The Habit of Art: A Play (2 page)

There is some talk in the play about Auden’s propensity to edit his poems, with his older self censoring what in his younger self he found dishonest or embarrassing. I think he was mistaken, but provided the original survives, which it does both in print and in his readers’ heads, it doesn’t seem to me to matter much, and just gives editors and bibliophiles something to talk about. To censor one’s work is tempting, though. While I was writing
The Habit of Art
, an earlier play of mine,
Enjoy
(1980), was revived. At its first outing it wasn’t well received, and were I writing it today there are things I wouldn’t include and dialogue I would do differently. That I didn’t cut it or alter it I would like to think was from reading about Auden falling into a similar time trap. But if I left the play as it was, it was just through laziness and a feeling that by this time the director and the cast probably knew more about it than I did.

The stylistic oddities in
The Habit of Art
– rhyming furniture, neighbourly wrinkles, and words and music comparing notes – may just be an attempt to smuggle something not altogether factual past the literalist probation officer who’s had me in his charge for longer than I like to think and who I would have hoped might have retired by now. Or it may be that whatever oddities there are come under Edward Said’s category of Late Style. Feeling I’d scarcely arrived at a style, I now find I’m near the end of it. I’m not quite sure what Late Style means except that it’s some sort of licence, a permit for ageing practitioners to kick their heels up. I don’t always need that and I’m often mildly surprised when something I’ve included in a script almost as a joke gets treated in production as seriously as the rest. ‘Gracie Fields?’ I jotted in the margin of
The History Boys
, and the next thing I knew they were rehearsing ‘Sing as We Go’.

The probation officer or the internal censor one is always trying to outflank chimes in with Britten’s plea on behalf of constraint, which, while true to his character, is also not unsympathetic to mine. With Britten censorship was home grown, his personal policeman never off duty. Stage censorship itself was abolished in 1968, the year of my first play, so I’ve never been seriously incommoded by it. On the other hand, I regretted its abolition insofar as it seemed to me to deplete significantly the armoury of the dramatist. With censorship there was a line between what one could and couldn’t say, and the nearer one got to this line the greater the tension: How candid did one dare to be? Would the men kiss or the women fondle? After censorship went, the dramatist had to manufacture tension of his/her own.

An author is sometimes surprised by what he or she has written. A play or a novel may start off as having nothing seemingly to do with his or her earlier work, and then as it progresses, or even long after it is finished, it can be seen to relate to themes or persons written about in previous books or plays. It was only when I was finishing the play that I realised that Stuart, the rent boy, is only the latest of a succession of not always similar characters who have found their way into my plays, beginning with my second play,
Getting On
, where he’s related to the young jobbing carpenter, Geoff, who is another young man who feels himself shut out (and sees sex as a way in). He in turn is fellow to the rather pathetic young man, Eric, in
The Old Country
, whose complaint is similar to Stuart’s (and to Leonard Bast’s in
Howards End
). He’s less obviously out of the same box as Coral Browne, who, visiting Guy Burgess in his seedy flat in Moscow in
An Englishman Abroad
, pauses by a bookshelf (oh, those bookshelves!), obviously baffled by most of its contents and even more so by Burgess’s questions about Harold Nicolson, Cyril Connolly and London literary life. The wife in
Kafka’s Dick
is another unmetropolitan waif, and the sports-mad Rudge in
The History Boys
, rather than the sensitive Posner, is the real outsider.

I ought to be embarrassed by these recurrences and did I feel they had anything to do with me I might be. But these personages slip in through the back door or disguised as somebody else altogether and it’s only when, like Stuart, they want their say and make a plea for recognition and acknowledgement that I realise the uninvited guest is here again.

I ought to know who this figure is, but I’m not sure that I do. Is he myself as a young man at Oxford baffled by the academic world? Is he one of the young actors in my first play,
Forty Years On
, many of whom I feared would have wasted lives? Is he even one of the procession of young actors who have auditioned over the years to play such parts and who have had to be sent away disappointed?

