An Ideal World

One of the unfortunate, yet natural, mistakes we can make when reading any 19th-century British play is to assume that the circumstances are the same as our own in 21st-century America. This is easy to do, for the characters and situations seem so much like ones we meet in our own time. But to do this is to misread or misunderstand a great deal of the play. This brief set of definitions intends to give the playgoer of An Ideal Husband an idea of the social and cultural contexts that the characters in the 1895 production shared with their audience. The major sources for this information are Russell Jackson’s notes in his edition of the play (1993) and Daniel Pool’s delightful and instructive What Jane Austin Ate and Charles Dickens Knew: From Fox Hunting to Whist—The Facts of Daily Life in 19th-Century England (1993). Almost all of the obscure phrases (to us, at least) refer to practices and events that were part of the lives of the aristocracy and the men in political power.

The Season, according to Pool, started with the nobility and gentry “coming to [London] ... from their country estates sometime around Christmas to prepare for the opening of Parliament.” It was a season of socializing; of attending the theatre, parties, balls, and dinners; of connecting and reconnecting with power brokers; and, especially, of debuting daughters officially among Society and acquiring an engagement to be married (often for the purpose of joining two powerful families). From Pool:

In London, it was up early to go riding in Hyde Park, preferably on the sandy track known as Rotten Row (there was also the Ladies’ Mile for the women), then home for breakfast. Shopping and paying bills for the ladies and making calls on those one knew extremely well came next. Then lunch, followed for men by the club—if they were not in Parliament or it was not in session just then—while the ladies took to their carriages to leave cards and to pay still more calls. Dinner followed at around six or seven and in the evening there were soirees or the opera (dinner parties, too, especially on the Wednesdays and Saturdays when there were no evening parliamentary sessions) and then balls or dances starting at ten or later that could go until three o’clock in the morning. (51-52)

The season took off in earnest shortly after Easter for “a dizzying three-month whirlwind of parties, balls, and sporting events. ... Despite all the surface gaiety,” writes Pool, “these ... gatherings revolved around the deadly serious business of marrying off the young girls of the family to eligible and wealthy young men...” (52).

The season ended with the adjournment of Parliament on August 12, and the wealthy families left London for their estates in the country.

An Ideal Husband takes place near the end of the season. Sir Robert Chiltern’s sister, Mabel, is one of the eligible young women and has received many marriage proposals from Tommy Trafford, but she is holding out hopes for a proposal from Lord Goring. Lord Goring’s father, Lord Caversham, desires his son marry, but he wants to make the arrangements: “That is a matter for me, sir,” he tells Lord Goring. “You would probably make a very poor choice. It is I who should be consulted, not you. There is property at stake. It is not a matter for affection. Affection comes later on in married life.”

Parliament
Sir Robert is a member of the House of Commons and an undersecretary for foreign affairs. He has an important post in the current government, although he is not a member of the prime minister’s cabinet, where the fifteen secretaries (like the U.S. president’s cabinet) have major responsibilities. Together, the cabinet and the twenty-five under secretaries (like Sir Robert) made up what was called the “ministry.” The head of the government is the prime minister (equivalent to our president), whose official residence, “10 Downing Street,” is synonymous with the seat of the executive power (like the White House in America).

Parliament met once a year between January or February (depending on when the hunting season ended in the north country estates) and August. Instead of Republicans and Democrats, the major parties were the Conservatives and Liberals, with a small number of Radicals also in the mix.

“Until 1888,” Pool writes, “the [House of] Commons met at 3:45 on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday with no cutoff time. Debates therefore often went on until well after midnight. Several hours after the afternoon sessions began members would begin drifting away for dinner. Then around ten o’clock they would wander in wearing evening dress, ready to go again and sometimes not adjourning til two or three in the morning.”

In Wilde’s third act of An Ideal Husband, Sir Robert shows up at Lord Goring’s house at ten o’clock at night, on his way to the Parliament to deliver his speech about the Argentine Canal scheme. To a Victorian audience this would have seemed a normal work schedule for a member of the Commons. Of course, it seems exceptional to a contemporary American reader or theatre-goer.

Women were not permitted in Parliament, proper, but the mothers, wives, or any other female relation of the members might view the proceedings from the Ladies’ Gallery, situated above a gallery for the press and looking down upon the floor of the House of Commons. The ladies were hidden from view of the members behind a dense grille-work. In An Ideal Husband Mrs. Chevely invites Lady Chiltern to join her in the Ladies’ Gallery to witness her husband throw his support behind the Argentine Canal scheme.

Tableaux
In Wilde’s second act, Mabel tells Lady Chiltern that she must “go round now and and rehearse at Lady Basildon’s. You remember we are having tableaux, don’t you? The Triumph of something, I don’t know what! I hope it will be triumph of me. Only triumph I am really interested in at present.” Russell Jackson notes that “Tableaux vivants [living pictures], in which performersw (usually amateur) gave a costumed representation of some familiar painting or historical scene, were a popular pastime and were often staged for charitable fund-raising events.” So Mabel is off to dress up as a figure in a work of art and practice holding the appropriate pose with other “actors,” who are helping to create the illusion of a living picture, representing a sculpture, a painting, or a scene from a work of literature or history.

