE ALL KNOW WELL, A WAITING FOR US IN TOWN.

ANTHONY leaves the saloon and nearly bumps into ISABELLA, who is walking and balancing a sandwich on a plate. They both struggle to walk a straight line.

ANTHONY: Got your sea legs now I see Isabella.

ISABELLA: Not really Mr Trollope. I’m just fetching this sandwich for Mrs Trollope.

ANTHONY: I’m heading up on deck. Bit of fresh air.

ISABELLA: Very good Mr Trollope.

ANTHONY is about to head off, but then he turns back and is slightly more forward with ISABELLA than he would be if entirely sober...

ANTHONY: Isabella?

ISABELLA: Yes Mr Trollope.

5 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VLV0QroGMI


ANTHONY: Mrs Trollope tells me you lived for a time in the Yorkshire Dales. Can this be true?

ISABELLA: It is Mr Trollope.

ANTHONY: D’you ever visit Bolton Abbey?

ISABELLA: I did once as a child Mr Trollope, with my mother. It’s a wonderful place.

ANTHONY: The glory of the Abbey, to my eyes, is in the river which runs round it and in the wooded banks which overhang it. No more picturesque arrangement of the freaks of nature, aided by art and taste of man, is to be found. But you know, I cannot for the life of me remember how many steps there are across the River Wharfe. Do you happen to recall?

ISABELLA: Oh I remember the stepping stones Mr Trollope. Such fun.

ANTHONY: But how many stones are there? Do you recall?

ISABELLA: Must be 35 or 40 Mr Trollope. Is this for your book?

ANTHONY: I intend, in a chapter or two, to set my heroine hopping from one stone to the next.

ISABELLA: Will she fall in Mr Trollope? I know I did.

ANTHONY: We shall see.

ISABELLA: Shall we? I’d love to read that chapter Mr Trollope and be reminded of the place. If you could bear to allow it.

ANTHONY: I’m sure I could bear that Isabella, indeed yes, I’m sure I could. 40 you say?

ISABELLA: Perhaps 40, yes Mr Trollope.

ANTHONY and then ISABELLA set off in their separate directions.

1.17 – ANNA ARRIVES IN YOXHAM – Yoxham Rectory approach

AUNT JANE and the RECTOR are outside Yoxham Rectory to greet ANNA as she arrives with her MAID (who does not speak but offers a silent masterclass in insolence) by carriage.

ANNA and the MAID both reach for Anna’s case but ANNA gets there first and so is holding it as she steps from the carriage. The MAID, empty handed, steps from the carriage after ANNA.

ANNA, spotting AUNT JANE and the RECTOR, has second thoughts and hurriedly hands the case to her MAID.

AUNT JANE: You’ve brought a maid. We didn’t think you would.

ANNA: Mamma thought it best. Am I wrong to have...


RECTOR: My understanding was that you and your mother had literally nothing to live on. And yet -‐-‐

AUNT JANE: (interrupting him) I suppose she has been with you a long time?

ANNA: She only came the day before yesterday. Mamma had to borrow money from -‐-‐

AUNT JANE: (interrupting her, kindly) We ought first to introduce ourselves. I’m Miss Jane Lovel, and this is my brother, the Reverend Lovel, Rector of Yoxham. And this is our home, the Rectory.

RECTOR: He ain’t here yet.

ANNA: I’m pleased to meet you Miss Lovel.

RECTOR: He’ll be a few days.

ANNA: Reverend Lovel.

RECTOR: He’s in Scotland.

ANNA: Thank you for you kind invitation.

RECTOR: With friends.

ANNA: I’m sorry but of whom are we speaking?

RECTOR: The Young Lord, of course. The reason why you’re here.

AUNT JANE: We’ll have plenty to entertain ourselves with until Frederic arrives. You may accompany me on my visits to the poor of the parish.

ANNA: Oh.

AUNT JANE: Unless you object to that?

ANNA: Oh no, I don’t, not at all. It’s merely that Mamma and I have grown so used to being the poor I suppose.

RECTOR: (with a glance at the Maid) Evidently.

AUNT JANE leads ANNA into the Rectory, followed by the MAID and the RECTOR bringing up the rear.

AUNT JANE leads ANNA to...

1.18. DESCRIPTIONS OF YORKSHIRE – Trollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain

... the Trollope’s cabin aboard the SS Great Britain where she becomes ISABELLA and ANTHONY places some manuscript pages in her hands.

ANTHONY: Here Isabella. Tell me if my descriptions of Yorkshire and Yorkshire life ring true.


ISABELLA: Oh, thank you Mr Trollope, I will.

ISABELLA’s eyes fall immediately to reading and ANTHONY leaves her to it.

ISABELLA: “Anna found that there was much in life at Yoxham Rectory which she thoroughly enjoyed. The green fields and the air, which was so pleasant after the close heat of the narrow London streets; the bright parsonage garden; the visits among the poor with Aunt Jane during which she won golden opinions on account of her soft, feminine humility and good humour; the pleasant idleness of the Rectory drawing room with its books and music; and doubtless also the luxuries of a rich, well-‐ordered household.

To come down with bright ribbons and clean unruffled muslin to breakfast, with nothing to do which need ruffle them unbecomingly, and then to dress for dinner with silk and gauds. She seemed to live among roses and perfumes.”

ISABELLA is startled by a voice behind her and finds herself...

1.19 – THE EARL AND ANNA MEET – Yoxham Rectory library ... as ANNA in the Yoxham Rectory library.

FREDERIC: Lady Anna, I presume? Frederic Lovel.

ANNA: My Lord.

FREDERIC: ‘Frederic’, please. Will it not be well that we two should be friends?

ANNA: Oh. Friends. Yes, My Lord.

FREDERIC: I’m sorry to say I was brought up to believe that you and your mother were impostors.

ANNA: My Lord, we are not impostors.

FREDERIC: I’m sure now that you’re not. Mistakes were made, but they were not of my making. As a boy, what could I believe but what I was told? I know now what you are and am glad of the opportunity to say it to you face. You are the Lady Anna. You are your father’s heir.

ANNA: But you are the Earl.

FREDERIC: As poor a peer as there is in England.

ANNA: I am sorry that that is so.

FREDERIC: The lawyers tell me that we should marry. Because I’m an Earl and you have a fortune.

ANNA: I have no fortune.


FREDERIC: Not yet, perhaps. But when all has been settled by the lawyers...

ANNA: I’m not sure if I’d like having one.

FREDERIC: (laughing) Well, don’t ask me what it’s like, I’ve no experience either.

What do you think then to this marriage plan?

ANNA: Oh.

FREDERIC: You’ve agreed we may be friends.

ANNA: Oh yes, friends, indeed. I hope we may be that.

FREDERIC: And cousins, by birth.

ANNA: Yes indeed, My Lord.

FREDERIC: Call by my name? Cousins, you know, do so. ‘Frederic’. Or ‘Fred’. You can have no better cousin than me. I’m bound, at the very least, to be a brother to you.

ANNA: Oh be my brother!

FREDERIC: Will you love me then?

ANNA: With my whole heart.

FREDERIC: Enough to be my wife?

ANNA: Enough, My Lord, to be your dear cousin, your loving sister.

The RECTOR and AUNT JANE, having caught on to the fact that FREDERIC has arrived, enter and the RECTOR makes his presence known with a light clearing of the throat.

FREDERIC: Uncle Charles!

RECTOR: My Lord.

FREDERIC: Will no-‐one call me ‘Frederic’ anymore!? Aunt Jane.

RECTOR: You are Earl Lovel and the appropriate formalities must be observed.

AUNT JANE: We were not expecting you until the morning Frederic.

FREDERIC: I made good time and I was keen to meet Cousin Anna. Now, I was thinking on the ride here whether we could not make an expedition to Wharfedale and Bolton Abbey in a day or two? We should have to sleep over one night, but that would make it all the jollier. There isn’t a better inn in England than the Devonshire Arms. What do you think Aunt?

AUNT JANE: It’s rather a long way, Frederic.


FREDERIC: Thirty miles. That counts as nothing to Yorkshire folk. What do you say Anna? Yoxham is all very well but we need to show you the very best the county has to offer. I can’t think of a pleasanter spot than Bolton Abbey.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I sense my Uncle wants his dinner. Is that right Uncle? Could there be a place set for me... ?

AUNT JANE: Of course there can be a place set.

FREDERIC: Then I will go up and change. It’s so good to be back here and to see you Aunt and Uncle. And to meet you Anna.

And with that he is gone, taking all his energy with him. The RECTOR, AUNT JANE and ANNA stand and find they have little to say to one another now. Eventually...

AUNT JANE: I do think Bolton Abbey’s a little far.

1.20 – THE STONES AND THE STRID – Wharfedale (stones and Strid) FREDERIC shows ANNA his favourite spot in the world at Bolton Abbey

FREDERIC: Behold the glory of Bolton Abbey.

ANNA: It is pretty.

FREDERIC: You see the stepping-‐stones across it?

ANNA gasps. She has a strong inkling of what’s coming next.

FREDERIC: Shall we?

ANNA: Is there no other way across?

FREDERIC: Let’s be quick. I want to leave Uncle Charles and Aunt Jane behind us, so we can talk.

FREDERIC steps onto the first stone and turns back to offer his hand to ANNA. Reluctantly, she takes it.

ANNA: How many stones are there?

FREDERIC: Perhaps 40. Let’s count them as we go.

ANNA: And the river here is very wide.

FREDERIC: I can’t see them following us across, can you?

ANNA, with FREDERIC’s help starts stepping across the stones.

FREDERIC: You have to keep moving.

Anna looks around her, her dress is not really suitable for this activity.


FREDERIC: Don’t look at the water.

ANNA: We are in the middle of a river, how can I not look at the water? This one is crooked.

FREDERIC: It’s no different to the others.

ANNA: Mayn’t we go back?

FREDERIC: Keep on. Soon, you’ll be hopping and skipping across like a milkmaid.

