137: I also engaged the help ...
Little Follies, “The Girl with the White Fur Muff,” Chapter 13
13
I ALSO ENGAGED the help of Matthew Barber. Matthew wasn’t enthusiastic at first. In fact, he was convinced that the production was going to be a farce.
“Peter,” he said, “all of you are going to look like a bunch of idiots when this hits the boards.”
“‘Hits the boards’?” I asked.
“That’s theater talk,” he said. “You’re not very familiar with the theater, are you?” he asked.
I thought of reminding him about my success as an elf, but from the way Matthew’s mouth was twisted I could tell that it wouldn’t go very far toward making him think that I was “familiar with the theater.”
“No,” I confessed.
He shook his head and let out a long sigh. “I’ll never understand school,” he muttered. “Look, Peter,” he said, looking me in the face and putting his hands on my shoulders, “it’s not going to be easy, you know. You can’t just have a bunch of kids running around the stage like madmen and fools. This is a very complicated play.”
“Oh,” I said, “we’re using a simple version, just for kids.”
“I should have known,” he said. “But that doesn’t make any difference. It’s complicated no matter how simple they make it.
This didn’t make any sense to me, but I nodded my head gravely, as if I recognized that it would be impossible not to agree.
“You’ve got to create an atmosphere of gloom,” said Matthew. “At the end, we’ve got to see that Lear has lost everything. You see? Did you read the play?”
“Oh, yeah!” I said. I was hurt that Matthew would think I hadn’t.
“Well, don’t you see what I’m talking about?”
“Well—”
“Worst of all,” said Matthew, “he loses the illusion that his daughters loved him. Only when he’s blind does he finally see the truth. Then he understands that Goneril and Regan think he’s just a crazy old fool.”
I nodded my head in the way that adults did when they meant to indicate by the nodding, “Too true, too true.”
“There’s no fool like an old fool,” I offered. I had heard my parents say this from time to time, and considered it an example of the kind of painfully acquired wisdom that adults laid claim to.
Matthew looked at me incredulously. “‘No fool like an old fool,’” he repeated. “Oh, God, this is going to be just horrible,” he said. “All right, Peter. You really need my help. I’ll do it.”
“Great!” I said. “I knew you’d help me out, Matthew. We’re going to have great fun with this, you’ll see. Here.”
I gave him a copy of The Story of King Lear and His Daughters. Matthew sneered at the book, but he did help me. In his heart of hearts, he must have been convinced that the play was doomed to failure, but part of him had decided to challenge fate on my behalf, to try with everything he had in him to make it a success for my sake. He had an apparently endless supply of ideas for staging the play, and yet he had no real enthusiasm for what he was doing. He would suggest things to me, or explain things to me, or listen tirelessly to my questions, all the time wearing a look that said, “We haven’t got a chance in the world of pulling this off.”
“The way I see the play is this,” Matthew announced one day. “Lear is in the clam-processing business. He owns a big plant. He’s worth a lot of money.”
“Matthew—” I said.
“He knows he’s going to die soon, so he wants his daughters to take over the family business.”
“Matthew,” I said, “we have to use these scripts.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Matthew, “we’ll use those scripts, but we’ll put the kids in costumes that make them look like people in the clam-processing business, and the scenery—”
His eyes lit up, and something almost like a smile formed on his lips.
“—the scenery will look like Babbington!”
“Matthew,” I asked, “couldn’t we just do it the regular way? Couldn’t we just do it the way people usually do it, the way the book says to do it?”
Matthew gave me a look of profound disappointment. “Peter,” he said, as if he were explaining something to a child, speaking as slowly and simply as he could, “you asked for my help, remember? This is our only chance to make something out of this. And it’s my big chance. This is going to make me famous in the fourth grade.” He paused and went right for my weak spot. “It might even make me happy.”
“Matthew,” I said, “I think this is going to get me into a lot of trouble.”
[to be continued on Tuesday, November 23, 2021]
In Topical Guide 137, Mark Dorset considers Language: Dialect, Slang, Idiolect, Shibboleths, Jargon; and Literature: Interpretation of from this episode.
You can listen to this episode on the Personal History podcast.
Have you missed an episode or two or several?
You can begin reading at the beginning or you can catch up by visiting the archive or consulting the index to the Topical Guide.
You can listen to the episodes on the Personal History podcast. Begin at the beginning or scroll through the episodes to find what you’ve missed.
At Apple Books you can download free eBooks of “My Mother Takes a Tumble,” “Do Clams Bite?,” “Life on the Bolotomy,” “The Static of the Spheres,” and “The Fox and the Clam,” the first five novellas in Little Follies.
You’ll find an overview of the entire work in An Introduction to The Personal History, Adventures, Experiences & Observations of Peter Leroy. It’s a pdf document.