 Great Scenes from Great Plays with your host Walter Hamden and starring tonight Mr. Basil Rathbone in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Each week at this same hour, the Episcopal families of your own community and the Episcopal Actors Guild invite you to share the dramatic inspiration of Great Scenes from Great Plays as transcribed by famous artists of stage, screen and radio. And now here is your host, the distinguished actor-manager, Mr. Walter Hamden. And good evening. Our Great Scenes for tonight come from a stirring play about truly great people. It is the love story of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. Rudolf Bessiers, The Barretts of Wimpole Street. And now it gives me great pleasure to introduce our guest star equally at home on radio, stage and screen, Mr. Basil Rathbone. Thank you Walter Hamden and good evening ladies and gentlemen. Basil, you are one of the very first actors to offer your services to this new series and for that it's a special pleasure to have you here. I'm not only a member of the Episcopal Actors Guild, Walter, mine is also one of the Episcopal community families just mentioned. And may I say I followed this program from the beginning when you gave us again your great performance of Cyrano. And I found it just as said, a half hour of dramatic inspiration. That's why I'm delighted to be here to portray Robert Browning in The Barretts of Wimpole Street. Browning. The great English poet who felt that his poetic function was to coordinate God and his universe. I think his meeting with and his courtship of Elizabeth Barrett makes one of the most stirring love stories ever written. And we are also especially fortunate tonight in having Miss Beatrice Strait to play the part of Elizabeth Barrett, best known to her friends as Bar. Elizabeth Barrett was an invalid as a result of a childhood fall and thereafter confined to her charming Victorian rooms on Wimpole Street in the London of a hundred years ago. As Elizabeth herself said to the family doctor one day. Well, doctor, if you shut a person up in one room for years on end, you can't very well expect to find a bursting with life and vigor. Why don't you prescribe something really exciting for a change? A gallop three time around the park every morning? Or a long sea voyage? And as we are about to hear that sea voyage was to come true, through romance. For our great scenes tonight depict the deep relationship between sickness and the emotional and spiritual life where the real cure proves not to be medicines for the body but medicines for the soul. And so with Basil Rathbone and Beatrice Strait co-stars of the current stage hit The Heiress are first seen from the barretts of Wimpole Street. We are in London in the spring of 1845 in a charming Victorian house at 150 Wimpole Street. Notice the long lace curtains at the windows. The shining brass door knobs, the lovely flower boxes and inside where Miss Barrett is confined to her room. Impressive walnut furniture, hand-painted china, mirrors in black shadow boxes and of course pillows and couch covers and shawls for the famous and charming Invalid and Poetess Elizabeth Barrett. She is reclining on a sofa and talking to her faithful servant, Wilson. Please open the door, Wilson. I'm expecting a visitor and I want the room to be quite fresh. How I wish we could open the window, Wilson. Open the window, Miss Barrett. Oh yes, I know it's strictly forbidden. Well, open the door wide. What best cover you will up first of all? Wilson? Yes, Miss Barrett. Have you noticed anything strange in me today? No, no, perhaps a bit absent-minded like. Then you don't think I'm going mad? Mercy on us. Mad? Very well. But now listen carefully to what I'm going to read to you and tell me what you make of it. And after a pastime, if June be refulgent with flowers and completeness or petals, no prickles, deliciousest trickles of wine poured at mass time and choose one indulgent to redness and sweetness. Well, I call that just lovely, Miss Barrett. But do you know what it means? Oh, no, Miss. Does it convey anything to your mind? Oh, no, Miss. Oh, thank heaven for that. But then Pertre never does, Miss. Lisa is not like real Pertre, what you make. But I didn't write that. It's by Mr. Browning. He must be a very clever gentleman. Oh yes, he is indeed. And now, Miss Barrett, you're all nice and comfortable. I... Barrett? Mr. Robert Browning has called. Mr. Browning? I can't see him, Henrietta. I don't feel up to it. I can't. But, Bar, what on earth is the matter? He's wonderfully romantic-looking and quite the dandy. Oh, Henrietta, you're incorrigible. I know he's been most anxious to call on you. Mr. Kenyon told me so. Why don't you want to see him? Because, my dear little sister at heart, I'm as vain as a peacock. You see, when people admire my work, they're likely to picture the poetess as stately and beautiful as her verses. And it's dreadfully humiliating to disillusion them. Don't be silly, Bar. You're very interesting and picturesque. Isn't that how the guidebooks usually describe a