ANNA: I’m going to fall in.

FREDERIC: It’s only up to your knees if you do.

Meanwhile AUNT JANE and the RECTOR have arrived at the edge of the river.

RECTOR: What do they think they’re doing?!

AUNT JANE: They’re young, Charles. What do you expect them to do when presented with stepping stones across a river? Come along! I haven’t done this in years.

AUNT JANE prepares to step across the river.

RECTOR: We are not going over there.

AUNT JANE: You may not be, but I most certainly am. It would not be proper to let those two out of our sight.

AUNT JANE starts to cross. Meanwhile, FREDERIC and ANNA are nearly across the other side.

FREDERIC: Only half-‐a-‐dozen to go. Are you counting?

ANNA: I thought you were counting.

FREDERIC helps ANNA make the final leap to the bank. They turn and see AUNT JANE and the RECTOR (huffily) following them across.

FREDERIC: I underestimated my Aunt and Uncle, though he looks none too steady.

They wave at the older couple but they are concentrating on their steps.

FREDERIC: I daresay he’ll get his feet wet.

ANNA: That may not improve his mood.

FREDERIC: He enjoys being grumpy. We mustn’t spoil his fun. And we mustn’t let him spoil ours. Come along!

ANNA: We can go back another way?

FREDERIC: Oh yes. We shall jump the Strid. This way, coz.


FREDERIC and ANNA head up the bank, while AUNT JANE and the RECTOR are still stepping across the river.

ANNA and FREDERIC arrive at the Strid (we have been here before – at the opening of the play).

The Strid is a narrow gully which the waters of the River Wharfe have cut for themselves in the rocks, perhaps five or six feet broad, where the river passes, but narrowed at the top by an overhanging mass. FREDERIC and ANNA contemplate the leap.

FREDERIC: “The pair have reached that fearful chasm6 How tempting to bestride! For lordly Wharf is there pent in With rocks on either side.”

Growing up in Cumberland, I thought you’d recognise these verses.

ANNA: Southey?

FREDERIC: The other one.

ANNA: Coleridge?

FREDERIC: Wordsworth.

“This striding-‐place is called THE STRID, A name which it took of yore: A thousand years hath it borne that name, And shall a thousand more.”

ANNA: The ‘Strid’?

FREDERIC: This chasm is the Strid the poet describes.

FREDERIC jumps across from one side to the other. ANNA gasps.

Come. It’s barely a step.

ANNA: I’m sure I should tumble in and be dashed to pieces among the rocks.

FREDERIC: You could jump over twice the distance on dry ground.

ANNA: Then let me jump on dry ground.

FREDERIC: Do you think I’d suggest it if I wasn’t sure?

ANNA: Do they jump across safely in Mr Southey’s poem

FREDERIC: It’s Wordsworth.

6 The Force of Prayer by William Wordsworth


“And hither is young Romilly come, And what may now forbid That he, perhaps for the hundredth time, Shall bound across The Strid?

ANNA: My sense is this will not end well.

FREDERIC: “He sprang in glee,-‐-‐for what cared he That the river was strong, and the rocks were steep? But –

ANNA: There must always be a ‘but’

FREDERIC: “But the greyhound in the leash hung back, And checked him in his leap.”

ANNA: And?

FREDERIC: We have no greyhound on a leash.

ANNA: What happened to... ‘Romilly’ was it?

FREDERIC: “The Boy is in the arms of Wharf, And strangled by a merciless force; For never more was young Romilly seen Till he rose a lifeless corse.”

ANNA: “A lifeless corse”! And you use these dreadful old verses to persuade me to jump.

FREDERIC: These are noble and romantic verses based on an old, old legend

ANNA: You want to make another legend of me?

FREDERIC: If you jump the Strid, we would certainly leave Uncle Charles and Aunt Jane behind us.

ANNA: Why are you so set on leaving them behind?

FREDERIC: We have to be so excruciatingly formal around them.

ANNA: I can’t afford to drown myself just that you may escape the inconvenience of your relatives. You can go ahead yourself, and I’ll wait for them here.

FREDERIC: (stretching out his arm across the Strid) I can almost touch you.

ANNA: It’s too far.

FREDERIC: It’s a gap of three feet. I’ll catch you.

ANNA: Do you promise?

FREDERIC: I promise. I will catch you.


ANNA determines then to jump, still anxious...

She takes a run up and leaps...

1.21. CAUGHT! – Trollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain

ROSE: (affronted) What is happening here!?

ROSE has returned to the cabin and found ISABELLA with pages of the manuscript of Lady Anna in her hands.

ROSE: You know you are not to touch Mr Trollope’s papers.

ANTHONY arrives slightly after ROSE.

ANTHONY: (distinctly sheepish) Ah, my dearest, I have solicited Isabella’s assistance with the Bolton Abbey chapters. She has some personal knowledge of the area and -‐-‐

ROSE: (ignoring ANTHONY, addressing ISABELLA) Give those pages to me.

Reluctantly, ISABELLA hands them over.

ANTHONY: (trying unsuccessfully to lighten the tone) You know those pages contain what I believe to be my 29th marriage proposal.

ROSE: I am the only one who reads what Mr Trollope writes before it goes to the publisher.

ISABELLA: Mrs Trollope, I –

ROSE: Not his editor. Not his literary friends. Not the maid. Not anyone but me.

ROSE sweeps out of the cabin.

ANTHONY and ISABELLA avoid eye-‐contact.

1.22 – SPRAINED! – The Strid

… ANNA, on the ground, cries out in pain and clutches her ankle. She has made it across the Strid but has twisted her ankle in the process.

FREDERIC: Anna, I shall never forgive myself if you are hurt?

ANNA: I twisted my foot when I landed.

FREDERIC I feel dreadful for making you jump. Are you angry with me?

ANNA: (through gritted teeth) I could never be angry.

FREDERIC: I want you to like me. Because I can in truth say that I love you.


ANNA: Ow.

FREDERIC: Not because of all that has been said and the machinations of our respective families and the lawyers. But for yourself and for myself. From the moment I saw you and in every moment we have spent together since then.

I know this is too quick. But, you understand, the doubts, the fears, the wellbeing of our families and so many of our friends are bound up in all of this. So much so that I hope you will pardon the haste which would otherwise be unpardonable.

Anna.

Will you –

ANNA: (interrupting) Frederic.

FREDERIC: Will you –

ANNA: Do not ask me.

FREDERIC: I am bound to ask, and to know, for all our sakes.

Will you marry me?

FREDERIC holds out his hand to help ANNA to her feet but she does not take it.

ANNA hauls herself to her feet, unaided. When she is standing, she looks directly at FREDERIC

ANNA: Frederic.

FREDERIC: Is it that you cannot love me?

I’m already engaged to be married.

FREDERIC stares at her in silence. Eventually...

FREDERIC: Already engaged?

ANNA: It has been a secret. Or I should have told you sooner.

FREDERIC: Of course.

ANNA: I’m engaged to Mr Daniel Thwaite.

FREDERIC: (puzzled, then appalled) The tailor?

ANNA: Yes.

As for the money, however, if it be mine to give, then you shall have it.

FREDERIC: You think the money is what I wanted?

ANNA: You despise Mr Thwaite, of course, because he is a tailor.


FREDERIC: Well, no, I don’t despise him but I’m sure he is beneath you.

ANNA: He was above me. My mother and I were poor, while he and his father had money, which we took. In all my childhood I had never a kind word from another child, but only from Daniel.

AUNT JANE and the RECTOR have appeared on the other side of the Strid, catching ANNA and FREDERIC unawares.

AUNT JANE: What is the matter Frederic, you look so pale?

ANNA: (hushed so Aunt Jane and the Rector cannot hear) What I’ve just told you is a secret. My mother does not know.

FREDERIC: (replying to Aunt Jane) Anna hurt her ankle, jumping the Strid.

RECTOR: What did you expect? Silly girl.

FREDERIC: It was entirely my fault Uncle. I made her jump.

AUNT JANE: Not seriously hurt, I hope.

ANNA: Oh no, nothing to signify. A sprain at worst.

Silence.

FREDERIC: We had better go on this way, to the inn.

AUNT JANE: We shall go back the way we came. Unless you wish to make the leap Charles?

RECTOR: I think not.

AUNT JANE: We’ll meet you back at the Inn?

FREDERIC: Very well.

ANNA nods.

Under the gaze of AUNT JANE and the RECTOR, FREDERIC offers ANNA his arm, and reluctantly she takes it. They walk off, ANNA limping. ANNA lets go of FREDERIC’s arm and walks unaided.

AUNT JANE seems reluctant to leave.

RECTOR: Come along then.

AUNT JANE: It’s all over. I knew the moment I saw both their faces.

RECTOR: If that’s true, it must be that Frederic has been offended by some lapse in her conduct, some falling away from feminine grace.

AUNT JANE: Or perhaps she has refused him.

The RECTOR looks at AUNT JANE appalled and gives an anxious laugh.


RECTOR: Impossible.

1.23 – TOO HEAVY FOR SECRETS – Gentlemen’s Club

FREDERICK has just told SIR WILLIAM Patterson the bad news, over claret and cigars.

FREDERIC: You must not repeat this to anyone, even to Mr Flick. I’ve promised Lady Anna that it shall not go beyond you.

SIR WILLIAM: Regardless of whom I tell, this will not stay secret long.

FREDERIC: You don’t seem terrifically surprised by this turn of events Sir William, if you don’t mind my saying.

SIR WILLIAM: That she is engaged to the tailor? She had no-‐one else near her as she grew up. Polite society shunned her. A girl must cotton to someone, and who else was there? We ought not to be angry with her, nor find fault with the tailor. He’s not carried her away and got up a marriage before she was of age. He’s not kept her from going out among her friends. He hasn’t wronged her, I suppose?

FREDERIC: (missing or choosing to miss Sir William’s insinuation) He has wronged her frightfully.

