An Ideal Husband

The octagon room at Sir Robert Chiltern’s house in Grosvenor Square.

The room is brilliantly lighted and full of guests. At the top of the staircase stands Lady Chiltern, a woman of grave Greek beauty, about twenty-seven years of age. She receives the guests as they come up. Over the well of the staircase hangs a great chandelier with wax lights, which illumine a large eighteenth-century French tapestry⁠—representing the Triumph of Love, from a design by Boucher⁠—that is stretched on the staircase wall. On the right is the entrance to the music room. The sound of a string quartet is faintly heard. The entrance on the left leads to other reception rooms. Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon, two very pretty women, are seated together on a Louis Seize sofa. They are types of exquisite fragility. Their affectation of manner has a delicate charm. Watteau would have loved to paint them.

Mrs. Marchmont

Going on to the Hartlocks’ tonight, Margaret?

Lady Basildon

I suppose so. Are you?

Mrs. Marchmont

Yes. Horribly tedious parties they give, don’t they?

Lady Basildon

Horribly tedious! Never know why I go. Never know why I go anywhere.

Mrs. Marchmont

I come here to be educated.

Lady Basildon

Ah! I hate being educated!

Mrs. Marchmont

So do I. It puts one almost on a level with the commercial classes, doesn’t it? But dear Gertrude Chiltern is always telling me that I should have some serious purpose in life. So I come here to try to find one.

At least that is the only way I can account for the terribly haggard look of most of your pretty women in London!

Sir Robert Chiltern

What an appalling philosophy that sounds! To attempt to classify you, Mrs. Cheveley, would be an impertinence. But may I ask, at heart, are you an optimist or a pessimist? Those seem to be the only two fashionable religions left to us nowadays.

Mrs. Cheveley

Oh, I’m neither. Optimism begins in a broad grin, and Pessimism ends with blue spectacles. Besides, they are both of them merely poses.

Sir Robert Chiltern

You prefer to be natural?

Mrs. Cheveley

Sometimes. But it is such a very difficult pose to keep up.

Sir Robert Chiltern

What would those modern psychological novelists, of whom we hear so much, say to such a theory as that?

Mrs. Cheveley

Ah! the strength of women comes from the fact that psychology cannot explain us. Men can be analysed, women⁠ ⁠… merely adored.

Sir Robert Chiltern

You think science cannot grapple with the problem of women?

Mrs. Cheveley

Science can never grapple with the irrational. That is why it has no future before it, in this world.

Sir Robert Chiltern

And women represent the irrational.

Mrs. Cheveley

Well-dressed women do.

Sir Robert Chiltern

With a polite bow. I fear I could hardly agree with you there. But do sit down. And now tell me, what makes you leave your brilliant Vienna for our gloomy London⁠—or perhaps the question is indiscreet?

Mrs. Cheveley

Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.

Sir Robert Chiltern

Well, at any rate, may I know if it is politics or pleasure?

Mrs. Cheveley

Politics are my only pleasure.

Sir Robert Chiltern

And are you going to any of our country houses before you leave England, Mrs. Cheveley?

Mrs. Cheveley

Oh, no! I can’t stand your English house-parties. In England people actually try to be brilliant at breakfast. That is so dreadful of them! Only dull people are brilliant at breakfast. And then the family skeleton is always reading family prayers. My stay in England really depends on you, Sir Robert. Sits down on the sofa.

Sir Robert Chiltern

Taking a seat beside her. Seriously?

Mrs. Cheveley

Quite seriously. I want to talk to you about a great political and financial scheme, about this Argentine Canal Company, in fact.

Sir Robert Chiltern

What a tedious, practical subject for you to talk about, Mrs. Cheveley!

Mrs. Cheveley

Oh, I like tedious, practical subjects. What I don’t like are tedious, practical people. There is a wide difference. Besides, you are interested, I know, in International Canal schemes. You were Lord Radley’s secretary, weren’t you, when the Government bought the Suez Canal shares?

Sir Robert Chiltern

Yes. But the Suez Canal was a very great and splendid undertaking. It gave us our direct route to India. It had imperial value. It was necessary that we should have control. This Argentine scheme is a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle.

Mrs. Cheveley

A speculation, Sir Robert! A brilliant, daring speculation.

Sir Robert Chiltern

Believe me, Mrs. Cheveley, it is a swindle. Let us call things by their proper names. It makes matters simpler. We have all the information about it at the Foreign Office.

Exit.

Sir Robert Chiltern

How beautiful you look tonight, Gertrude!

Lady Chiltern

Robert, it is not true, is it? You are not going to lend your support to this Argentine speculation? You couldn’t!

Sir Robert Chiltern

Starting. Who told you I intended to do so?

Lady Chiltern

That woman who has just gone out, Mrs. Cheveley, as she calls herself now. She seemed to taunt me with it. Robert, I know this woman. You don’t. We were at school together. She was untruthful, dishonest, an evil influence on everyone whose trust or friendship she could win. I hated, I despised her. She stole things, she was a thief. She was sent away for being a thief. Why do you let her influence you?

Sir Robert Chiltern

Gertrude, what you tell me may be true, but it happened many years ago. It is best forgotten! Mrs. Cheveley may have changed since then. No one should be entirely judged by their past.

Lady Chiltern

Sadly. One’s past is what one is. It is the only way by which people should be judged.

Sir Robert Chiltern

That is a hard saying, Gertrude!

Lady Chiltern

It is a true saying, Robert. And what did she mean by boasting that she had got you to lend your support, your name, to a thing I have heard you describe as the most dishonest and fraudulent scheme there has ever been in political life?

Morning room at Sir Robert Chiltern’s house.

Lord Goring, dressed in the height of fashion, is lounging in an armchair. Sir Robert Chiltern is standing in front of the fireplace. He is evidently in a state of great mental excitement and distress. As the scene progresses he paces nervously up and down the room.

Lord Goring

My dear Robert, it’s a very awkward business, very awkward indeed. You should have told your wife the whole thing. Secrets from other people’s wives are a necessary luxury in modern life. So, at least, I am always told at the club by people who are bald enough to know better. But no man should have a secret from his own wife. She invariably finds it out. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious.

Sir Robert Chiltern

Arthur, I couldn’t tell my wife. When could I have told her? Not last night. It would have made a lifelong separation between us, and I would have lost the love of the one woman in the world I worship, of the only woman who has ever stirred love within me. Last night it would have been quite impossible. She would have turned from me in horror⁠ ⁠… in horror and in contempt.

Lord Goring

Is Lady Chiltern as perfect as all that?

Sir Robert Chiltern

Yes; my wife is as perfect as all that.

Lord Goring