Introduction - Page 2

you there--when you can get them.

THE COUNT. Why not get them? The difficulty is not that there are no
beautiful realities, Mr Savoyard: the difficulty is that so few of us
know them when we see them. We have inherited from the past a vast
treasure of beauty--of imperishable masterpieces of poetry, of
painting, of sculpture, of architecture, of music, of exquisite
fashions in dress, in furniture, in domestic decoration. We can
contemplate these treasures. We can reproduce many of them. We can
buy a few inimitable originals. We can shut out the nineteenth
century--

SAVOYARD. [correcting him] The twentieth.

THE COUNT. To me the century I shut out will always be the nineteenth
century, just as your national anthem will always be God Save the
Queen, no matter how many kings may succeed. I found England befouled
with industrialism: well, I did what Byron did: I simply refused to
live in it. You remember Byron's words: "I am sure my bones would
not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that
country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my deathbed
could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey
my carcase back to her soil. I would not even feed her worms if I
could help it."

SAVOYARD. Did Byron say that?

THE COUNT. He did, sir.

SAVOYARD. It dont sound like him. I saw a good deal of him at one
time.

THE COUNT. You! But how is that possible? You are too young.

SAVOYARD. I was quite a lad, of course. But I had a job in the
original production of Our Boys.

THE COUNT. My dear sir, not that Byron. Lord Byron, the poet.

SAVOYARD. Oh, I beg your pardon. I thought you were talking of the
Byron. So you prefer living abroad?

THE COUNT. I find England ugly and Philistine. Well, I dont live in
it. I find modern houses ugly. I dont live in them: I have a palace
on the grand canal. I find modern clothes prosaic. I dont wear them,
except, of course, in the street. My ears are offended by the Cockney
twang: I keep out of hearing of it and speak and listen to Italian.
I find Beethoven's music coarse and restless, and Wagner's senseless
and detestable. I do not listen to them. I listen to Cimarosa, to
Pergolesi, to Gluck and Mozart. Nothing simpler, sir.

SAVOYARD. It's all right when you can afford it.

THE COUNT. Afford it! My dear Mr Savoyard, if you are a man with a
sense of beauty you can make an earthly paradise for yourself in
Venice on 1500 pounds a year, whilst our wretched vulgar industrial
millionaires are spending twenty thousand on the amusements of
billiard markers. I assure you I am a poor man according to modern
ideas. But I have never had anything less than the very