SIR WILIIAM: Ah, well. We mean different things. I’m obliged to look at it as the world will look at it.

FREDERIC: The world will be appalled. A lady marrying a tailor! But there is nothing to be done.

SIR WILLIAM: There is everything to be done. We have the mother on our side. I understand we may have the tailor’s father on our side. From what you’ve told me, we may well have the girl herself on our side. In all probability she promised herself in gratitude and now clings to her promise in good faith rather than in affection. Now we have knowledge of the engagement, we may act.

FREDERIC: Do you think we may buy the tailor, Sir William?

SIR WILLIAM: Mr Flick could answer that question better than I can do.

FREDERIC: But I promised Anna I would tell no-‐one of this but you.

SIR WILLIAM: This matter is too heavy for secrets, Lord Lovel.

SIR WILLIAM puts out his cigar and leaps to his feet…

Mr Flick!

1.24 – NOT ALTOGETHER VILLAINOUS – Lobby of legal office

… and takes MR FLICK to one side and speaks to him in hushed tones.


MR FLICK: The tailor?

SIR WILLIAM: His Lordship asked me to keep this information to myself but it behoves me rather to look after my client’s interests than his instructions. And also, one might add, the interests of the country against which the proposed unnatural alliance would commit such grievous injury. Now, no doubt the tailor wants money.

MR FLICK: No doubt.

SIR WILLIAM: And, in fairness, he is entitled some considerable reward for all that he has done and suffered in Lady Anna and her mother’s cause. He might have done much worse to the girl, if you know what I mean.

MR FLICK: We must be thankful that he has not.

SIR WILLIAM: The tailor should not be regarded as altogether villainous. Nonetheless, he most certainly must not be allowed to carry off the prize. This promise of marriage must be annihilated utterly.

MR FLICK I shall be guided by you, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM: One thing is plain Mr Flick. You must see the Countess and inform her. Clearly, she has been kept in the dark with regard to this obscene proposal. She will do our work better than we can do it ourselves.

1.25 – IMPUDENT SLUT! – Courtyard, London

The COUNTESS meets ANNA off the coach from York. ANNA rushes enthusiastically to her mother.

ANNA: Oh dear Mamma, I am so glad to be back with you again.

The COUNTESS, though she submits to being kissed by her daughter, seems cold towards her.

COUNTESS: Where is your maid?

ANNA: She’s looking to my luggage. Mamma, is everything – ?

COUNTESS: (cutting her off) Quiet, Anna!

ANNA: Why are you unkind to me, Mamma?

COUNTESS: Have you not been unkind to me?

ANNA: I have never meant to be unkind. Oh Mamma, if you look at me like that, I shall die.

COUNTESS: Is it true that you have promised that you would be the wife of Mr Daniel Thwaite?

ANNA: Who told you?

COUNTESS: Is it true?


ANNA: Who told you?

COUNTESS: Lawyers. Is it true?

ANNA: Oh Mamma.

COUNTESS: Is it true?

ANNA: It is true.

COUNTESS: Lawyers had to tell me how you have deceived me. Do you think I have struggled these long, dark years to prove you to be the heir of an Earl in order that you might become the wife of a tailor?!

ANNA: You do not know Daniel, Mamma.

COUNTESS: Impudent slut!

The COUNTESS steps momentarily out of character.

ROSE: Might I reassure incredulous spectators that Mr Trollope does indeed deploy this very phrase at this point in his novel.

Picking up where she left off as the COUNTESS...

COUNTESS: ‘Impudent slut!’ Don’t tell me what I know. Did I not know him before you were born? I would sooner die here, at your feet, this moment, and know that you must follow me within an hour, than see you married to such a one as he. Now, give me your word of honour, you will never see him again.

ANNA: I cannot give you that, Mamma, because I have made him a promise -‐-‐

COUNTESS: (interrupting) Then I will make you a promise: I will not smile upon you again until this baseness is abandoned and you have repudiated this monstrous engagement.

The COUNTESS turns upon her heels and leaves ANNA.

ANNA: Mamma?!

END OF ACT I


LADY ANNA: ALL AT SEA – ACT 2

2.1. MIDPASSAGE – Between Liverpool and Melbourne, SS Great Britain, 1871

ISABELLA, ANTHONY and ROSE appear (ROSE somewhat peeved at the other two).

ROSE: Ladies and Gentlemen, it is June 1871 and we are at sea. At the midpoint of our journey to Melbourne, Australia, aboard the SS Great Britain, the great passenger steamship designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel. ‘We’ being Rose (indicating herself and ANTHONY) and Anthony Trollope.

ANTHONY: Off to visit son Freddie, amongst his sheep.

ROSE: Perhaps to see him for the last time.

ISABELLA: (indicating herself) And also, Mrs Trollope’s maid, Isabella.

ISABELLA tries to catch ROSE and ANTHONY’s respective eyes. ROSE glares at her; ANTHONY evades the eye-‐contact.

ANTHONY: When making long journeys, I have always succeeded in getting a desk put up in my cabin. And this has been done for me here, so that I was able to get to work the day after we left Liverpool on a story...

ISABELLA: Lady Anna.

ANTHONY: ... every word of which, at a rate of 66 pages of manuscript in each week for the eight weeks of the journey, should be completed by the time we reach Melbourne.

Where have I got to now?

ROSE: Chapter 28 of a planned 48 chapters: The trial: Lovel versus Murray and Another.

2.2 – THE TRIAL OPENS – Court of King’s Bench, Westminster

The COUNTESS (veiled), LADY ANNA, FREDERIC, the RECTOR and AUNT JANE assemble in anticipation.

ANTHONY: Acting for Earl Lovel: Sir William Patterson.

ANTHONY puts on a wig and gown and becomes SIR WILLIAM. He clears his throat, milks the moment, then...

SIR WILLIAM: The essence of the case before us is this: The previous Earl Lovel ...

Muted boos. SIR WILLIAM raises an indulgent eyebrow and continues.

... has died.

Cheers. SIR WILLIAM sighs, then continues.


Two ladies, mother (indicates the Countess) and daughter (Anna), claim the substantial personal property of the late Earl as his widow and daughter.

Against that claim, my client, the current Earl, Frederic Lovel, has made his claim as heir-‐at-‐law, alleging that there was no marriage and therefore no widow and no legitimate daughter.

Now this is a complex case and you will forgive me if I speak at some length in order to touch on all the relevant details...

AUNT JANE and FREDERIC, at the back of the Court Room, whisper anxiously to one another.

AUNT JANE: I’m told Sir William’s opening statements can last for several days.

FREDERIC: Mr Flick is working hard behind the scenes to try to spare us the indignity and expense of a lengthy trial.

2.3 – DANIEL AND THE LAWYER – Legal Office, Lincoln’s Inn DANIEL stands in MR FLiCK’s office.

MR FLICK : Would you care to sit Mr Thwaite?

DANIEL: I’m content to stand Mr Flick. Now what is it that you want?

MR FLICK: You are aware Mr Thwaite that friends on both sides of this case are endeavouring to arrange matters amicably outside of the Court?

DANIEL: I‘m aware that the friends of Lord Lovel, finding that they have no ground to stand on at law, are endeavouring to gain their object by less honourable means.

MR FLICK with a wince allows Daniel’s comment to pass.

MR FLICK: Both those representing the lady whom you call the Countess Lovel and we who represent Earl Lovel, support the very proper and natural alliance that now exists between the Earl and the girl whom we shall call, as a courtesy, Lady Anna.

DANIEL: I know of no such alliance.

MR FLICK: We are all of us most anxious to promote a marriage between the two parties and to bring to a close this potentially ruinous litigation.

DANIEL: Ruinous to whom Mr Flick? Not to you and your kind, who live and thrive by litigation?

Mr FLICK also allows this comment to pass, though he’s rattled by DANIEL.

MR FLICK: Now, I’m told that Anna feels herself hampered by some childish promise that has been made to you.


DANIEL: Do you call it childish?

MR FLICK: I do. A marriage to you, as you must well know, is impossible.

DANIEL: Marriage to me, Mr Flick, is quite as possible as would be one to Lord Lovel, if the rules prescribed by law are to be obeyed.

MR FLICK: I will not argue with you Mr Thwaite on points of law, but you know as well as I that a marriage of a lady to a tailor would not be fitting.

DANIEL: To which of us has Anna given her promise? The Earl or the Tailor? Which of us has she known and loved? Which of us has won her by long friendship and steady regard? And which of us, Mr Flick, knows her not at all and is attracted to marriage by her lately assured wealth?

MR FLICK: I suppose, Mr Thwaite, that you are not indifferent to her money?

DANIEL: Then you suppose wrongly. No-‐one, it seems, in this matter has paid any attention to my word, or opinion, or character. I have been neither consulted nor considered by anyone at any stage. So I will tell you now what I think.

I think the arbitrary domination of one man by another is ungodly. I find social distinctions entirely abhorrent. Aristocratic gentlemen, so called, are to me as savages and ought to be cleared away in order that perfection might come about in obedience to the ordinances of the Creator.

MR FLICK is appalled at DANIEL’s radicalism.

When I first knew Anna, I pitied her. I joined my father in fighting for the rights of her mother, not because it was her right to be a Countess, but because we opposed an Earl. My father’s wealth, which should have made the world for me a world of promise, was instead lavished in the service of Anna and her mother. I did not complain. Rather, my pity for Anna developed into love and she became the world to me.

I ask you: am I now to drop my love? To confess myself unworthy and slink out of her sight because she is become an heiress? Am I to think so badly of her as to think that she will drop her love for me because she is become wealthy?

MR FLICK: You place the young lady in an extremely difficult position.

DANIEL: Not at all. If I have misjudged Anna and she does, indeed, wish to drop me then I will offer no resistance. She need but tell me and I will take myself off at once to Australia on the far side of the globe, to live in a newer, better world, free of class distinctions. A world uncontaminated by noble lords and titled ladies.

MR FLICK: You will forgive me if I am not entirely convinced by your indifference to Lady Anna’s likely inheritance.


