An Ideal Husband: ‘One’s Past Is What One Is’

I recently enjoyed a production of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play ‘An Ideal Husband.’ (Bristol Old Vic, until 20 June)

Lord Goring: I usually say what I really think. A great mistake nowadays. It makes one so liable to be understood.
 
As one would expect with Wilde, the work is rich with the fizz and froth of aristocratic society; with witty conversations about buttonholes, bonnets and marriage proposals; with the bons mots of the beau monde.
 
Lady Chiltern: Oh I love London society!...It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and brilliant lunatics.
 
But at the heart of the play is a serious narrative about blackmail and corruption, a plot that considers themes of public and private morality; truth and trust within relationships; the intrusion of the past into present day life.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: I wanted my success when I was young. Youth is the time for success. I couldn’t wait.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern, a hard-working, highly respected MP and junior government minister, is visited by Mrs Cheveley, mysterious and glamorous, cunning and quick witted.
 
Mrs Cheveley: Questions are never indiscreet. Answers sometimes are.
 
Mrs Cheveley has invested heavily in a scheme to build a canal in Argentina. However, Sir Robert believes it to be ‘a commonplace Stock Exchange swindle,’ and plans to present a report to that effect to Parliament the following day.
 

Chiké Okonkwo and Jamael Westman in ‘An Ideal Husband’ © Helen Murray

Mrs Cheveley: One should always play fairly…when one has the winning cards.
 
Mrs Cheveley has learned that Sir Robert, in his youth, was involved in insider trading on another canal project. He revealed a cabinet secret to her late mentor and lover, which enabled the rogue to buy shares in the Suez Canal Company three days before the Government announced its purchase. Sir Robert's payoff became the basis for his present fortune, and Mrs Cheveley has a letter as proof of his crime. 
 
Mrs Cheveley: My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am.
 
Mrs Cheveley’s price is more than money. It is Sir Robert’s reputation.

Mrs Cheveley: Even you are not rich enough, Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

She demands that Sir Robert withdraw the critical report about the Argentine venture, and state in the House that he believes the enterprise will be of great international value.
 
Mrs Cheveley: A few ordinary platitudes will do. In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude.
 
Sir Robert seeks the counsel of his wife. But, concerned that her love for him is founded on her belief in his rock-solid integrity, he cannot reveal the whole truth. And so he ties himself in knots.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: Public and private life are different things. They have different laws, and move on different lines… Truth is a very complex thing, and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life, one has to compromise. Everyone does… I am not changed. But circumstances alter things.
 
Lady Chiltern is unimpressed.
 
Lady Chiltern: Circumstances should never alter principles.
 
Sir Robert tries again. 
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: It was a question of rational compromise. It is no more than that.
 
This prompts the response he most feared.
 
Lady Chiltern: Oh! Don’t kill my love for you, don’t kill that!
 
Distraught, Sir Robert turns for help to his friend Lord Goring. ‘A flawless dandy’ and ‘the idlest man in London,’ Goring does not initially come across as a man for a crisis.
 
Lord Goring: I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.
 
Surprisingly, however, Lord Goring reveals himself to be a sympathetic listener and a practical ally.
 
Lord Goring: The English can’t stand a man who is always saying he is in the right, but they are very fond of a man who admits that he has been in the wrong.
 
This time Sir Robert argues that his misdemeanour occurred a very long time ago, and he has in any case given greatly to charity since.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: Do you think what I did nearly eighteen years ago should be brought up against me now? Do you think it fair that a man’s whole career should be ruined for a fault done in his boyhood almost?
 
We may recognise in Sir Robert’s mental gymnastics some of our own attempts to legitimize our actions when we are in the wrong: work operates by different rules; life is about compromise; the end justifies the means; it happened many years ago; times change; it was a victimless crime.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: And, after all, whom did I wrong by what I did? No one.
Lord Goring: Except yourself, Robert.
 
When we are at fault, we resort to casuistry; we lie to ourselves; we create self-justifying narratives. But in time, our faults find us out.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat.
 
The themes in ‘An Ideal Husband’ are particularly pertinent to young people. At the start of our careers, in a hurry to get on, we may be more reckless. We may compromise and cut corners. We may make bad choices.
 
We need to understand that old sins cast long shadows. The past always catches up with us. Indeed, the past makes the present.
 
Sir Robert Chiltern: No one should be entirely judged by their past.
Lady Chiltern: One’s past is what one is. It is the only was by which people should be judged.
 
