Curtain Up (7 page)

A long-time neighbour of the Millers in Torquay – his daughter Adelaide attended the same ballet class as Agatha – Eden Phillpotts was forty-six when he started advising Agatha,
and already a successful novelist. A sort of Thomas Hardy of Dartmoor, specialising in work written in Devon dialect and set in Devon locations, his prolific output would eventually exceed even Agatha's, and he enjoyed some success latterly with detective fiction. Well connected in literary circles – he had undertaken collaborations with Arnold Bennett and Jerome K. Jerome – Phillpotts had originally trained as an actor in London but had been forced to abandon his thespian aspirations due to a recurring illness that made him unable to control his legs. His love of the theatre never left him, though, and although he had experienced no great success as a playwright by the time he counselled Agatha, he went on to write some thirty plays, a number of which were notable and long-running West End successes.

In 1912 Phillpotts famously refused to concede to the request of the Lord Chamberlain's office that he alter two lines in his play
The Secret Woman
, about a man who starts a relationship with his son's lover, with the result that they refused to issue it with a licence. The ensuing furore saw many of the great writers of the day sign a letter to
The Times
in his support and contribute to a fund to enable performances to take place in a ‘club' theatre where a licence was not required. Amongst the signatories was Bernard Shaw, whose work ‘in its massive and glittering magnificence' Phillpotts admired greatly, in particular ‘the thousand challenges he offers to humanity on burning and still living questions'.
¹⁴
Phillpotts and Shaw would later meet at Birmingham Repertory Theatre which, under its legendary founder Barry Jackson, regularly produced the work of both men. There can be no doubt that Phillpotts shared his enthusiasm for Shaw with the young Agatha and that this informed some of her early, unpublished playwriting ventures, which deal with such Shavian preoccupations as variations on the marriage contract, grounds for divorce and eugenics. The lengthy and witty preface to Shaw's 1908
Getting Married
has particular resonances in some of Christie's early work.

In any event, contact with Phillpotts would have broadened
young Agatha's mind when it came to the issue of human relations, as is evidenced by his recommended reading for her. In a letter to her he suggests that she try ‘a few of the Frenchmen', including Flaubert's
Madame Bovary
. ‘But this last is very strong meat and perhaps you had better wait till you have taken some lighter dose first of the more modern men. When you come to it, remember that
Madame Bovary
is one of the greatest works in the world.'
¹⁵
Although one may concur with his literary appraisal,
Madame Bovary
seems a particularly daring recommendation for an eighteen-year-old Edwardian girl, given its subject matter and the lifestyle of its author, who stood trial in France for obscenity in 1857 after it was published in a magazine.

Sadly, Phillpotts' advocacy of unconventional human relations extended beyond literature and into his family life. His daughter Adelaide, who collaborated with him on a number of books and plays, including the 1926 Theatre Royal Haymarket success
Yellow Sands
– and whose literary career was to cross paths with Agatha's in the future – was the long-term victim of his incestuous attentions, as is apparent from his correspondence with her and, indeed, her own autobiography.
¹⁶
This bizarre obsession was confined to the one relationship, and there is no indication of any impropriety as far as the young Agatha was concerned. There can be no doubt that Phillpotts' advice and input, and his role as a sounding board for her early work, was critical to Agatha's blossoming as a writer, enabling her to gain confidence in her writing and widen her horizons. Indeed, her 1932 novel
Peril at End House
was dedicated to Phillpotts ‘for his friendship and the encouragement he gave me many years ago'. He doubtless, too, encouraged her interest in theatre, and they maintained a sporadic correspondence until the 1950s. In 1928 Phillpotts' wife died and the following year he married a young cousin. We will hear more of Adelaide later.