DANIEL: I will not forgive you, no. For myself, I’d be content to see Lord Lovel take all the money and squander it among thieves and prostitutes, while I have Anna to sit with me at my table and share with me the earnings of my own honest labour. But her money is her money and, as her betrothed, I do defy Lord Lovel and all other claimants to it for her sake and for the sake of the children she may bear, with all my power. And that, Mr Flick, is all I have to say.

2.4 – DANIEL ON THE DOORSTEP: LET HER CHOOSE – Doorstep of Wyndham Street DANIEL moves to the COUNTESS’s doorstep.

COUNTESS: She’s not here.

DANIEL: (he doesn’t believe her) Where is she then?

COUNTESS: No good can be done by my telling you where she is.

DANIEL: My father is sick.

COUNTESS: Anna has told me she made you a promise.

DANIEL: And I am honoured by it. I wish to speak to Anna before I leave for Cumberland to be at my father’s side.

COUNTESS: She feels bound to her promise not by love but by simple gratitude.

DANIEL: Let her tell me so with her own lips and I will free her from her promise. Let her come and stand before me and tell me to my face that she does not love me and, I swear to you, neither you nor Anna will see me again. You may stay and witness the whole, brief, conversation if you so choose.

COUNTESS: I’ve told you, Mr Thwaite. She’s not here. She does not love you. She loves the young Earl. And why should she not?

DANIEL: Let her say the word.

COUNTESS: You think it possible that she should wish to marry so far below her degree if she were now left to her own choice?

DANIEL: If she has chosen him then let her tell me and I will take her at her word. But it must be her choice and one made freely.

COUNTESS: She has no freedom. You have entangled her by this promise, foolish on her part, wicked on yours and, by so doing, you continue to cause our lives to be suffocated by lawsuits and uncertainty and questions. You make it impossible for me to pay your father what I owe him -‐-‐

DANIEL: The money, if money there is to be, will likely come too late for my father.


He’s dying.

COUNTESS: In which case, my debt will pass to you.

DANIEL: The money, as it seems I must constantly re-‐state, counts as nothing to me. I loved Anna when no-‐one in the world thought that she would be rich.

The COUNTESS is not budging.

Will you at least give this letter to Anna?

DANIEL produces and tries to give the COUNTESS a letter he has written but she flatly refuses.

COUNTESS: I will not.

DANIEL: You may read it yourself, before you give it to her. There is nothing here of which I have any reason to be ashamed. I have purposely abstained from any clandestine communication with her.

Still the COUNTESS will not relent. DANIEL turns to go.

COUNTESS: I’m sorry to hear the news of your father.

DANIEL pauses, but does not turn. He leaves.

2.5 – EVERYONE KNOWS WHAT’S BEST FOR ANNA – Drawing room, Wyndham Street A tense and unhappy ANNA receives advice from AUNT JANE, SIR WILLIAM Patterson and the COUNTESS

AUNT JANE: Anna.

SIR WILLIAM: Now Anna, it is not for me to dictate to you, or to any other young lady, the choice of a husband. But it is, I feel, my duty to point out to you the importance of your choice.

AUNT JANE: This is how God made the world.

COUNTESS: Foolish…

AUNT JANE: It is how it is…

COUNTESS: … ungrateful girl!

AUNT JANE: … and how it should be.

SIR WILLIAM: Here, in England, the welfare of the Nation and the State depends on the welfare and the conduct of our aristocracy.

AUNT JANE: A girl who is a lady should never marry a man who is not a gentleman.


COUNTESS: Is everyone belonging to you to be ruined because you once spoke a foolish word to a playmate?

SIR WILLIAM: You are not like other young ladies.

AUNT JANE: “There is a great gulf fixed: so that they which would pass from hence to you cannot”7

COUNTESS: You are damning yourself and the rest of us with you.

SIR WILLIAM: You have in your hands the marring or the making of the whole family of Lovel.

AUNT JANE: Without this gulf everything would become mingled and soon there would be no difference between gentlemen and ladies and the ordinary people. And what sort of a world would that be?

SIR WILLIAM: If you, whom Fate and Fortune have exalted, forget what the country has a right to demand from you, then it is a large and rusty nail in the coffin of the glory of Old England.

COUNTESS: I swear to you that the day of your marriage to Daniel Thwaite shall be the day of my death.

ANNA: Why are you so cruel to me Mamma?

COUNTESS: How can I not be cruel? You place everything for which my life has been devoted in jeopardy. If I’m tender with you, you’ll think that I am yielding.

ANNA: It would be better if I died. Everything would come right then.

ANNA puts her face in her hands..

... when she brings her face out of her hands, AUNT JANE, SIR WILLIAM and the COUNTESS have gone but FREDERIC is sitting there with her.

FREDERIC: I’ve not come to reproach you.

ANNA: You may if you will.

FREDERIC: I’ve no right to do so, and would not if I had. I’ve been tempted to leave all the talking to the lawyers and let them settle all as they see fit. But that seems rather cowardly, don’t you think? And one can never entirely trust them. I may as well ask you outright: have your feelings with respect to the tailor...

ANNA: Daniel.

FREDERIC: Mr Thwaite... changed in the slightest?

ANNA: I love him, My Lord.

7 Luke chapter 16, verse 26


FREDERIC: It’s right that you should love him – as a friend.

ANNA: I’ve sworn to be his wife. Though I’m not allowed to speak or to correspond with him.

FREDERIC: If the tailor loves you, I’m sure he cannot wish to shame you and hurt you and your family. There’s no need at all for him to bow out without a generous settlement of some sort. I will personally see to that.

ANNA: (increasingly overwrought) Everyone believes it is the money Daniel wants. And when they call him a ‘tailor’, they think he must be mean. But he is not mean. He is clever and can talk about things as well as you. Better in some ways. He is noble too. He can work hard and give away all that he earns. He and his father gave all they had to us, and have never asked for it again.

No-‐one will say that Daniel has acted nobly. No-‐one will grant that he has been a generous friend? No-‐one will admit that he has done aught for love? Am I ashamed to marry him? Yes! I am! Not for myself, but because I am your cousin and my mother’s daughter. But I should also be ashamed to marry you, Lord Lovel, because that would be a false and ungrateful act.

FREDERIC: Coz. Coz. I hear everything you say; though there is little in it to flatter or to satisfy me. I will leave you now. And though I will never believe that Mr Thwaite is fit to be your husband, I love you better for the pride with which you cling to so firm a friend.

2.6. ANTHONY IN TROUBLE – Saloon and Trollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain

ANTHONY is once again in the saloon with his fellow passengers.

LADY FITZ: Will you and Mrs Trollope be joining us for supper later?

ANTHONY: Mrs Trollope will be taking supper in her cabin again this evening.

LADY FITZ: Is she unwell?

ANTHONY: She’s perfectly well.

BORE: What have you done now Trollope?

ANTHONY: She’s transcribing pages from my novel.

LADY FITZ: At suppertime?

ANTHONY: They concern a trial and legal matters and so are perhaps heavier going for her. She doesn’t wish to fall behind.

BORE: I suspect there’s more to it than that.


ANTHONY: Well, yes, there is. I made the mistake of giving the maid a chapter of my book to read.

BORE: I knew it!

LADY FITZ: And is it suitable material for a maid?

ANTHONY: We’re more than halfway to Australia, where different rules apply. I thought some adjustment could be made.

BORE: Sounds to me like an adjustment too far.

DULLARD: This is not the story of the girl who wants to marry beneath her surely?

ANTHONY: I’m afraid it is.

The DULLARD shakes his head and tuts.

LADY FITZ: Oh Mr Trollope. I’m afraid you are most clearly in the wrong. I assume you have apologised to Mrs Trollope.

ANTHONY: Apology is not a singular act. It is a process. A slow and arduous process not unlike a complicated legal case…

ANTHONY dons the wig and gown of SIR WILLIAM.

2.7 – THE TRIAL: CLOSING STATEMENT – Court of King’s Bench, Westminster The Court rapidly assembles.

SIR WILLIAM: … and therefore it is my intention here to do that which an advocate seldom does and make a clean breast of it. To tell the court and the jury all that I know and, in short, to state a case as much in the interest of my opponents (the Countess and Lady Anna) as of my client (Frederic).

The RECTOR mutters to AUNT JANE.

RECTOR: I do not like the sound of this.

SIR WILLIAM: On the question now before this court depends the possession of immense wealth. But there is more to be tried than this, and on that more depends the right of the two ladies mentioned to bear the name of Lovel.

Our titles of honour – ‘Countess’, ‘Lady’, etcetera – are justly regarded as the outward emblem of splendour and noble conduct. They are recognised so universally as passports to all society, such that we are naturally prone to watch their assumption with a caution most exact and scrupulous. But I will now state frankly to you all my belief, and the belief of my client, Earl Lovel, that these two ladies are fully entitled to the names which they claim to bear.


A shocked hush descends on the court.

RECTOR: If I did not know he has a wife of his own, I should think the man means to marry one of those dreadful women himself.

SIR WILLIAM: It is in the interest of both sides of the Lovel family here represented, and seemingly thus far to be in dispute, that a very proper and natural alliance which has begun to form between the two sides be allowed, nay be encouraged, to develop.

RECTOR: ‘Alliance’, what does he mean ‘alliance’?

AUNT JANE: He means marriage between Frederic and Anna.

SIR WILLIAM: And so let me make the following statement as unambiguously as I am able: My client Earl Lovel and I, without reservation, accept the till-‐now disputed marriage of the widowed Countess as a marriage in every respect legal and binding. We accept wholly that she is, and should therefore be known as, the Countess Lovel. It naturally follows, therefore, that we accept wholly that the Countess’s daughter, Anna, is Lady Anna Lovel and heir to the deceased Earl’s fortune.

I move that the jury be told they have no alternative but to find a verdict for the defendants.

RECTOR: What?!

SIR WILLIAM sits.