ruin? As a matter of fact, Mr. Browning has been so insistent that out of sheer weariness I gave way. But I really don't feel that I can see him now, Henrietta. Wilson, please tell Mr. Browning that I'm very sorry, but I'm not well enough to receive him. But that's not true, Bar. You can't send him away like that. I'm going to bring him up here myself. Henrietta! He's wonderfully handsome. Is my hair tidy, Wilson? Yes, Miss Bar. Thank you, Wilson. And Wilson? Yes, Miss Bar. No, thank you, Wilson. That will do. Yes, Miss. Dear Miss Barrett. How do you do, Mr. Browning? At last. At last. I've had to postpone the pleasure of meeting you much longer than I wished. Won't you take off your cape? Thank you. I hope you won't find this room very close, Mr. Browning. Oh, no, no, no. It's wonderful. You may think, Miss Barrett, that this is the first time I've been here. You are quite wrong, you know. But I... I've seen this room more times than I can remember. It's, um, it's as familiar to me as my own little study at home. Oh, come, Mr. Browning. I can't believe that, dear Mr. Kenyon, described my poor little room to you in detail. I dragged all the details I possibly could out of him, and my imagination supplied the rest. But he never told me anything about you personally that had the slightest interest for me. Oh? Everything he could give me about your surroundings and the circumstances of your life, I snatched at with avidity. But all he said about you was quite beside the point because... I knew it already. But, Mr. Browning, do my poor writings give me so hopelessly away? Hopelessly, utterly entirely. To me, I can't speak for the rest of the world. You frighten me, Mr. Browning. No. But you do. For I'm afraid it would be quite useless my ever-trying-to-play act with you. Quite useless. And you too, Mr. Browning? Oh, I'm always just myself. You have never been yourself in any one of your poems. It's always somebody else speaking through you. Yes. And shall I tell you why? I'm a very modest man. I am really so modest I fully realize that if I wrote about myself, my hopes and fears, my hates and loves and the rest of it, my poems would be unutterably dull. Oh, but those poems of yours, with their glad and great-hearted acceptance of life, you can't imagine what they've meant to me. You... You really mean that? Why, Mr. Browning? Oh, but of course you do, or you wouldn't say it. And you'll believe me when I tell you that what you just said makes up to me oh, a thousand times over for all the cold-shouldering I've had from the public. Oh, it infuriates me. Why can we never know an eagle for an eagle until it has spread its wings and flown away from us for good? Uh, mind you, Miss Barrett, I have an uneasy feeling that my style is largely to blame for my unpopularity. Not quite always. Sometimes there are passages... here. I've marked one or two in your sedella, which rather puzzled me. Oh, oh, dear. Yes, sedello. Somebody once called it a horror of great darkness. I've done my best to forget it. Here, for instance? Let me see. Oh, here. Huh? Well? Looks extraordinary. Well, Miss Barrett, when that passage was written, only God and Robert Browning understood it. Now only God understands it. Oh, but I love sedello. You would, of course you would. And shall I tell you why? Because it's such a colossal failure. If by a failure you mean an attempt. Yes, you're right. Isn't one such failure with a hundred small successes? Oh, a thousand and more. You think so too, oh, but of course I knew that. And what you just said about success and failure proves to me finally how right I was. Oh, dear Mr. Kenyon. I suppose he told you that I'm a dying woman? Well, we're all of us dying. And that my family life was one of unrelieved glue? Yes, yes, he hinted at something of the sort. Frankly, Mr. Browning, do you find me such a pitiable object? I find you, as I expected to find you, full of courage and gaiety. And yet in spite of what you say, I'm not at all sure that Kenyon's colors were too somber. Oh, but I... No, no, listen to me. Those colors are not yet dry. They must be scraped off. The whole background must be repainted. And if only you allow it, I must have a hand in that splendid task. No, no, listen, I'll dip my brush in the sunrise and the sunset and the rainbow. You say my verses have helped you? They're nothing. It's I, I who am going to help you now. We've come together at last and I don't intend to let you go again. But please... No, listen to me. Give me your hands. Give me evens good for one man. It seethes and races in me. Up to now I've spent a little of that surplus energy in creating imaginary men and women. But I've still so much that I've no use for but to give. May I give it to you? Don't you feel new life? Tingling and pricking up your fingers and arms right into your heart and brain? Oh, please. Mr. Browning, please let go of my hands. Well? Well, you are rather an overwhelming person. And in so but true I'm... No, no, no, no, no. Don't tell me again that you're afraid of me. You're not. It's life that you're afraid of. And