ISOLA; or, THE DISINHERITED. A Revolt for Woman and all the disinherited.

FIRST PREFACE.

Isola demands the practice of the true laws of the only true God.

The drama demands Justice for all living things, from Ruler to Subject, of either sex, and for the brute Creation.

It advocates the Reign of Truth and the destruction of Humbug.

Look at the World and what the latter has produced!

Let Truth take the place of The Lie.

Let rational laws in Church and State prevail, fashioned in accordance with the laws of the Universe.

Shall Progress be deterred by antiquated ideas and opinions founded on imperfect Knowledge?

No. The antiquated ideas and opinions must be swept away. The result will be Freedom.

SECOND PREFACE.

Isola first appeared in Young Oxford in September, 1902, and ran in serial form for six months through that publication. The drama itself was written many years ago. It is not for me to deal with its merits or demerits. These are handled generously by the true-hearted and honest gentleman to whom I have the honour to dedicate the piece. At nineteen or twenty the heart is more concerned with ideals, than the brain with thoughts of literary excellence. The soul, longing to uphold Truth and destroy Falsehood, forgets the p’s and q’s of literary etiquette, and I fear influences the pen to give premier consideration to the former.

The drama, Isola, opposes many established customs, but if these rest their claim to existence on antiquated and erroneous ideas, they must be remorsely uprooted. Man cannot make lasting laws. That is in Nature’s viiipower alone, for Progress, Research and enlarged Thought Force will not be bound by the cramped and immature ideas of gloomy ages gone. Superstition has persecuted many, but the time has come to repudiate it, for in its wake follows Misery, and to it is due the sorrows of Mankind.

In my preface to Young Oxford occurs the following paragraph:

“Let us in imagination soar above our Earth and look down on it revolving in space, and then look round on that infinite space, in which myriads of other worlds are also revolving. As we look down on our Earth, shall we not see upon its surface the glories of Nature’s beauty, and the hideous scars inflicted thereon by Man? As we look down on these unsavory sights, and realise how contemptible they are, shall we not resolve to eradicate them and make the picture one of peace, contentment and joy? Instead of looking down on blood, carnage, cruelty, torture, suffering and injustice, let us look down on the reverse, and in order to do so, let us realise the simple, rational and natural ideas of ‘Isola.’ Advanced, are they? Not a bit of it. Unusual? Maybe. But because they are unusual ixdoes not make them wrong. Nothing Natural can be aught but right, for it is the offspring of Nature, the only true God. ‘Isola’ demands the practice of the true laws of the only true God.”

I shall always stand by this assertion.

In conclusion, I desire to make the following statement. My publishers have pointed out to me that in some of the names of places and countries I have chosen, there might arise cause for the belief that my characters in Isola are drawn from life. I am glad to here state frankly that, in so far as royal personages are concerned, they are purely fictitious and concern no living human being whatever. Customs and etiquettes I certainly openly attack. Who would not who desires, as I do, to see justice done, not only to the poor disinherited human and suffering non-human, but also to our disinherited and manacled rulers? The unjust laws in regard to woman I also vigorously attack, and for Superstitious Falsehood I have no reverence whatever. Nevertheless, judge me as they may, let no one accuse me of Mockery or Infidelity, for I innately xworship the Inscrutable and believe in Nature, both of which are God alone. Let us have “Truth at any price,” no matter what idols we have to cast down to attain it. In the attainment of Truth, Justice, Love

and Kindness shall rule in the place of Selfishness, Cruelty and Greed, and Fair Play be meted out to all.

Characteristics of the Drama.

Though I cannot but be gratified by the Dedication of this Drama to me, it does not, and was not intended to influence my judgment. Its noble and unusual aims of “demanding Justice for every living thing, from Ruler to Subject, of either sex, and for the brute creation and advocating the reign of Truth and destruction of Imposture”—could not fail to command my sympathy and admiration. Written when the authoress was a girl, the drama is a marvel of thought and power. I know of no one, save Shelley, who, at so early an age was troubled about the questions she discusses with such generous passionateness. Apart from immaturities of expression, natural to immaturity of years, the Drama is a wonderful piece of writing. But the occasional youthfulness of style creates the greater surprise at the maturity of conception and often original expression.

xiiThe Drama opens with what George Henry Lewes entitled the great problem of “Life and Mind.” The first words Isola speaks are:

“Vast attribute of the Eternal mind. Thought, and thy clinging twin, fair Memory. Art thou and she imperishable parts Of Life and Matter?”