RECTOR: Is that it?

MR FLICK: Merely the formalities to conclude now.

RECTOR: He cannot possibly leave it at that Mr Flick. The sum of money at stake is too large.

MR FLICK: The jury here has nothing to do with the disposition of the property. It is inevitable and sufficient for them to find a verdict for the Countess and Lady Anna.

RECTOR: I can’t understand it; upon my word I can’t. That woman is no more a Countess than I am.

On the other side of the court room, ANNA speaks to the COUNTESS.

ANNA: What does this mean, Mamma?

COUNTESS: The Court has found in our favour. We have won.

ANNA: Oh Mamma! After all these years?! Does it mean you will be tender to me again?

COUNTESS: Promise me now that you will not marry Daniel Thwaite.

ANNA: I can’t promise that, Mamma.

COUNTESS: Then our victory means nothing.


ANNA: You must allow me to see him Mamma.

COUNTESS: Never. Daniel Thwaite has been a greedy, covetous, self-‐seeking dog and by the living God he shall die like a dog unless you will free us from his fangs.

ANNA is shocked by her mother’s vitriol.

ANNA: Mamma –

COUNTESS: No! Do not speak to me again unless it is to tell me you have come to your senses.

The COUNTESS turns her back on ANNA’s entreating look.

In desperation, ANNA swoons and faints. The COUNTESS observes her witheringly, then turns on her heels and leaves....

AUNT JANE rushes to ANNA to tend to her.

2.8. LOVE STORIES AFTER THE AGE OF 50 – Saloon, SS Great Britain

The DULLARD deals cards to ANTHONY, the PEDANT, LADY FITZWARREN and himself.

PEDANT: She’ll come round of course.

ANTHONY: Round?

PEDANT: To the young Earl. This is a love story, is it not?

LADY FITZ: Ought not a man of your years to have given up the fabrication of love stories by now?

ANTHONY: It hasn’t occurred to me to do so. I’ve written a fair few in recent years. But now you mention it Ralph the Heir must be one of the worst things I’ve written and alone almost justifies your proposal. In my defence though: The Eustace Diamonds. You’ll see, when it is published, there is not too much love in that book but what there is, is good. I stand by it. Why shouldn’t I write about love?

LADY FITZ: You don’t feel it rather undignified?

DULLARD: One might feel it is undignified to spend one’s time writing novels at all.

ANTHONY: A man must make a living somehow.

DULLARD: Silly, trivial things. What are trumps again?

ANTHONY: Hearts!

PEDANT: You spend so much time at cards Trollope, I worry that your heroine may not be married by Melbourne.


ANTHONY: I get my 9 pages done every day before any of you have breakfasted. I’ll be finished with Lady Anna well ahead of our arrival in Melbourne, never fear. And she will, as the conventions of the form dictate, be married. The only question to be asked is: to whom?

LADY FITZ: Seriously Mr Trollope, you don’t imagine any one of us is in any doubt?

2.9 – DANIEL ON THE DOORSTEP: THOMAS THWAITE’S WILL – Doorstep and Legal Office

On the COUNTESS’s doorstep once again is DANIEL clutching papers.

DANIEL: I congratulate your ladyship on your victory in the courts. I’m only sorry I wasn’t present to witness it.

The COUNTESS stares at DANIEL. She does not acknowledge his congratulations.

I was in Cumberland, at my father’s bedside. I don’t know whether you’ve heard but he died on the 24th of last month leaving behind him nothing but the debt due to him by your ladyship. I find myself bound to give you this copy of his will.

DANIEL hands the COUNTESS the will

You may, perhaps, have some account of what money passed between you and him. I’ve none save this receipt for £500 given to you by him many years ago and this bill against you for £71, 18 shillings and 9 pence. There may be no more due than this but you will know. And I’ll be happy to hear from your ladyship on the subject in due course.

DANIEL leaves.

The COUNTESS goes immediately to her desk and starts gathering receipts and making notes of all that she owes Daniel. She leaves...

... and enters the legal office, where MR FLICK sits.

MR FLICK: Countess, you must feel justifiably triumphant.

COUNTESS: I’ve neither the time nor inclination to triumph, Mr Flick.

MR FLICK: I’d be surprised if His Majesty does not himself soon send to congratulate you on the restitution of your rights.

COUNTESS: I would sooner be in beggary, still fighting, even without the means to fight, still suffering, still conscious that all around me regarded me as an imposter, than conquer only to know that she, for whom all this has been done, has degraded her name and my own. A message from the King will comfort me not in the slightest. I would sooner see Anna dead at my feet than know that she was that man’s wife.


MR FLICK is rather shocked. There is a change in the COUNTESS’s demeanour. She softens, temporarily as she remembers Thomas.

But I will not forget my obligations to Daniel Thwaite. I ate his father’s bread. Drew courage from his friendship and constancy. Passed long hours in his company in the parlour behind the tailor’s shop at Keswick where, as children, Anna and Daniel played together.

She is crying

It behoves me now to pay my debt to Thomas Thwaite’s son. I would be grateful if you’d arrange it immediately. Then I may treat the man altogether as my enemy.

She hands the completed paper to MR FLICK and departs...

... MR FLICK shows the piece of paper to SIR WILLIAM

SIR WILLIAM: £9000!

MR FLICK: That will be better to him than marrying the daughter of an Earl.

SIR WILLIAM: Do you mean to say that Thomas Thwaite advanced the Countess £9000 in hard cash?

MR FLICK: Most of it to cover legal costs and sums for bills paid by Thwaite on her behalf.

SIR WILLIAM: £9000 advanced by these two small tradesmen to the Countess Lovel and at a time when no relation of her own or her own husband would lend her a penny! I wish I had known this while the case was running.

MR FLICK: It would hardly have done any good.

SIR WILLIAM: It would have enabled me to give credit where credit is due. One is almost inclined to think that Daniel Thwaite deserves Lady Anna.

FLICK is shocked. He does not agree with SIR WILLIAM at all.

No?

MR FLICK: Most definitely not, Sir William.

SIR WILLIAM: Well, if he is not to have his wife, at any rate let him have his money without delay.

2.10 – THE YOUNG EARL’S HORSES – Frederic’s rooms

FREDERIC receives his uncle and aunt. He is putting a brave face on it though – tellingly – he’s in his dressing gown.

AUNT JANE: Are you giving up on the girl entirely?


FREDERIC: Not the sort of question a fellow likes to be asked on his doorstep by his aunt.

RECTOR: I suppose we may ask you, in light of the judgement – which I have to say I believe to be an utter travesty – how you intend to live?

FREDERIC: I trust, Uncle Charles, that I shall not, at any rate, be a burden to my relatives.

AUNT JANE: You must not give her up. She’ll see the error of her ways.

RECTOR: I have to say also: you have been grossly misused by Sir William Patterson.

FREDERIC: I can’t agree with you Uncle.

RECTOR: I never did nor never will believe that woman was ever Lord Lovel’s wife. The whole affair has been a deception from beginning to end.

FREDERIC: I’m as certain she is the Countess as I am that I am the Earl.

AUNT: Anna is headstrong, like her mother, but she’s good and kind girl. She’ll see sense.

RECTOR: My opinion costs me nothing but it costs you 30,000 a year. Now tell me, Frederic, do you mean to come down to Yoxham this winter?

FREDERIC: I’m not sure yet Uncle.

RECTOR: Well are we to keep your horses there?

FREDERIC: They shall come up to Tattersall’s before the week is over.

AUNT JANE: He didn’t mean that. (prompting/scolding him) Charles?

RECTOR: No, I didn’t mean that.

FREDERIC: I’m glad you thought of it, Uncle. They shall be taken away at once.

AUNT JANE: They are quite welcome to remain at Yoxham.

RECTOR: But we can’t afford to keep them for you indefinitely.

FREDERIC: They’ll be removed and sold. I’ll see to it at once.

AUNT JANE: Let us not exercise undue haste. Listen to what I am saying Frederic: do not give up on Anna.

RECTOR: That the great Lovel dynasty should have come to this sorry point.

FREDERIC: Would you like some tea Aunt, Uncle? I’m afraid there is no cake.

2.11 – DANIEL GETS HIS MONEY – Legal office DANIEL holds a cheque just given to him by MR FLICK.


MR FLICK: I’m pleased to have been able to settle your claim on Lady Lovel with so little delay. It’s not often we write out a cheque for as large a sum as that Mr Thwaite. I hope you’re satisfied.

DANIEL: More than satisfied with the amount. It seemed to me that I had no legal claim for more than a few hundred pounds.

MR FLICK: Luckily for you the Countess kept detailed records of each and every sum advanced. Full interest has been allowed at 5%, as is quite proper. Now, may we speak openly about the other matter? Lady Anna.

DANIEL: I’ve neither seen nor heard word of my betrothed since last we spoke.

MR FLICK: I’m sorry to report she’s been unwell and has taken to her bed.

DANIEL: (concerned) I appreciate your telling me, Mr Flick

MR FLICK: Everyone believes she’s in love with the young Earl Lovel. It is quite natural that she should be. But she needs to be freed from the obligation she feels towards you.

DANIEL: If she asked me to free her from her ‘obligation’ towards me, I’d free her in an instant.

MR FLICK: Could you not be more generous than that?

DANIEL: How more generous Mr Flick?

MR FLICK: Release her from her obligation unasked.

DANIEL: You mean more generous to Lady Lovel, more generous to Lord Lovel, more generous to all the Lovels except Anna. It seems that all the generosity is to be on one side.

MR FLICK: You do not think £9000 is generous?

DANIEL: I’ve received what I presume to be my own. If I have had more, it shall be immediately refunded.

MR FLICK: I think you are a little high flown, Mr Thwaite.

DANIEL: I dare say I may be, to the thinking of a lawyer.

MR FLICK: If you will only aid us lawyers in our present project which is to enable Lady Anna to become the wife of her cousin the Earl, much more can be done than the mere payment of the debt which – as you have rightly intimated – was due to you. It has been proposed to settle on you for life an annuity of £400 a year. To this all the Lovels have agreed.