“You are interested, I know, in International canal schemes.” So states Mrs. Chevely to Sir Robert in the first act. They discuss two plans, the first being the purchase of shares in the Suez Canal by Great Britain in 1875. Sir Robert, at that time was secretary to (the fictitious) Lord Radley and, as a result, had access to government information about the deal before it was made public. In the past action of An Ideal Husband, Robert surreptitiously sold this information to his mentor Baron Arnheim. In reality, there was a scandal associated with Great Britain purchasing the shares, for Prime Minister Disraeli did so with financing from the Rothchilds (an international banking family) without receiving consent from Parliament. Four million pounds changed hands in the transaction, and many in Parliament were aghast that so much money had been spent without discussion and official government action.

The other “international canal scheme” that is mentioned in this section of the play comes from Sir Robert. As he disparages the (fictitious) Argentine canal, which Mrs. Chevely supports, he says, “The whole thing is a second Panama.” Sir Robert refers to the 1889 collapse of the original Panama Canal project, which was like some precursor to Bernie Madoff or insider trading run amok. There were, writes Russell Jackson, “massive debts and unaccounted-for expenditures,” and an investigation of the French speculators showed that they had “involved senators and deputies in the corruption.” Sir Robert compares Mrs. Chevely’s pet project, which he calls “a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle,” to this  mismanaged and corrupt and failed Panama Canal company.

Sex and propriety
Mrs. Chevely is a woman whose actions would not be considered proper at the time, at least among good society. Wilde gives us many hints that she has been pretty casual with both sex and commitments: She has married twice and is again a single woman, and since no mention is made of her being a widow, it may be safe to assume she’s been twice divorced. In England, at any rate, the only acceptable grounds for divorce for a man was when his wife was guilty of sexual infidelity.

She suggests she had been Baron Arnheim’s mistress when, speaking to Sir Robert of the Baron’s deep involvement in the Argentine Canal scheme, she says, “It was his last romance. His last but one, to do him justice.”

Her past actions have not been those of a typically honorable woman: Lord Goring ended their brief engagement because he had discovered her “having a violent flirtation” with another man on a country estate. “Well, you were silly, Arthur,” she tells him. Why, Lord Mortlake was never anything more to me than an amusement. One of those utterly tedious amusements one only finds at an English country house on an English country Sunday. I don’t think anyone at all morally responsible for what he or she does at an English country house.”

As a Victorian woman who seems to be as sexually free as a Victorian man (and this would bring her the censure of most Victorians, men and women), Mrs. Chevely has no compunction in visiting Lord Goring’s house at ten o’clock in the evening, as she does in Wilde’s third act. In London in 1895, there would be only one purpose an unescorted woman would have when visiting a bachelor’s house late in the evening; most men and women in “proper” society would find it an indecent one.

Knowing this allows us to gauge Lady Chiltern’s desperation in the beginning of act three, when, in her letter to him, she tells Lord Goring, “I trust you. I want you. I am coming to you.” She desperately needs his advice, and she plans on seeking his help by coming to Lord Goring at night. Were she to do so and be discovered, her reputation would be ruined.

This may help clarify the comic confusion of the later scene in act three, when Sir Robert confronts the eavesdropper in the adjacent room, who has heard him confess to Lord Goring about his marriage and his love for his wife. Sir Robert discovers his enemy Mrs. Chevely in the rooms of his best, most trusted friend. Lord Goring, meanwhile, believes the woman in the drawing room to be Lady Chiltern:

Sir Robert: Stand back. My life is at stake. And I don’t care who is there. I will know who it is to whom I have told my secret and my shame.
Enters room

Lord Goring: Great Heavens! his own wife!

Sir Robert comes back, with a look of scorn and anger on his face

Sir Robert: What explanation have you to give me for the presence of that woman here?

Lord Goring: Robert, I swear to you on my honour that that lady is stainless and guiltless of all offence towards you. [Here, Lord Goring is defending Lady Chiltern’s character, which would be highly compromised were Gertrude actually the person in the adjacent room.]

Sir Robert: She is a vile, an infamous thing!

Lord Goring: [Thinking, still, that Robert is speaking of his wife’s loss of honor] Don’t say that, Robert! It was for your sake she came here. It was to try and save you she came here. She loves you and no one else.

Sir Robert: You are mad. [And to Sir Robert, so it must seem.] What have I to do with her intrigues with you? Let her remain your mistress! You are well suited to each other. She, corrupt and shameful — you, false as a friend, treacherous as an enemy even— [And of course, since neither man has given a name to the woman in the next room, these lines, too, are interpreted by Lord Goring to be about Lady Chiltern. Wilde has carefully structured the scene to provide humorous confusion, while accomplishing serious destruction to the relationship between Sir Robert and Lord Goring.]

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