Here is a perfect philosophic theory excellently put. Surely never Queen before was set to answer such questions.

Isola is a Lady Macbeth of a nobler kind, but has the same undaunted spirit. She is bold but tender—and only inflexible for the Right. Her conception of womanly independence is original in literature. The legal and ecclesiastical restrictions woven about her, which limit her freedom and frustrate her equality, are discerned with great acumen and described with great power. Such indignation at wrong; such energy and eloquence in its denunciation, such devotion, sacrifice and unbewailing courage—constitute the Rebel Queen a new inspiration. Rugged expressions which occur here and there, seem congenial to the rugged and impetuous times in which the scenes are laid. Even there there is gold in the quartz. Keats tells us that Columbus when he first saw new lands from xiiithe peak of Darien, viewed them with “glad surprise.” In like manner the reader comes upon fresh unexpected sentences. The moral interest of the Drama has great charm. Every speech, however impassioned, has a certain quality of restraint; amid fiery denunciation of regal and legal wrong, there is no insurgency

against law, but against unjust law Isola abdicates her throne in generosity to her rival. Her love of justice and right brings her to the scaffold, which she contemplates with quiet heroism, in which there is no fear, or flutter of fear—neither bravado nor shrinking. No hysterical word escapes her. No word of reproach, such as Madame Roland uttered, is spoken by Isola. Her sole desire is to save others and to serve the cause of right. As the tragic death of a woman, capable both of heroism and reflection, the last hours of Fortunatus are memorable.

The reader will not need to be told of the felicity in the invention of names; nor of the spirited scenes in the public Hall, where the orators of the People speak; nor of the intrigues of courts, nor the conspiracy of priests—which make these pages alive with interest. The speech of Merani on the consciousness of her approaching death, has queenly dignity, as well xivas flashes of true poetry. The reader will see in the “Last Watch” of Fortunatus on the heights of Avenamore, the beauty, the dignity, the determination without defiance, of Isola. Intellectual intrepidity in defence of the Right, is the soul of the Drama of the Disinherited.

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ.

1. No suggestion whatever is intended in the selection of these names. (1877)

2. The situation is created to enable the Author to deal with the degrading position assigned to woman in the Religious Marriage Service, which position that service forces her to agree to accept and enjoins her to obey. (1877)

PROLOGUE.

Isola, Princess of Bernia, loves Escanior, one of her father’s youthful bodyguard. The Prince of Bernia has, however, promised her in marriage to his liege lord and sovereign, Hector, paramount King of the Saxens, Scotas and Ernas, inhabitants of the three islands Saxa, Scota and Bernia, situated in the Emerald Ocean, in the Planet Erthris, or Erth, and together forming the Kingdom of Saxscoberland. Isola and Escanior attempt flight, but are pursued by the Prince of Bernia, and captured in their boat, whereupon the Prince condemns Escanior to instant death, and he is stabbed and flung into the sea, his unhappy 2love, Isola, being borne away to become the wife of Hector, King of the Saxscober people, and shortly afterwards the nuptials are celebrated.

Isola, Queen of the Saxscobers, sitting alone soliloquises: “Vast attribute of the Eternal mind, Thought, and thy clinging twin, fair Memory, Art thou and she imperishable parts Of Life and Matter, or but sudden sparks Born to expire and never live again? What art thou Thought and what is Memory If not the factors of undying Life, Which draws from Death fresh force to recreate And fashion new existence from Decay? Oh! Thought; oh! Memory, Ye cannot die, Ye can but sink to sleep in Death’s cold arms To wake again, a recreated force, Part of a universe which cannot end, Because its function is to recreate, Evolving Life from Nature’s boundless store, Nature the all Eternal, only God, Creator of all things known and unknown, The Great Inscrutable, which mind alone Shall understand when it is perfected. Escanior; Oh! Escanior, where art thou? Fair Memory recalls thee to thy love, Isola, who will never yield her heart 3 To mortal man, for it is thine alone. My golden haired, my blue-eyed Escanior! They murdered thee before these starting eyes,

They forced me to become another’s bride, They forced that horror on my shrinking soul And left me to endure its fearful pain. One thing they could not do. They could not take My heart away, or force it to vibrate For any other but thy own dear self, My murdered love, my vanished Escanior. Thought! speak to me. Ah! tell me where his is, What part of Nature is his woven with? When will my body, mingling with the Earth Quit this curst slavery and twine once more Its arms around the Love that cannot die? Oh! Thought so penetrating, so divine, Fathom for me the Knowledge that I seek. Shew me where I can find Escanior, Tell me and I will burst my prison bars, And seek with him the liberty I crave.”

