Tango in Madeira by Jim Williams

Author:Jim Williams [Williams, Jim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Murder, Mystery, Madeira, Suspense, tango, George Bernard Shaw, art deco, WW1, European, British, Mystery & Suspense, Romance
Published: 2013-04-11T16:00:00+00:00

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW to WILLIAM ARCHER (journalist and playwright)

Reid’s Palace Hotel

Funchal

28th March 1922

My dear W.A.

So it is four years since your dear boy, Tomarcher, was killed. Damn! Damn! Damn! If I thought it would help, I should tell Reason to boil its head and give a rousing three cheers for table-rapping. Instead, the black dog has got us both by the throat and we slouch through the world: old men, too tough, chewy and useless to be worth Death’s time of day.

Don't look to me for consolation. Expect nothing of monuments and Remembrance Days and Angels of Mercy bringing balm like Father Christmas hauling presents. Away with them all! Tomarcher’s monument and true remembrance are that we labour on, bleakly unconsoled, to make the best of a misbegotten peace and castigate the fools who would throw away whatever it is that was won.

Quand j’aurai fait le brave, et qu’un fer pour ma peine,

M’aura d’un vilain coup transpercée la bedaine,

Que par la ville ira le bruit de mon trépas

Dites moi, mon honneur, en serez-vous plus gras?

At least your dear boy escaped the ruination of the victors. Pity them. They are here in the hotel: a gang of old soldiers on the cadge. I call them The Three Cads because they remind me of a third rate music hall act: the show going on because it must go on. Pity, too, the defeated. My old friend, Siegfried Trebitsch, has sold his wife into slavery and eaten his boots. Though I feel broken into pieces, I have promised him a play, which he can put on or turn into soup: whatever serves.

In a house above the town, one of the villains survives: the former Austrian Emperor, Karl – except that he won't play the villain. He is, by all accounts, amiable, liberal and possessed of all the virtues, domestic and otherwise. In short he is that most ridiculous specimen: a thoroughly decent man, fit for nothing but building public libraries while the world goes to pot. For my part, I have been accused of many things, but never of decency. Do you recall Wilde’s aphorism? ‘Shaw has not an enemy in the world, and none of his friends like him.’ Bless the poor devil, but he was often right.

The tragedy of life and the tragedy of drama are quite different things. My father was an adamant teetotaller. But he was a teetotaller who drank. I defy anyone not to laugh. Now you may think that Karl’s situation contains the stuff of tragedy. Isn't the downfall of kings what it’s all about? Ah, but the tragic hero has always a whiff of the monster about him, and what sort of tragedy is it where the fellow absolutely refuses to die? No – it won't do. You can't make one out of a decent man: not if he’s the genuine article. If we look to Karl to fulfill that role, we must wait until he goes mad and takes up writing.

The upshot is that I am old and the war has made me tired, cynical and avaricious.

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