Some of the yearning felt in this play by Stuart in the houses of his clientele reflects my own wonder as an undergraduate going to tutorials in the vast Victorian houses of North Oxford. I was there on a different, and more legitimate, errand from Stuart, but to see a wall covered in books was an education in itself, though visual and aesthetic as much as intellectual. Books do furnish a room and some of these rooms had little else, but there in a corner the don under a lamp. Sometimes, though, there would be paintings, and occasionally more pictures than I’d ever seen on one wall, together with vases, urns, pottery and other relics – real nests of a scholarly life. And there were wonders, too: drinking soup, once, from fifteenth-century Apostle spoons, medieval embroideries thrown over chair backs, a plaque in the hall that might be by Della Robbia.

These days I think of such houses when I go to museums like the Ashmolean or the Fitzwilliam, where the great masterpieces are plumped out with the fruits of bequests from umpteen academic households: paintings (particularly in the Fitzwilliam), antiquities, treasures brought back from Egypt and Italy in more franchised days than ours, squirrelled away up Norham Road and Park Town, the components of what Stuart rightly sees as a world from which he will forever be excluded – and from which I felt excluded, too, though with less reason.

Early on in the writing process I asked Mari Prichard’s permission to include her late husband, Humphrey Carpenter, as a character. She and her family have been both generous and forbearing…and forgiving, too. As I’ve explained in the introduction, Carpenter deserves a play to himself, but without his biographies of Auden and Britten mine could not have been written.

I should also thank Libby Purves for her recollections of Carpenter, David Vaisey for his help with Oxford topography, and Patrick Garland and Michael Berkeley for their memories of Auden and Britten respectively, Patrick being one of the few people to have been in the flat that is depicted on the stage.

I am, as always, indebted to Nicholas Hytner for his initial encouragement and help with the text, even if this time we’ve had more to-ing and fro-ing than usual. Though he carries the whole burden of the National Theatre, he never brings any of its inevitable problems into the rehearsal room. That there are other plays in production or in prospect one might never guess, and I’m sure the actors appreciate this as much as I do. I am grateful to them, too, and particularly to Richard Griffiths, who took on the role of Auden at short notice. One of the blessings of working at the National Theatre is its ample rehearsal schedule; circumstances made ours less ample but they were no less enjoyable for that.

Alan Bennett, November 2009

The Habit of Art
was first performed in the Lyttelton auditorium of the National Theatre, London, on 5 November 2009. The cast was as follows:

Fitz
(
W. H. Auden
) Richard Griffiths

Henry
(
Benjamin Britten
) Alex Jennings

Donald
(
Humphrey Carpenter
) Adrian Scarborough

Tim
(
Stuart
) Stephen Wight

Charlie
Laurence Belcher/Otto Farrant/Toby Graham

Brian
Philip Childs

Author
Elliot Levey

Kay
Frances de la Tour

ASM
John Heffernan

Joan
Barbara Kirby

Matt
Danny Burns

Ralph
Martin Chamberlain

Tom
Tom Attwood

Director
Nicholas Hytner

Designer
Bob Crowley

Lighting Designer
Mark Henderson

Music
Matthew Scott

Sound Designer
Paul Groothuis

Fitz
  (
W. H. Auden
)

Henry
  (
Benjamin Britten
)

Donald
  (
Humphrey Carpenter
)

Tim
  (
Stuart
)

Charlie
singer

Brian
  (originally Boyle)

Author
  (Neil)

Kay
Stage Manager

Assistant Stage Manager
  (George)

Joan
chaperone

Matt
sound

Ralph
dresser

Tom
rehearsal pianist

Afternoon. A large rehearsal room in the National Theatre. Already set up is the interior of the Brewhouse, Christ Church, Oxford, lodgings into which W. H. Auden had moved in 1972. There are a couple of easy chairs, a cluttered kitchen unit and piles of books and papers on every available surface. The room is a mess.

Above the room and set back from it is another stage on which is a grand piano. George, the ASM, is checking props when Donald, who is playing Humphrey Carpenter, enters, and murmurs to him. The ASM takes Donald’s script in order to prompt him.