that shouldn't be. Do you affect other people in the same way? They've often told me so. No wonder I hesitated about meeting you much as I wanted to. You laugh at me, Mr. Browning. But when my sister told me you had arrived, I was so panic-stricken that I all that sent down were that I was too unwell to receive you. You know, I think I must have been about as nervous as you at that moment. You, Mr. Browning? Yes, yes, and I'm anything but a nervous man as a rule. But that moment was the climax of my life. Up to now. Miss Barrett, do you remember the first letter I wrote you? Yes, indeed. It was a wonderful letter. You may have thought that I dashed it off in a fit of white-hot enthusiasm of your poems. I didn't. I weighed every word of every sentence. And of one sentence in particular, this sentence, I love your books with all my heart. And I love you too. You remember? Yes. I thought it charmingly impulsive. But I tell you, there was nothing impulsive about it. That sentence was as deeply felt and as anxiously thought over as any sentence I've ever written. Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It's quite useless. You're trying to put aside the word with a smile and a jest. I said love. And I mean love. Mr. Browning, I must ask you... All these months, since first I read your poems, I've been haunted by you. And today, today you're the center of my life. If I were to take you seriously, Mr. Browning, it would, of course, mean the quick finish of a friendship which promises to be very pleasant to both of us. Why? You know very well that love, in the sense you apparently use the word, has no place and can have no place in my life. Why? For many reasons. But let this suffice. As I told you before, I'm a dying woman. Oh, I refuse to believe it. For if it was so, God would be callous and I know that he's compassionate and life would be dark and evil and I know that it's good. You must never say such a thing again. I forbid you to. Forbid, Mr. Browning? Yes, forbid. If you forbid me to speak of you as I feel and I accept your orders as I must, isn't it only fair that I should be allowed a little forbidding as well? Yes, but... Ha-ha, dear Miss Barrett, what a splendid beginning to our friendship. We've known each other a bare half hour and we've talked intimately of art and life of death and love that we've ordered each other about and we've almost quarreled. Could anything be happier or more promising? Thank you. And now your host, Mr. Hampton. Our next great scene is again at Wimpole Street three months later. The doctors are amazed at Elizabeth Barrett's improvement. Three months ago, she seemed more than a little inclined to let life and the world slip through her pretty fingers. Since then, life and the world have become more and more worth grasping. Day by day she has become better able to take and enjoy the good things everyone has a right to. Friends, the open air, the warm sun, the grass and flowers growing under the sky, a trip to Italy is now in prospect, even though her father is sure to veto it. And now Robert Browning has just come to see her. He takes both of Elizabeth's hands in his. Tell me quickly. I've been differing all day with suspense. You've seen them? What they say? Dr. Ford Waterloo was quite taken out of his grumpy self with a stolish delight at my improvement. Say that again. Must I? The whole sentence? Oh, I should like to see it in letters of fire burning at me from each of these four walls. This is the best moment I've had since I got your note giving me permission to call on you. Ah, let me see. How many years ago was that? Three months. Absurd. We've always been friends. I've known you a lifetime and over. Of course, I never once doubted that you would turn the corner someday, but even I little dreamt recovery would be so rapid. And, um, and Italy. Are both doctors agreed about your wintering there? Yes. And when do they think that you'll be fit for travelling? The middle of October, unless there's a relapse. Relapse? There isn't such a word. October. October, extraordinary. You know, October suits my plans to perfection. Your plans? Yes, don't you remember my telling you that, uh, I thought of wintering in Italy myself? Well, now I've quite decided. Uh, uh, may I, uh, may I call on you often in Italy? Why, why are you laughing? In Italy, I'm afraid you'll need seven league boots when you call on me. Well, what do you mean? I shall be here at Wimpole Street next winter. Here? Yes. But didn't you tell me that both doctors will agree... Doctors may propose, but the decisions rest elsewhere. Your father? Yes. Is beat of the plan? No, no, not exactly, but I'm quite sure that he will consider such a trip selfishness on my part, and so make it impossible for me to go. Didn't the doctors make it clear to him that this move of yours may mean all the difference between life and death? I believe Dr. Ford Waterlow spoke very forcefully... In Heaven's name! Oh, it's hard to explain to someone who doesn't know all the circumstances. You see, Papar is, is very devoted to me, and depends a great