DANIEL: Including Anna?

MR FLICK: You may take my word that Anna’s consent shall be forthcoming.


DANIEL: I will take your word for nothing. I don’t believe that you would dare make such a proposition to Anna, and I wonder that you should dare to make it to me. What have you seen in me to lead you to suppose that I would sell myself for a bribe? You lawyers deal in subterfuges till you think it impossible that a man should be honest. What about this Earl? Is he honest?

MR FLICK: I can assure you that the Earl is devoted to Anna.

DANIEL: Because it seems to me his devotion to Anna began when he was told that the money was hers and not his. My devotion, I will remind you, began when no believed that she would ever have a shilling to her name. When all the Lovels ridiculed her and her mother’s claim. My devotion springs from giving, his from the desire to get. Make the 400, 4000. Make it 8000, Mr Flick, and offer it to Earl Lovel. With him, you may succeed.

DANIEL leaves, enraged.

Then he turns his heels and addresses MR FLICK again.

DANIEL: God dammit, I will be generous. I will offer Anna her freedom unasked. I will beg her to tell me if it be true that she loves her cousin, and if she can say that – to my face –she shall want no permission from me to be free. She shall be free.

2.12 – ANNA IN HER SICK BED – Bedchamber ANNA lies motionless in bed (she’s been feigning sickness for days). FREDERIC sits beside her.

AUNT JANE and the COUNTESS look on from a distance.

AUNT JANE: Is she any better?

COUNTESS: Let her die, if it be God’s will. I can follow her without one wish for a prolonged life. Then will a noble family be again established, and her sorrowful tale will be told among the Lovels with a tear but without a curse.

AUNT JANE: God forbid that we should prosper by Anna’s death. As a mother and as a Christian, you should not say such things.

At the bed...

ANNA: (weakly) Lord Lovel.

FREDERIC: (gently correcting her) Frederic.

ANNA: It is good of you to come to me.

FREDERIC: How could I not come to you when you ask? Is it too much to hope that you have changed your mind?

ANNA: Where is Mamma?


FREDERIC: Nearby. I’ll fetch her, shortly.

ANNA: Does Daniel know yet that I am sick?

FREDERIC: I can’t speak for Mr Thwaite.

ANNA: They won’t let me see him, Frederic. Please pass me the Bible?

FREDERIC passes the bedside Bible to ANNA. She grips it.

ANNA: They tell me I’ve inherited so much money, hundreds of thousands of pounds. The amounts seem to me unreal.

FREDERIC: You’re unwell Anna, don’t trouble yourself.

ANNA: But I do trouble myself about it, and I know that it ought to be yours. I want to swear to you now, on the Bible, that will do all I can to make sure you get it.

FREDERIC: No need for that.

ANNA: But I must swear also, so that you and everyone will believe it, that if I live to be any man’s wife, I shall live to be the wife of Daniel Thwaite. I swear it before God. Do you believe me now?

FREDERIC: I believe you.

ANNA: My understanding though, such as it is, is that, until I am married, I may do as I please with the money I’ve inherited. And I please to give it to you.

FREDERIC: No Anna.

ANNA: Yes Frederic. Everyone says you’re not rich as a Lord Lovel should be, because the money has been taken from you. That was why you took me across the stones and across Strid and why you’ve come to me now.

FREDERIC: By Heaven, no Anna, I’m here because I love you.

THE COUNTESS approaches the bed.

COUNTESS: What is she saying?

FREDERIC: (standing) I dont know that I should tell you.

COUNTESS: I know that surely you are bound to tell me.

FREDERIC: She wishes to give me all her property.

COUNTESS: She’s right to do that.

FREDERIC: But she’s sworn to me, on the Bible, that she’ll never be my wife.

COUNTESS: She’s half delirious.


FREDERIC: She never loved me, not for an instant. She loves the other man. And I, for one, and for what little my opinion seems to be worth, believe she should be allowed to see him.

FREDERIC turns to leave. The COUNTESS calls after him...

COUNTESS: You mean to say you will abandon her?

FREDERIC: (turning momentarily) I cannot, will not, ask her to be my wife again.

COUNTESS: Are you so poor a creature as to give up hope?

FREDERIC: I think I’ve been a poor creature all this time.

FREDERIC goes.

AUNT JANES comes and joins the COUNTESS at ANNA’s bedside.

AUNT JANE: Mr Flick believes that if the tailor is allowed to see Anna, he might release her from her obligations. It seems to me that possibility provides our last and only chance to save the Lovel name.

The COUNTESS stares down at ANNA in contempt.

2.13. HAIRDRESSING II – Trollopes’ cabin, SS Great Britain

... ROSE removes the COUNTESS’s bonnet and sits for ISABELLA to dress her hair for a few moments in frosty silence. ISABELLA eventually breaks the silence...

ISABELLA: How is Mr Trollope’s novel coming along Mrs Trollope, if you don’t mind my asking?

ROSE: I’m not sure whether perhaps I do mind your asking, Isabella. Reading and discussing novels, particularly Mr Trollope’s unfinished manuscripts, is not what we pay you to do.

ISABELLA: Very well Mrs Trollope.

ISABELLA continues in silence until ROSE relents...

ROSE: But, since you ask, Mr Trollope thinks it will rank alongside the best he has written. And I must confess he is placing the most delicious obstacles in the way of our heroine and the young Earl.

ISABELLA: But of course Anna will marry the tailor in the end won’t she Mrs Trollope?

ROSE: Well, no, don’t be ridiculous, no, of course she won’t. You are showing your lack of sophistication I’m afraid, Isabella. Mr Trollope’s readers certainly would not find marriage to the tailor a satisfactory conclusion to the story. Not in the slightest.

ISABELLA: Of course I’ve only read a few pages. I shall have to wait until the story is published.


ROSE: You will.

ISABELLA: Will it be available in Australia do you suppose, Mrs Trollope?

ROSE: I’ve not the slightest idea.

ISABELLA continues working ROSE’s hair in silence.

ISABELLA: The beeswax pomade, Mrs Trollope?

ROSE: The beeswax, yes.

ISABELLA applies the pomade to ROSE’s hair.

2.14 – THREE MINUTES WITH DANIEL – Countess’s house

The actors’ roles are reversed: ANNA is out of bed and the COUNTESS helps her dress.

COUNTESS: It would have been very much better if you had done as you were desired without subjecting me to this indignity. But, as you have taken into your head the idea that you cannot be absolved from an impossible engagement without the man’s permission, I have submitted. He’s waiting for you.

ANNA is dressed.

Let this be done as quickly as possible. Remember who you are and all that I have done to establish your right for you. You have three minutes. No more.

ANNA goes into the next room to meet DANIEL. He is waiting for her.

DANIEL: Sweetheart!

ANNA: If you have anything to say, Daniel, you must be quick because Mamma will come in three minutes.

DANIEL: Do you love me, Anna?

ANNA is anxious, overcome.

If you have ceased to love me, tell me so, in all honesty.

ANNA cannot speak.

If you are true to me, as I am to you, with my heart, will you not tell me so?

ANNA: Daniel...

DANIEL: I’ve been told you love your cousin, Earl Lovel.

ANNA: I’ve never said so.

DANIEL: But you’ve said that you love me, have you not?


ANNA: I have.

DANIEL: And was that true?

ANNA: It was.

DANIEL: And is it still true?

ANNA: It is.

DANIEL: I said to the lawyers and to your mother that if you preferred Lord Lovel to me, I would at once make you free of your promise to me. Do you prefer him?

ANNA: I do not.

DANIEL: Even so, leaving questions of love to one side, if you think it is better to be the wife of a lord, because he is a lord, than to be the wife of a tailor, you may still be free from me.

Do you prefer the lord?

ANNA shakes her head.

If you do prefer him, you are free to say so, but you must answer me.

ANNA: I did answer you Daniel. I love you. I prefer you.

The COUNTESS bursts into the room (she has, of course, been eavesdropping)

COUNTESS: This meeting is at an end.

ANNA: Mamma that was not three minutes!

DANIEL: Lady Lovel, I’ve asked your daughter, and I find that it is her wish to adhere to the engagement which she made with me. I need hardly say that it is my wish also.

COUNTESS: Anna, he has come here and has insulted and frightened you.

DANIEL: I said that I would offer her her freedom and I have done so. I told her, and I tell her again now, that if she will say that she prefers her cousin to me, I will retire to Australia and you will never see me again. Anna, do you prefer the Earl?

ANNA: No!

DANIEL: She does not prefer him. She has given her heart to me and I hold it.

ANNA: He has my heart, Mamma.

COUNTESS: Then may the blight of hell rest upon you both!

Mr Thwaite, I will trouble you at once to leave my house and never more return.


DANIEL In 17 days’ time, Anna come of age. Until then, she is your child and I see there is little I may achieve here. I’ll take my leave. Goodbye my love. I’ll see you in 17 days.

DANIEL attempts to take ANNA by the hand but the COUNTESS violently prevents this.

COUNTESS: (to Anna) If you but touch him, I will strike you!

ANNA: Goodbye Daniel. Don’t let anyone make you think that I can ever be untrue to you.

DANIEL nods and leaves.

COUNTESS: If you think, Anna, that I will live to see my daughter the wife of a foul, sweltering tailor, you are bitterly mistaken? By heavens, you shall never marry him. With my own hands I will kill him first. Or you. Or both of you. Do you understand that?

ANNA: You don’t mean it, Mamma.

COUNTESS: You may return now to your room. Till I have constrained you to obey me, I do not wish to have you in my sight.

2.15 – THE NIGHTMARE – Countess’s house

At the desk, the COUNTESS has a pistol, powder and a box of bullets. She is sleep-‐deprived, obsessing, talking to herself.

COUNTESS: Pistol.