Carpenter
(
hesitantly
) I want to hear about the shortcomings of great men, their fears and their failings. I’ve had enough of their vision, how they altered the landscape. We stand on their shoulders to survey our lives. So. (
As Donald.
)…Yes?

ASM
(
prompting
) ‘So let’s talk about…’

Carpenter
So let’s talk about the vanity. (
He quickens up.
) This one, the connoisseur of emptiness, is tipped for the Nobel Prize yet still needs to win at Monopoly. That playwright’s skin is so thin he can feel pain on the other side of the world…so why is he deaf to the suffering next door? Er…

ASM
‘Proud of his modesty…’

Carpenter
Yes. Proud of his modesty, this one gives frequent, rare interviews in which he aggregates praise and denudes others of credit. Artists celebrated for their humanity, they turn out to be scarcely human at all.

ASM
I thought Stephen had cut all this?

Donald
He has…which is fine by me, only I just feel, like, the play needs it. You know?

ASM
Yeah.

Fitz
Am I smoking this afternoon?

ASM
Is Fitz smoking this afternoon?

Kay
Tomorrow, we decided.

Fitz
Worth a try.

Donald
My speech about biography…

Kay
(
waving him away
) I’m doing the setup, love.

Tim
Afternoon.

Kay
(
who has seen it all before
) We’re minus Penny.

Fitz
Oh. No Penny.

Kay
And Brian. Both in the Chekhov matinee.

Fitz
Is she? I don’t remember her.

ASM
Cough and a spit.

Kay
I’ll read in for Penny. Henry, can you read Boyle?

Henry
Will do.

Kay
And George.

ASM
Yeah!

Kay
You do the rest.

ASM
Oh, great!

Fitz
That’s all very well, but no Penny means no cake. You can answer this, Henry.

Tom
Coffee, Fitz?

Fitz
Why is it that whoever’s got the smallest part is the one who brings in the cakes to rehearsal?

Henry
Because they’re still human beings?

Fitz
You see, in my whole life in the theatre I have never brought in a cake. Look at him, they say in the canteen; there is an actor who has never brought in a cake.

He was in
Coriolanus
. No cake.

He was in
Henry VI
Parts One, Two and Three. No cake.

He was in
The Birthday Party
. No cake.

Kay
(
on the phone
) Hello?…Leeds!

Fitz
The first production I was in here, I was painted bright blue.

I was an Ancient Briton.

Kay
Oh precious! LEEDS!

Henry
I’ve been painted pink.

Kay
(
to various people
) LEEDS!!

ASM
Pink! What was that in?

Henry
Hospital. I had scabies.

Kay
Very good, darling. (
Puts phone down.
) Bad news, people. The director cannot be with us. Even as we speak Stephen is on his way to Leeds, having forgotten he was due to host a conference.

Henry
What on?

Kay
The relevance of theatre in the provinces.

Fitz
Good. So we can go home.

Kay
What Stephen suggests we do is run the play…

Henry
Shit.

Fitz
What?

Oh fuck.

Kay
What Stephen suggests we do – hello, darling – is run the play with those of us who are still a little uncertain of the text, Fitz, paying particular attention to the words which I’m sure we would want to do anyway if only out of courtesy to our author, who has just joined us. Good afternoon, Neil. Where’ve you been, darling? We’ve missed you.

Author
Newcastle, actually.

Fitz
Newcastle? Really? What were you doing there? It’s all vomit and love bites.

Author
I was judging.

Fitz
Malefactors?

Author
Playwrights, actually.

Fitz
I am saying nothing.

Kay
Now, Fitz, have you your slippers?

Fitz
(
displaying them
) I have. I also have my prosthetic cigarettes, my elephantine urine-stained trousers, my disgusting handkerchief and my plastic bag. The question is, have we got the mask?

Author
What mask?

ASM
The mask is coming.

Fitz
They’ve been saying that for the last week.

Tim
(
whispering to the ASM
) Will I be doing the – (
seeing Charlie and whispering
) sucking-off?

ASM
Will we be doing the sucking-off?