deal on my companionship. Miss Barrett, may I speak plainly? What do you think you'd better? I know, more or less, how you feel about this. But I don't understand! I don't understand a devotion that grudges you when you ray of light or glimpse of happiness and doesn't even stop at risking your life to gratify its colossal selfishness, devotion. Mr. Brownie, I must ask you... It's not just your comfort and happiness which are at stake now. It's your very life, and I forbid you to play with your life, and I have the right to forbid you. Please, don't say any more. Yes, the right, and you won't tonight. You're too utterly candid and true. At our first meeting, you forbade me to speak of love. There was to be nothing more than friendship between us. I obeyed you, but I knew very well we both knew that I was to be much more than just your friend. Even before I passed that door and our eyes first met across the room, I loved you, and I've gone on loving you. And I love you now more than words can tell, and I shall love you to the end and beyond. So that you've always known. Yes. Yes, I've always known. And now for pity's sakes. For pity's sakes, leave me. No. Oh, please, please let me go. Leave me. We must never see each other again. I shall never let you go. I shall never leave you, Elizabeth. Elizabeth. No, no, Robert, have mercy on me. Elizabeth, my darling. Oh, Robert, I love you. I love you, I love you. Oh, Robert, I have so little of all that love asks for. I love you. I should have refused to see you after our first meeting, for I loved you then, even though I denied it to myself. I love you. Robert, do you know what you've done for me? Because of you, the air once more is sweet to breathe, and all the world is good and green again. And with those words singing in my ears, I'm to turn my back on you and go. But Robert, how is it all to end? What are we to look forward to? And how? I love you. I love you, and I want you for my wife. I can't marry you? How can I? Oh, not today or tomorrow, not this year perhaps, or next, perhaps not the years to come. I may never be able to marry you. What then? If you remain to the last, beyond my reach, I shall die proud and happy in having spent a lifetime fighting to gain the richest prize a man was ever offered. Do you think I'm a boy to be swept off my feet by an impulse or a sentimental dream of blind to reality? There's no man alive who sees things clearer than I do, or has his feet more firmly planted on the earth, and I tell you in all soberness, that my need of you is as urgent as your need of me. If your weakness asks my strength for support, my abundant strength cries out for your weakness to complete my life on myself. Have you thought what your position here would be like if you went on seeing me after today? Robert, if we were able to say goodbye today, we should have nothing but beautiful memories of each other to last to the ends of our lives. Is it you who are speaking? What do you mean? I don't know you. I thought yours was the courage the dead, the uttermost careless of defeat, fear's life. Life! Offering us the best that life can give. Aren't you dare not grasp it for fear it will turn to dust in your hands? I don't know you. I never thought you were a coward. A coward? I? Yes, I'm a coward, Robert. A coward through and through, but it's not for myself that I'm afraid. Oh, I know that, my darling. What's another great or small to me who have known nothing but disaster all my life? But you're a fighter, and you were born for victory and triumph. If disaster came to you three... Yes, a fighter, but I'm sick of fighting alone. I need a comrade at arms to fight beside me. Not one already wounded in the battle? Wounded, but undefeated, undaunted, unbroken. What finer comrade could a man ask for? Yes, Robert Browning was indeed the overwhelming person Elizabeth sensed him to be at their first meeting. Now, some time later, she is waiting for Robert. She is alone with her sister Henrietta. One has only to look at your face, Bar, when you're expecting him, and again after his left you. I love him. And he loves me. What of it? Haven't I as much right to love and be loved as any other woman? Oh, yes, dear. But how is it all to end? In your case, it isn't only a question of Papa's consent. Of course I don't mean to interfere, Bar. All I want to do is to save you any sort of... Oh! Mr. Browning! Robert! My love. Oh, you look tired. Oh, I went for a drive and a walk in the park. And then I ran all the way upstairs without help and without one stop. Now, don't you think you're being a trifle too ambitious? I don't think so. I'm feeling wonderfully well. Look at me. What's the matter? Nothing. Has your father returned? No. We expect him today. Those talking eyes of yours give you hopelessly away. Something's gone wrong. What is it? You must tell me. Read that letter on the mantelpiece, Robert. From your father? Yes. Well? I think by the look of it that you crumpled up this letter furiously. And I'm quite sure that you pitched it in the great. Yes, I did. Why? Oh, Robert, don't you