She unlocks the desk (the key is on a chain around her neck), opens it and puts the pistol inside it, and closes the desk

Dream last night. At sea. A skiff with Daniel Thwaite. Two of us.

Powder.

She opens the desk and puts the powder inside it, closes the desk

Pulled the plug, I pulled and let him know as we went, both went, down. 17 days. With skiff. The water. Down.

Bullets.

She opens the desk and puts the bullets inside it, closes and locks the desk

Down, beneath the cold cold waters. 16 days.

She unlocks and opens the desk again and takes out the pistol, bullets and powder.

Woke. And found there was no sea, no plug, no boat. Just: pistol, powder, bullets.

15 days.


She places the three items back in the desk. Closes and locks the desk. SIR WILLIAM Paterson startles her when she speaks (she had forgotten he was there).

SIR WILLIAM: Why not let her have her way? Let her marry him? Matters might have turned out far worse. Anna is firm of purpose, like her mother. Carved from the same Cumberland granite. You will say she is obstinate to a bad end. But to my eye she is honest and she is generous. Let her marry whom she will and do not cast her out. Accept them both and make the best of them.

Mr Thwaite is a clever man and with the means at his command, I don’t see why he shouldn’t make as good a gentleman as the best of us. In 5 years, he’ll be in Parliament, likely as not. In 10 years: Sir Daniel Thwaite, if he cares for it. And in 15 years...

COUNTESS: 14 days.

SIR WILLIAM: ... Lady Anna will be supposed by everyone to have made the happiest of marriages.

COUNTESS: (turning on Sir William, furious) You are all joined against me! Every one of you! But it shall never be. I will not live to see it.

An alarmed SIR WILLIAM beats a hasty retreat.

The COUNTESS once more takes the pistol, powder and bullets from the desk.

COUNTESS: 13. 12. 11.

2.16 – DANIEL AND FREDERIC BREAKFAST TOGETHER – Frederic’s rooms Breakfast is set (silver plates, butter, toast etc).

FREDERIC (once again in his dressing gown) greets DANIEL with a shake of the hand. FREDERIC is upper class charm personified, DANIEL much more wary.

FREDERIC: I’ve heard much of you, Mr Thwaite, and am glad to meet you at last. Pray sit down. I hope you’ve not breakfasted.

DANIEL: Thank your lordship, but I breakfasted long since, as is the habit of the working man. If it will suit you, I’ll walk about and call again.

FREDERIC: Not at all. I can eat and you can talk to me. Take a cup of tea at any rate.

DANIEL sits. FREDERIC rings a little bell, sits himself and starts to butter his toast.

DANIEL: I believe your lordship knows that I’ve long been engaged to marry your lordship’s cousin, Lady Anna Lovel.

FREDERIC: Indeed yes. I was among the first to know of it.

DANIEL: I want you to understand that it’s not for her money that I’ve sought her.


FREDERIC: I’ve not accused you of that.

DANIEL: I have been accused. And barely admitted to her presence.

FREDERIC: That has not been my fault, Mr Thwaite.

DANIEL: But as of today, she’s 21 years of age. I’ll now demand to see her and we’ll fix a day for our marriage.

FREDERIC: I’ll not interfere.

DANIEL: I’m glad of that, my lord. My reason for visiting you today is that I hope something may be done about the money before Anna becomes my wife.

FREDERIC: (with a sigh) The money, yes.

DANIEL: People say that you should have it.

FREDERIC: Who says so?

DANIEL: The lawyers. The only people with whom, until now, I’ve been permitted to interact.

FREDERIC: What do you feel should be done?

DANIEL: I’ve been given what is my own, and that’s enough for me. When she’s my wife, I’ll guard for Anna and for those who may come after her, what belongs to her with my whole being. But as to what may be done before we marry, I’m less certain. What is hers now perhaps should be yours.

FREDERIC: There are many opinions on this matter. I will confess, I tire of hearing them. One thing strikes me however: there is more than enough money to cover the needs of everyone involved. And I include all the lawyers.

DANIEL: Should every shilling of the money be made over to you, I’d marry her as willingly as if she were the wealthiest woman in England.

FREDERIC: The most equitable suggestion I’ve heard proposes dividing the property into three parts: one for the Countess Lovel; one for myself and the third for Anna and... (he gestures towards Daniel)

DANIEL: That would be more than enough for Anna and me.

FREDERIC: Well, that’s settled then.

Both stand.

You have all my good wishes.

They shake hands.


2.17 – DANIEL ON THE DOORSTEP – Wyndham Street

COUNTESS: Are you so ignorant of the ways of the world, Mr Thwaite, as to suppose that a young lady can receive what visitors she pleases without the sanction of her guardian?

DANIEL: Anna has no guardian, my lady. She is now of an age to determine her own company.

COUNTESS: Do you mean you’ll force your way past me to see her?

DANIEL: I’ll not be stopped from seeing her, Lady Lovel.

COUNTESS: Then trample over me.

DANIEL: Is she is prisoner?

ANNA appears behind her mother

ANNA: Daniel!?

COUNTESS: Daniel Thwaite, if you do not leave, the blood which will be shed shall rest on your head.

ANNA: Whose blood shall be shed?

ANNA forces her way past her mother to embrace DANIEL.

COUNTESS: Take your hands from her! Would you disgrace the child in the presence of her mother?

DANIEL: Anna, my sweetheart, clearly your mother is disturbed and I’d better go. I will return tomorrow, when she’ll perhaps have ceased her raving.

DANIEL extracts himself from ANNA’s embrace.

ANNA: I’ll come away with you.

DANIEL: I don’t feel that would be proper.

ANNA, put out, stomps back into the house, glaring at the COUNTESS, who calls after her...

COUNTESS: Anna you will relinquish this man who is so infinitely beneath you, and who is unfit even to tie your shoe-‐string?

DANIEL: Lady Lovel, you must see that this opposition is fruitless. Ask the young Earl, he will tell you.

COUNTESS: Even if Lord Lovel be false, I will remain true.

DANIEL: I’ll return tomorrow. At the same hour. Until then my sweetheart!

DANIEL leaves.


The COUNTESS returns to her desk, unlocks it and removes the pistol, powder, bullets.

2.18. A WAGER – Saloon, SS Great Britain

ANTHONY and his fellow male passengers have been drinking and conversing in a fug of cigar smoke.

ANTHONY is now dozing in his chair.

ANTHONY: (dreamy mumble)... My sweetheart.

The PEDANT and the DULLARD laugh at him.

PEDANT: Trollope’s off again.

DULLARD: I’ve never known a man who could take so many spells of 40 winks in the midst of conversation.

ANTHONY: (awake!) I disagree with you entirely.

What was that you said?

PEDANT: We were discussing the possibility of a wager.

ANTHONY: What’s that?

PEDANT: And we were wondering what you made on a book, financially, for let’s say one of your better efforts.

DULLARD: Seems a rum question to ask a fellow.

ANTHONY: Orly Farm or The Last Chronicle of Barset for example...

PEDANT: For example. I can’t pretend to have read any of them.

ANTHONY: Well those two made me over £3000 apiece.

DULLARD: Really?

ANTHONY: Really.

DULLARD: 3000.

PEDANT: In that case, I’ll lay you a wager of £100 that you can’t make more than 2000... 1500... on a book in which a lady marries a ruddy tailor. Or equivalent.

ANTHONY: Who says I want to write such a book?

DULLARD: (pointing at Anthony) Ahh.

PEDANT: (pointing at Anthony) Ahh.

DULLARD: She aint married no-‐one yet.


ANTHONY: We’re two weeks away from Melbourne. Much can happen to a novel in that time.

PEDANT: (pointing at Anthony) Ahh.

DULLARD: (pointing at Anthony) Ahh.

ANTHONY: (pointing back) Ahh.

2.19 – SHOT! – Wyndham Street DANIEL has returned to the COUNTESS’s doorstep. She seems calmer than at their previous meeting.

COUNTESS: You keep your time, Mr Thwaite.

DANIEL: An essential quality in my trade, Lady Lovel, as my father taught me. I’m here, as you know, to see Anna.

COUNTESS: You won’t see her.

DANIEL: Do you mean you have sent her away?

COUNTESS: I mean you won’t see my daughter again.

DANIEL: Please bid her come to me. I’ve reached the limits of my patience.

COUNTESS: Mine has been a hard struggle, Mr Thwaite. None can have been harder. Do you think that I will stand by and see you rob me of all I have struggled for?

DANIEL: I’ll no longer be kept from her.

He forces himself past the COUNTESS and into the house in search of ANNA.

The COUNTESS raises her hand in which is, we now see, the loaded pistol. She points the gun at DANIEL’s back.

COUNTESS: Wait!

DANIEL stops but he does not turn.

COUNTESS: I have begged you for mercy but you’ve shown me none. I ask you now, from my very soul, turn around and leave this house, lest I commit some terrible crime. I have sworn that I would not see this marriage, and I will not see it.

DANIEL sighs, shakes his head and does not turn and leave but instead begins to move deeper into the house.

Before he takes a step, the COUNTESS shoots.

DANIEL’s hand clutches at his own shoulder. He remains standing, an expression of surprise on his face. After a few moments, he slumps to his knees.


The COUNTESS lowers her arm and walks, seemingly calmly, back to her desk. She puts the smoking pistol into the desk and locks it. She sits.

COUNTESS: It would have been easy to send the bullet into my own bosom and disappear from the world. But that would have left my enemy free to enjoy his prize. And people would forget my sufferings and my victory and say merely that “She went mad”.

Rather: let them hang me for murder. That way is nobler. That way they will speak of the Countess as a woman cruelly misused, maligned, scorned, tortured, robbed, neglected, deserted, damned by her husband. A woman thwarted in her ambition by an ungrateful child and cheated of her triumph at the very moment of her success.

Let them hang a Countess and tell the whole world her story.

DANIEL has remained on his knees and motionless throughout the COUNTESS’s soliloquy.

ANNA finds him.