 
'What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?
What can I do to prove it to you, that I'm sorry?
I didn't mean to ever be mean to you.
If I didn't care, I wouldn't feel like I do.
I was all wrong, but right or wrong, I don't blame you.
Why should I take somebody like you and shame you?
I know that I made you cry, but I'm so sorry dear.
What can I say, dear, after I say I'm sorry?’
Dinah Washington, '(What Can I Say) After I Say I'm Sorry?’ (W Donaldson, A Lyman)

No. 573

Don McCullin: Photography as Feeling

Don McCullin The Guvnors in Their Sunday Suits

'Seeing, looking at what others cannot bear to see, is what my life is all about.'
Don McCullin

I recently attended an excellent retrospective at Tate Britain of the photographer Don McCullin (until 6 May).

Born in 1935, McCullin grew up in a two-room flat in Finsbury Park, an area that had been battered by war and poverty. His father died when he was 14 and he had to leave school to support his family. He bought his first camera when he was on National Service, and he took to photographing North London’s gangs, tearaways and immigrants. Some of his pictures were picked up by The Observer newspaper.

'I fell in love with photography accidentally – it chose me, I didn't choose it.'

In 1964 The Observer commissioned McCullin to cover the civil war in Cyprus.

A running man in a raglan coat, with a peaked cap and Stenn gun, casts a crisp shadow in the Limassol sun. Two dead men lie in a pool of blood on the cool tiled floor. A child grasps his despairing mother by the hand. The soles of four corpses look out at us from the back of a Land Rover. These are scenes of Biblical sadness.

Don McCullin ‘The Cyprus Civil War’

'Cyprus left me with the beginnings of a self-knowledge, and the beginning of what they call empathy. I found I was able to share other people’s emotional experiences, live with them silently, transmit them.'

Soon McCullin was off covering wars and civil strife all over the world for The Observer and The Sunday Times. The Congo, Biafra, Vietnam, Cambodia, Northern Ireland, Bangladesh, Beirut, Iraq, Ethiopia - the conflicts that dominated our news bulletins for over half a century. Unflinching, he examined pain, fear, cruelty, death and grief; he exposed the realities of war, the starvation, shell shock, looting and torture; the dark fruits of this bitter earth.

He worried that he was becoming addicted to hostilities.

'I used to chase wars like a drunk chasing a can of lager.’

But McCullin had a strong sense of moral obligation, of duty to report what he saw.

'You have to bear witness. You cannot just look away.'

Of course, continuous exposure to human suffering and inhuman cruelty came at a price. McCullin was troubled by doubts, haunted by nightmares.

'I am tired of guilt, tired of saying to myself: ‘I didn’t kill that man on that photograph, I didn’t starve that child.’'

Periodically McCullin took assignments in the UK. But even here his conscience drew him to ‘social wars’- to document the poverty, inequality and deprivation on our doorsteps. He observed the homeless in London’s East End; considered the effects of industrial decay in Bradford, Doncaster and Wigan; captured the harsh economic realities in Hartlepool, Liverpool and Sunderland.

Homeless men stand around the fire, sleep amid the litter. Heads down, eyes shot, faces grubby, hands knotted. Kids play in the rubble, unemployed men forage for coal, a courting couple take a drag on a cigarette. Parkas, prams and flat caps. Cold rooms and damp walls. England ‘laughing in the face of defeat’.

'Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.'

Don McCullin Gangs of Boys Escaping CS Gas Fired by British Soldiers

If you’re familiar with photographers, you’ll know that they like to discuss their equipment: lenses and light exposure, apertures and aspect ratios. I was quite struck by McCullin’s inclination to focus on human qualities.

‘The photographic equipment I take on an assignment is my head and my eyes and my heart. I could take the poorest equipment and I would still take the same photographs. They might not be as sharp, but they would certainly say the same thing.’

Indeed McCullin describes his craft as a matter of feeling rather than technical expertise.

'Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.'

There’s a lesson for us all here.

In creative professions we often hide behind the tools and technology; the gear and gadgets; the arcane language and expert jargon. But the best practitioners are often characterised by their humanity; their feeling for others; their empathy.

A recent BBC documentary (‘Don McCullin: Looking for England’) followed the photographer on a tour round his home country.

‘I’m never bored by trying to discover what makes me tick and this country tick.’

In Eastbourne he comes across a bunch of intrepid old folk in anoraks - watching a brass band play, eating sandwiches in the rain.

‘Terrible weather,’ says McCullin to one of them.
‘But the show must go on’, comes the reply.

This tickles McCullin. He can barely hold himself together. He wipes a tear from his eye.

'This bitter earth,
Well, what a fruit it bears.
What good is love,
That no one shares?
And if my life is like the dust,
That hides the glow of a rose.
What good am I?
Heaven only knows.

Oh, this bitter earth,
Yes, can it be so cold?
Today you're young,
Too soon you're old.
But while a voice
Within me cries,
I'm sure someone
May answer my call.
And this bitter earth
May not be so bitter after all.’

Dinah Washington, ‘This Bitter Earth’ (Clyde Lovern Otis)

No. 221