see what this means to us? Yes, and perhaps a great deal better than you do. Better than I? Oh, you mustn't deceive yourself. You don't know Papar as I do. He's grown jealous of my life here, my pleasures and my friends, and I'm slowly and surely to be parted from them. Oh, Robert, it will soon be made impossible for me to see you at all. This precious letter may mean all that, but it means a great deal more that you haven't yet been able to grasp. A great deal more? I think you'll be in Italy before the month is out. Italy? Yes, and with me. It means that we must be married at once. Do you know what you're saying? Yes, I know what I'm saying, and I repeat it. We must be married at once, my darling. Listen to me. No, no, don't touch me. What you say is madness. I can't marry you. I can never marry you. You can, and you shall. You'll marry me if I have to carry you out of this house and up to the altar. On the whole, yes. I think this will be our best plan of campaign. You told me last week that Mr. Redlead invited your sisters to picnic at Richmond Park next Saturday so the house will be conveniently empty. We'll meet at Malibone Church and be married quietly sometime in the morning. I'll see about the license and interview with Vicar at once. Oh, Robert. So after the ceremony, I think you'd better come back and take things easily for Vicar too. You'll have six days if we leave here on Saturday. What? I can't listen to you. I always thought that the papa was the most overbearing man in the world. And yet you've known me for some time now. But I mustn't give way. I don't. Robert. Have you ever thought that my strength may break down on the journey? Yes. Suppose I were to die on your hands. You were afraid, Bar? Afraid. You know that I'm not afraid. You know that I would sooner die than you, beside me, than live a hundred lives without you. But how would you feel if I were to die like that? And what would the world say of you? I should be branded as a little less than a murderer. And what I should feel? Well, I'll leave you to imagine. And yet you asked me to come with you? Yes. Yes, I'm prepared to risk your life and much more than mine to get you out of this dreadful house into the sunshine where I have you for my wife. You love me like that. I love you like that. Forever. This is Walter Hamden again, ladies and gentlemen. In a moment I'll tell you about next week's program. First, an important message I know you'll want to hear. How much does the mind and the soul have to do with the health and well-being of the body? That is the basic theme of tonight's great scenes from the Barretts of Wimple Street. Tonight we learn that much of Elizabeth Barrett's supposedly desperate illness existed only in her mind. When she was exposed to Robert Browning's tremendous emotional and physical drive, she was simply lifted out of her illness. Today the importance of this relationship between the mind and the body is recognized by most modern authorities in medicine, physiology and psychology. Certainly there are a great many today suffering from illnesses which, like Elizabeth Barrett's, have their origin mainly in the mind. Frequently the cure for this kind of suffering is not in medicine or treatment for the body, but for the soul. And such medicine for the soul can often be best found in the guidance of an experienced clergyman. If either you or someone near you is suffering from any physical ailment that might possibly have its origin in the mind or in the soul, why not seek help from the church? If you're a member of any church, go to your clergyman and let him try to help you find better health through greater knowledge of God. If you're not a member of any church, you may find that the Episcopal Church is one that can give you what you need spiritually. To assist you to know something about the Episcopal Church, what it is, what it stands for, and how it offers you a faith that can bring security and happiness through the difficult times, we have prepared an informative booklet called Finding Your Way. This booklet will be sent to you promptly if you will simply send a postcard or letter with your name and address to the station to which you are listening. I would like to thank you, Mr. Basil Rathbone and Ms. Beatrice Strait, for a very moving performance. Next week, friends, we shall present an unusual play, Dark Victory by George Brewer Jr. and Bertram Block. The story of a man and woman in love and how they tried to close their eyes to the past in the hope of finding a future that didn't exist. And to play the roles of these two unusual people, we shall have Academy Award winner Ms. Celeste Holm and the popular star of stage and screen, Mr. Walter Abel. Now, an invitation from the Episcopal Church. The Episcopal Church welcomes men and women alike to share in the opportunities for service represented by the church's wide variety of activities. There is important work to do for those less fortunate than ourselves. Work that in the true spirit of the church makes better citizens of us all. So, after services this Sunday, why not