Author
Sucking-off? What scene is that?

Kay
Darling, can we not play it by ear?

Fitz
Ear?

Sorry. Though these days they probably know more about it than we do. All right, Charlie?

Kay
Right, everybody? Charlie, are you all right? Is Charlie all right?

Joan
(
reading
) Charlie’s fine.

Author
(
to Kay
) Sucking-off?

Fitz
If we’re starting, I suppose I should have gone to the loo, but it’s so far.

Henry
Far? There’s one just outside.

Fitz
No, I can’t use that. I don’t like to be overheard. In the whole of this bloody building there is only one loo I can use.

Henry
Which one is that?

Fitz
I’m not going to tell you. You might start using it.

Kay
OK, everybody.

Author
Where’s Stephen?

Donald
(
indicating speech
) Kay?

Kay
(
to Donald
) Your speech, love. I know. I haven’t forgotten.

Running Act One. Ready! LIGHTS UP!

Carpenter
When you were singing that as a child, were you aware that your mother was taking the part of Tristan and you were singing Isolde?

Auden
Oh yes.

Carpenter
And were you aware of the implications?

Auden
I was. I’m not sure she was. My father made no comment. He was a doctor.

Carpenter
I am talking this evening with Mr W. H. Auden, formerly Professor of Poetry at the University and newly returned to Christ Church.

Auden
Am I addressing the nation?

Carpenter
Radio Oxford.

Auden
Why poets should be interviewed I can’t think. A writer is not a man of action. His private life is or should be of no concern to anyone except himself, his family and his friends. The rest is impertinence. Yes?

ASM
(
prompting
) ‘I was once rung from Hollywood…’

Auden
I was once rung from Hollywood by Miss Bette Davis. She said, ‘Mr Auden, I’ve just been reading one of your poems.’ I said, ‘I’m glad to hear it, madam, but it’s two o’clock in the morning,’ and put the phone down.

Chester has never forgiven me.

Chester is my partner. Is that the word you use?

Carpenter
People do.

Auden
You can’t be arrested for using it?

Not even in England? Progress.

Fitz
(
to Author
) People will know, author, this is 1972?

Author
If they have any intelligence.

Fitz
Because you couldn’t be arrested for having a partner in 1972.

Author
Auden is being ironic. He means it and he doesn’t mean it.

Fitz
Yes. I know what irony means.

Henry
(
on the upper stage
) Actually, you could be arrested for having a partner in 1954, which is why the police interviewed Britten.

Fitz
Yes. All right.

Henry
And 1972 wasn’t such a paradise either. ‘How old are you? How old was he?’ They don’t let up that easily.

Kay
On we go.

Henry
Someone was had up only last week.

Donald
Thank you!

Carpenter
(
throws a black look at Henry
) Benjamin Britten is in Oxford today.

Auditioning choirboys. You worked together?

In the thirties?

Auden
I know when it was. Why?

Carpenter
I wondered whether there was a programme in it. You and him, collaborating.

Auden
That would come under impertinence, I think. My business not yours, though collaborate we did and very happy it was, too.

Britten
(
over song
) Don’t make it sound too polite. ‘O lift your little pinkie.’ Good. Very good. (
Music ends.
)

Boy
Um, sir, what does ‘pinkie’ mean? Is it rude?

Britten
No. I wouldn’t ask you to sing it if it were. It’s what Americans call the little finger. Happy?

Boy
Sir.

Britten
Let’s try it again and just make the consonants clear.

Carpenter
That afternoon in 1972 I had gone to interview Auden in Oxford at the Brewhouse in Christ Church, an outbuilding of the college converted into lodgings for one of its most distinguished sons. Spool back half an hour and I am waiting outside with my tape recorder ready to interview the great poet. Only he’s not here…just a couple cleaning his rooms.

Kay
And Henry is reading Boyle and I’m reading May.

Author
Why?

Kay
Because Penny and Brian are in the Chekhov matinee.

Boyle
Jesus Christ!

I was in the Western Desert.

Tobruk.

Ben-fucking-ghazi.

Where were you, Mr Auden?