Hector, King of the Saxscobers, joins her exclaiming: “Dreaming again Isola. Truth, thou art A sorry bride for a great King to own, A King whom many virgins yearned to win, And whom thou shrinkest from with mute appeal In thy sad eyes that I should let thee be. Hast thou no sense of honour? Where the vows Which Holy Church commanded thee to make To love me, and obey and reverence me, 4 Yes, me thy Lord and Master, thou my slave? Hast thou then no respect for pledges given, And priestly exhortation? How is it Thou shun’st me as thou dost, breaking the vows Thou mad’st to God to be my loving mate?”

Isola. “Hector, I made no vow, my lips were mute, I did not utter the accursed lie, Which would have fallen from them, had I vowed To love, and honour, and obey a man I could not love or honour. Nor would I Lose self respect by swearing to obey One who should be my equal and co-mate, But not my Lord and Master, I his slave. What care I for your Holy Church, or for The priestly exhortations of its Men? Why should these Mockers of the laws of God, Make laws for Women, whom they treat as naught? Tell me not Hector, that their words are God’s, God’s laws are not immoral as theirs are, For God is Nature, God is not that fiend Which priestly doctrine has set up on high And bidden us remember and adore. Remember what has never been, nor is? Adore a myth ladened with cruel crimes, The base conception of ignoble minds? Never! Isola worships one true God, The vast, inscrutable, unfathomed force, Which nothing but a perfect mind shall solve, Which nothing but Perfection shall attain. 5 Hector, you call yourself a mighty King, A ruler wise and just, guided by laws

Called by their framers Righteous. Go to, King! I tell you they are rotten to the core, Fruits of a tree planted by priests and men Without the aid of Woman’s guiding hand. Small wonder they are false and trample down The heads of Justice, Mercy and Great Truth. As well might Man attempt alone the task Of making Life without the Woman’s aid, As seek to frame those human laws, which bind Communities together and enforce Their will upon the disinherited. For all around, these outlaws of our Erth Wander and prowl in seething discontent. Men, women, children, all are victims of Unnatural laws, Nature’s base antichrists. Am I not a poor disinherited? Is not that lonely woman far away, That woman dwelling in fair Scota’s isle, Whom, ere you tied with me ignoble ties, You treated as a wife, who bore you seed, And loved you Hector as I love you not, Is she not too a Disinherited, One of the outlaws fashioned by your laws? Is not the son she bore you, Vergli called, Your rightful heir? Is not the child you force On me, by Nature illegitimate,

Although the priests declare it blest by God? Why did you leave her to dishonour me? 6 I did not seek to be your crownèd slave, I loved but one, my dear Escanior, They murdered him and tore me from his side To be your lawful, sacred prostitute! Out on the creed that dares to order thus, Out on it, and its superstitious cant, Out on the monstrous God it has set up And made the Sponsor of its ranting lies. No, Hector, such a creed will never stand, Or be professed by thinking, honest hearts. ’Twas only made to gull the ignorant, And sway the superstitious multitude. All round you cry the disinherited, Go lift the loads from off the poor oppressed, Strike down all civil and religious laws Which mock at Nature and withhold from Man Those rights which Nature gives to everyone.”

Hector. “Isola, prate no longer blasphemy, Cease thy revilings of the Orthodox, Merani was not wed by Holy Church, Who judges her unwedded, and her son, Vergli, my first born, illegitimate. I bow to Holy Church, the fount of God And its behests I cannot disobey. Vergli is not my heir, the child from thee Will be The Prince of Scota, if a son, And dost thou dare to question his true right, Thou his own mother and King Hector’s wife, Thou the crowned Queen of mighty Saxscober? 7 Cease woman, nor defame God’s holy name, That God who fashioned Woman out of Man. Who are the Disinherited of Erth? Would’st have men equal, and to women give Those sacred rights which Holy Church declares Are man’s alone, given him by his God? Cease thy revolt against the Orthodox, Bow to revealed religion and become A lover of Conventionality. Isola, I command it, I, thy King, And, as thy husband, lord and master too.”