Nobody would publish Agatha's novel
Snow Upon the Desert
, but she carried on producing short stories and one-act plays. Amongst these,
Teddy Bear
is an endearing and performable
comedy for two male and two female actors, written under the pseudonym of George Miller. A well-constructed but lightweight romp, it centres around young Virginia's attempts to attract the attention of Ambrose Seaton, a fellow who is involved in an impressive array of charitable ventures:

       
VIRGINIA: He's so good looking and – and so splendid. Look at all his philanthropic schemes, the Dustmen's Christian Knowledge, and the Converted Convicts Club, and the Society for the Amelioration of Juvenile Criminals.
¹⁷

Virginia eventually adopts a strategy of attracting Ambrose's attention by herself becoming a ‘juvenile criminal'. Needless to say, things do not go according to plan, and after the farcical unravelling of her scheme she abandons her attempts to ensnare the virtuous but elusive (and possibly gay) Ambrose and settles instead for her long-suffering admirer, Edward:

       
EDWARD: You heard me say I wasn't going to propose again?

       
VIRGINIA: (smiling) Yes.

       
EDWARD: (with dignity) Well, I'm not going to.

       
VIRGINIA: (laughing) Don't.

       
EDWARD: Not in that sense. I was going to suggest a business arrangement.

       
VIRGINIA: Business?

       
EDWARD: You see, you've got a lot of money, and I'm badly in need of some. The simplest way for me to get it would be to marry you. See?

       
VIRGINIA: (still laughing) Quite.

       
EDWARD: No sentiment about it.

       
VIRGINIA: Not a scrap.

       
EDWARD: Well – what do you say?

       
VIRGINIA: (very softly) I say – yes.

       
EDWARD: Virginia! (tries to take her in his arms)

       
VIRGINIA: (springing up) Remember you're only marrying me for the money . . .

This is nicely constructed comic banter, although there is already an undercurrent of more serious debates about the nature of the marriage contract. In this case, it all ends happily, although it is clear who the dominant force in the relationship is going to be:

       
VIRGINIA: (tragically) . . . a confession of weakness. I've fallen from the high pinnacle of my own self esteem. I fancied that I was strong enough to stand apart from the vulgar throng, that I was not as other women (sits upright) but I am beaten, I am but one of the crowd after all, (slowly) I have –

       
EDWARD: (breathlessly) Fallen in love?

       
VIRGINIA: (dramatically) No. Bought a Teddy Bear!

Eugenia and Eugenics
, another of Agatha's unpublished and unperformed early one-act plays housed at the Christie Archive, is a more ambitiously constructed comedy which explores a popular theme of the day. We are told that it is set in 1914, which may be either the present or the future, given that it deals with the repercussions of a fictitious piece of legislation. In 1905 Shaw's
Man and Superman
had received its London premiere, with a plot that underlined his belief that women are the driving force in human procreation, and that the development of the species is dictated by their success in finding biologically (rather than socially or financially) suitable partners: a quest which essentially constitutes the ‘Life Force'. There can be no doubt that Agatha's work was also informed by this philosophy, although by what route it reached her is unclear. ‘What are men anyway?' asks Kait in the 1944 novel
Death Comes as the End
. ‘They are necessary to breed children, that is all. But the strength of the race is in the women.'
¹⁸
This novel is set in ancient Egypt, but time and again we see in Christie's plays examples of the weak male either dominated or rejected by the superior female.

Shaw's take on the topic, which challenged received Darwinian theory, was just one aspect of a much wider debate about the
subject of eugenics that was current at the time, leading to the first International Eugenics Conference, held in London in 1912. Although there were ethical issues from the outset with a philosophy that advocated the genetic improvement of humanity, this was well before the concept of breeding a ‘master race' took on a much more sinister aspect. Whilst Christie seems at home with Shaw's approach to the matter, her comedy both makes merciless fun of the wider philosophy's advocates and touches on some other burning issues of the day. Faced with an upcoming new law that will enforce eugenic philosophy by allowing only the physically and mentally perfect to marry, Eugenia has taken herself to what she believes to be a eugenics clinic advertising perfect partners. Her maid, Stevens, accompanies her:

       
EUGENIA: Talking of divorce, Eugenics will revolutionise the divorce laws.