ANNA: Daniel, is that you? Is anything the matter? The place is full of smoke and there is a smell of something.

DANIEL: No harm done, at any rate.

ANNA: Why are you kneeling there? Are you unwell? Has something happened?

DANIEL: I’ve hurt my shoulder a little.

ANNA: What was the bang I heard?

DANIEL: The less said, the sooner mended. Anna, my sweetheart, would you send for a surgeon?

ANNA stands and moves...

2.20. ISABELLA GIVES NOTICE – Trollope’s cabin, SS Great Britain

... and, as ISABELLA, approaches ROSE who is in the hairdressing position.

ISABELLA: I’ve been thinking Mrs Trollope that, so long as it’s acceptable to you and Mr Trollope, I might not return home to England with you.

ROSE: I see.

ISABELLA: Of course I wouldn’t leave you and Mr Trollope high and dry. I’d work for you until such time as you’ve found a replacement.

ROSE: You intend to stay in Australia?

ISABELLA: I’m told there are opportunities there better than there are at home. For someone with aspirations, who’s prepared to work hard.


ANTHONY bursts in.

ANTHONY: Forgot my hat. Ah there you are Mr Hat.

ROSE: Isabella has just announced she will not be returning with us to England.

ANTHONY: Oh. Dear. Not, I hope, over the business with the manuscript. Because the fault there was with me much more than with Isabella.

ROSE: This is Isabella’s decision. She has aspirations.

ANTHONY: Well. Certainly wages are higher in Australia. Food is cheaper. The wines are surprisingly good. It’s a land full of possibilities. The usual social barriers not so evident.

ISABELLA: Will I be able to read Lady Anna there though, Mr Trollope, when it’s published?

ANTHONY: I would very much hope so. I shall take special care to see that it is serialised in The Australasian.

ROSE: I shall have to get used to dressing my own hair.

ANTHONY: We’ll find you another maid in Melbourne.

ROSE: In these cabins I wonder if the space would be more valuable.

2.21 – A YOXHAM WEDDING IS PROPOSED – Yoxham Rectory approach FREDERIC has just arrived. The RECTOR and AUNT JANE greet him.

RECTOR: Any word of Mr Thwaite? I hear he’s been murdered.

FREDERIC: Not true Uncle.

AUNT JANE: We heard from Lady Fitzwarren that he’s been shot with a pistol.

FREDERIC: Unsubstantiated rumours.

AUNT JANE: It’s even thought that Anna’s mother shot him.

FREDERIC: Mr Thwaite has indeed suffered an injury. But it is only to his shoulder. He fell and caught it on a step.

RECTOR: Had he been drinking?

FREDERIC: He’s not at all such a man as you seem to think.

AUNT JANE: He is alive then?

FREDERIC: I’m sorry to disappoint you but yes he is. And you’ll find he makes a very decent sort of gentleman.


RECTOR: You’ve met him?

FREDERIC: I have. And you know, Sir William says he’ll likely be in Parliament before long.

RECTOR: Sir William! Sir William. Always meddling.

FREDERIC: Come, Uncle, you should be fair. If we had gone on quarrelling and going to law, I should never have got a shilling out of the property. I’ve no doubt Sir William has acted very wisely on our behalf.

RECTOR: I’m no lawyer. I can’t say how it might have been. But I’ve been sure for 20 years that those women were not what they claimed to be and, at my age, I can’t change my mind as quickly as some.

FREDERIC: (firm) Well the King would doubtless receive them as Lady Lovel and Lady Anna Lovel if they went to Court. And, certainly, I’m bound to acknowledge them after taking their money. So I would appreciate it, Uncle, if you’d exercise your mind and perhaps force it to change, at least a little.

AUNT JANE: You’ve had none of the tailor’s money. There’s no need for you to acknowledge him.

FREDERIC: Mr Thwaite is going to marry our cousin, and we should stand by her. We’d be very strongly advised to be present at the marriage.

RECTOR: Advised by whom? Sir William I suppose.

FREDERIC: In fact I was thinking I’d offer to give her away.

AUNT JANE: The girl you were going to marry yourself?!

FREDERIC: You liked her Aunt, do not deny it.

AUNT JANE: Yes, I liked her. Till I found out she’d lost her mind.

FREDERIC: She has behaved perfectly nobly. Did you ever know any other woman to give away 10,000 a year to a fellow simply because he was her cousin? We should do this for her. Particularly since her mother says she’ll play no part in any ceremony.

RECTOR: (mutters) Turns out the counterfeit Countess is the best Lovel of us all.

FREDERIC: Anna and Mr Thwaite should be married here in Yoxham. Uncle, you should preside.

RECTOR: Me!?

FREDERIC: You should marry them. We shall invite Sir William to attend. I shall give Anna away. There. I’m the Earl and I’ve spoken.

2.22. ANNA AND DANIEL EMIGRATE – Saloon, SS Great Britain

ANTHONY bursts into the saloon. He looks for and immediately finds the PEDANT.


ANTHONY: Sir, I will take your wager! Eight days from Melbourne and – ahead of schedule – the novel is complete.

PEDANT: So she’s married the tailor has she?

ANTHONY: A lady ought to marry a tailor if she chanced to fall in love with him, and to promise him, and take his goodness, when she was not a lady. Don’t you think?

LADY FITZ: Surely you revealed in the final pages that the tailor had unexpectedly inherited a noble heritage. Or a fortune?

DULLARD: Preferably both.

ANTHONY: I’m afraid not.

PEDANT: Radical stuff!

LADY FITZ: You’ve a week of the journey left in which to reconsider.

ANTHONY: No, no: the work which has been done quickest has been done the best

DULLARD: Not that I was intending to read it in any case, but rest assured, your heroine has made entirely the wrong choice.

LADY FITZ: Your readers won’t like it one bit. Not Earls and Countesses, unless they are particularly disloyal to their order. Not middle-‐class readers. Not even tailors. What sensible man – regardless of his station – wants a wife who is ashamed of him?

ANTHONY: The horror you all express is the strongest testimony I could receive of the merits of my story.

PENDANT: We’ll shake on it then. Should you earn more than £1500, I’ll give you 100 more.

The PEDANT and ANTHONY shake hands.

DULLARD: Seems to me utterly indecent to write for money at all.

LADY FITZ: And what becomes of the poor Countess?

ANTHONY: You’ll have to read the book when it’s published.

LADY FITZ: I’ve heard nothing here that would encourage me to do that.

ROSE has joined them in the saloon and takes ANTHONY’s arm.

ROSE: She did not attend her daughter’s wedding, I can tell you that. The rumours that she’d attempted to murder the tailor were never substantiated. Certainly, the tailor or his bride never spoke of it. The Countess returned to Cumberland. To the lonely house to which she had been brought, many years previously, as a young bride herself. And, from there, she performed good works and, in general, avoided society for the rest of her life.


PEDANT: And Lady Anna and the tailor?

ANTHONY: They’re here, among us. On board a ship bound for the Antipodes...

ANNA and DANIEL arrive in the saloon of the SS Great Britain, to a muted reception from the others assembled there. DANIEL’s arm is in a sling.

ANTHONY: ... where a more equitable society awaits them. And quite possibly a series of books to rival the Chronicles of Barsetshire or the Pallisers.

LADY FITZ: (disapproving) A whole series set in the Colonies?

ANTHONY: Why not!?

ANTHONY beckons to ANNA and DANIEL.

ANTHONY: Welcome Lady Anna and Mr Thwaite. Steward! Let us have some champagne?

ANNA is game but DANIEL guides her away.

DANIEL: Thank you but we’ll first take some air up on deck.

LADY FITZ: She’ll live to regret her choice.

ROSE: (to Anthony) You should have married her to Frederic.

ANTHONY: No, it had to be the tailor.

2.23 – LADY ANNA LOOKS OUT TO SEA – Deck, SS Great Britain

DANIEL and ANNA are on the deck looking out to sea. Their position mirrors that of Anna and Frederic as they looked across the Strid in Part 1.

Before them – instead of a rocky chasm – is a line demarking the separation between first and second class passengers.

A sign on their side of the line states: “FIRST CLASS PASSENGERS ONLY BEYOND THIS LINE”

DANIEL looks at ANNA.

DANIEL: Shall we?

ANNA: (ironic) Won’t we be dashed to pieces?

DANIEL steps across the line. He holds out his (unslinged) hand for ANNA. She too crosses the line.

DANIEL: Do you feel any different?

ANNA: A little, I confess.

DANIEL goes over the railings and looks out to sea.


DANIEL: It’s the same view here as it is in first class.

ANNA: What do you see?

DANIEL: A new world. The future. No earls, no countesses.

ANNA: The theory of equality is very grand...

DANIEL: The grandest thing in the world, Anna. You’re not sad to leave First Class behind you?

ANNA: My heart is sore thinking of Mamma. She and England and all the Lovels are such a long long way behind us now.

DANIEL: The picture I can’t get out of my head is: the young Earl, when I met him the first time, he had on a sort of long and brightly coloured gown.

ANNA: I think of him as a sort of butterfly?

DANIEL: It would have made a grand frock for you, Anna. That is where the wealth of a nation such as England is spent: bright gowns for lords and buttered toast for their midday breakfast. I’m glad to be leaving it behind us. I suppose now you have given him half your money, the Earl’s gowns will burn even brighter.

ANNA: There will be one or two bright gowns in Australia though for me, Daniel, won’t there?

DANIEL: I daresay there will be one or two.

DANIEL and ANNA (with some trepidation) gaze out to sea.

2.24. IN MEDIA RES – Deck, SS Great Britain

The rest of the acting company assemble around DANIEL and ANNA.

DULLARD: Of the further doings of Mr. Daniel Thwaite and his wife Lady Anna,

PEDANT: Of how they travelled and saw many things...

LADY FITZ: And became perhaps wiser individuals...

ANTHONY: I had hoped to tell but...

ROSE: But we must end here where we began...

ANTHONY: In media res.

ROSE: In the middle of a story.

END

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