Isola. “No, Hector, I will never bow the knee To Humbug or to the black fiend Untruth. I say the Prince of Scota is Vergli And not the son that I, alas! may bear. Poor innocent! Born to commit a wrong. What am I, the crowned Queen of Saxscober? A creature, a dependent on your life, Who bears the empty title of a Queen Without the powers which should accompany it, And who at your demise is ousted by The very child who prattles at her knee, Who thus is early taught to scorn that part Of his own being, given him by her, Far more a parent than his father even, Whom he calls mother. No, no, Hector, King, Your slave I am, but most unwillingly, Give me my freedom, give to everyone The equal right to strive for and attain 8 The opportunities, which Life affords To those who have the chance to grasp their hands. Unto the Orthodox I will not bow And only one religion can command The homage of Isola. That which Truth Proves unmistakably by Nature’s laws, To be revealed, I will obey, but Cant And rant, and superstition, out on them! Isola shuns them as she would a plague.”

Hector, solus. “How now! Revolt is in the son and air! Vergli protesting, and Isola’s ire Roused and evolving disobedience. I must assert my sole prerogative, And call unto my aid most Holy Church, Which will not brook of disobedience. Vergli, the disinherited indeed! Isola too a disinherited! The poor, the disinherited of Erth! ’Tis Revolution, ’tis Revolt indeed, Which must be checked at once and instantly. Vergli, Isola shall not mock at me.”

ACT FIRST.

SCENE I.

The Palace of Dreaming, in the Metropolis of Infantlonia, capital of the Island of Saxa, which with Scotia and Bernia, forms the Saxscober Sovereignty.

Vergli. Solus, looking through them: “Home of my fathers, where I claim the right To live, and by the law Fair Play, to be The Prince of Scota. By that law I am My fathers heir, and the young fledgling boy, Who steals from me the title I should hold, Mocks at me, I, the Disinherited! Ay, disinherited; for he and I Are both the offspring of a common sire, Who called me son, long prior to the day When my young brother first beheld the light, And took the title which is mine alone. Does not this base injustice cast a slur Upon my most beloved mother’s name? Did she not wed my sire by Scota’s law? 10 Am I not part of her as well as him? By what unnatural law is she denied The right to bear the title of The Queen? Does not the very act, which weds the two, And by the law of Nature makes them one, Proclaim a union most legitimate? Yet ye, Oh! Prelates, hold aloft a book, Concocted in the gloomy ages gone, By men as selfish and unjust as ye, Who flaunt the Act of Nature, and declare It wicked and unbinding, unless blest By superstitious Mummery, conceived

By the immoral Prophets of the Past. They dare to call my pure-souled mother bad. Dub her a wanton, robe her name in shame! Curses upon them and the ranting Cant Which voices such a foul and hideous lie. Away with it! Perdition to its name, I will for ever be its fiercest foe; I, who love Nature, the true, only God, I, Vergli, the poor bastard son of him Who lives in legalized Adultery With the unhappy and degraded slave, Which his priest-ridden Creed has called The Queen, I swear to fight it to its very death. I vow it! I, the Disinherited.”—

Enter Maxim, who has overheard the last words. “What, Vergli here? ‘The Disinherited!’ 11 Sighing o’er wrongs. Planning Revolution. Dost know King Hector is abroad to-night, And will return this way without a doubt? What will he say if he should find thee here? Put thee in prison, man, most probably. Oh! thou art rash to venture thus, as ’twere Into the precincts of The Lion’s den, The person of The Disinherited.”

Vergli. “Maxim, that’s why I came; I fain would speak With my liege lord and King, and Father too, I would plead just once more for my own rights And crave respect for my dear Mother’s name. She lies sore sick, sick unto very death, That Mother, dearer to me than my life, She, who should be our fair Saxscober’s Queen, Not as is poor Isola, a mere slave, But reigning all conjointly with my sire, I, the presumptive heir to him and her And not the forced usurper of her rights.”

Maxim. “Oh! these are dreams, Vergli; thou dream’st strange dreams; Woman is but the appanage of man, At least our priestly tutors tell us so. ’Tis they who have assigned that place to her. Would’st thou make her Man’s equal? Have a care, Freedom to Woman would doom Privilege, And that we have secured from ages old 12 By help of Superstition and false gods, Who bade the Woman bow the knee to Man. Mind’st thou how in the days that have gone by Thou had’st a sister, little Merani? She was thy elder by a year or more, Did she live now, would’st put her in thy place And as the eldest born declare her heir, Princess of Scota and prospective Queen Of fair Saxscober, leaving out thyself As a nonentity and younger born?”