       
STEVENS: Indeed Ma'am. Well I've heard as in Norway and Sweden and such countries you can get rid of your 'usband as easy as asking, with no more reason than just losing your taste for him. Very unfair I calls it. All men is trying at times, but don't turn them helpless creatures adrift, call 'em your cross and put up with 'em.
¹⁹

In the preface to his 1908 play
Getting Married
, under the heading ‘What does the word marriage mean?' George Bernard Shaw had written: ‘In Sweden, one of the most highly civilized countries in the world, a marriage is dissolved if both parties wish it, without any question of conduct. That is what marriage means in Sweden. In Clapham that is what they call by the senseless name of free love.'
²⁰
The divorce laws were the subject of much debate in the early twentieth century, and it was not until 1923's Matrimonial Causes Act that women were able to file for divorce on the same basis as men. Prior to that, men had simply to prove infidelity on the part of their spouse, whilst women had to establish further exacerbating circumstances such as rape or incest.

Christie's play goes on:

       
EUGENIA: It's an equal law for men and for women. Men can obtain a divorce with equal ease.

       
STEVENS: Ah! Ma'am, but a wife's an 'abit to a man, and we all know how attached a man is to his 'abits, drinking and smoking and such like.

       
EUGENIA: So you class a wife with drinking and smoking, Stevens!

       
STEVENS: Well, Ma'am it's true she comes more expensive sometimes.

       
EUGENIA: Stevens, you are lamentably behind the spirit of the age . . .

       
STEVENS: (thoughtfully) It seems to me M'am, what with the gentlemen being as difficult and scarce to get hold of as they are, that it's a pity to ask too much of 'em . . .

       
EUGENIA: . . . next week, the Marriage Supervision Bill will become Law. It ensures that only the physically and mentally sound shall marry . . . I'm sure I don't know what society is coming to. A few years ago money was everything – like birth used to be, and now nothing counts but notoriety. To be anybody one must have a new religion, or a new pet. My baby kangaroo, in spite of the fuss with the police, kept me in the forefront of society last season. But this year, Hyde Park is a walking menagerie, and an elephant would hardly attract attention. Eugenics, I feel assured, will be the next society craze. Let me then, be the first to take it up . . . This advertisement caught my eye this morning (reads) ‘Eugenic Institute. Men and Women of England. Protect the Race. Choose mates of physical and mental perfection. Come here and find your mate (Guaranteed with Medical Certificate). Remember the Race and Come. And here we are. What do you think of it, Stevens. Shan't I be the most talked of woman in society?

       
STEVENS: It's my experience, M'am, as anything that mentions racing, is shady.

Even the suffrage movement does not escape Stevens' wisdom: ‘I holds as votes is very much the same as husbands,
they're a lot of trouble to get, and not much use once you've got 'em.'

Women over the age of thirty were finally enfranchised in Britain in 1918, but this play's 1914 setting places it at the height of the suffrage campaign; the previous year, the Women's Social and Political Union had mobilised thousands of supporters to march through the streets of London behind the coffin of suffragette Emily Davison, who had thrown herself in front of the king's horse at Epsom. The characters in a play, of course, all speak with their own voices and without the benefit of authorial comment. Agatha's writing, as ever, is well considered and fully engaged with the issues of the day, but it is up to the audience whether they believe Stevens to be speaking from a position of ignorance or whether they think her homespun philosophy may contain some pearls of wisdom.

Meanwhile, the ‘Eugenic Institute' in the play turns out not to be all that Eugenia had hoped. The physically farcical elements of the piece are not as well handled as the comic dialogue, but suffice to say that Eugenia's schemes to find the physically perfect partner are frustrated, and she resigns herself to marrying the devoted but self-professedly less than physically perfect Goldberg who, from his name, we may assume to be Jewish. Agatha's play thus wittily subverts eugenic philosophy and underlines the importance of putting the heart first. They decide to tie the knot immediately, before the new ‘Marriage Supervision Bill' takes effect: