The Books: “Long Day’s Journey into Night” (Eugene O’Neill)

Next in my Daily Book Excerpt:

Next on the script shelf:

Still on Eugene O’Neill – next play on the shelf is Long Day’s Journey into Night

It’s such a nice cheery play, isn’t it? Really fills you with hope. The glass is half full, ya know what I’m sayin’? You can just tell by the title that you are in for a rollicking comedic evening of theatre.

Eugene O’Neill wrote it in 1939, but it was never performed in his lifetime. His wife remembered the summer he wrote it. He would stay in his study all day working, and emerge in the evening, with his eyes puffed up out of his head from weeping. He wrote and wept. And damn, you can tell that from the language in this play. An astonishing and painful exorcism has taken place. It’s a wrenching play. Bleak. If you find the hope in it, lemme know, would ya?

On his twelfth wedding anniversary with his wife Carlotta, O’Neill gave her the script of the play with this note:

For Carlotta, on our 12th Wedding Anniversary

Dearest: I give you the original script of this play of old sorrow, written in tears and blood. A sadly inappropriate gift, it would seem, for a day celebrating happiness. But you will understand. I mean it as a tribute to your love and tenderness which gave me the faith in love that enable me to face my dead at last and write this play, write it with deep pity and understanding and forgiveness for all the four haunted Tyrones.

These twelve years, Beloved One, have been a Journey into Light, into love. You know my gratitude. And my love!

Gene
Tao House
July 22, 1941

The play is autobiographical. O’Neill’s father, like James Tyrone, was a Broadway actor. Eugene O’Neill was raised Irish Catholic, Catholicism was a big deal in their family, and his rejection of the faith devastated his father – just like in the play. O’Neill’s father was also an alcoholic (like James Tyrone) – and has also given up a career as a Shakespearean actor for a part in a very commercial (but worthless) production called Monte Cristo. James Tyrone is haunted by the great Shakespearean actor he could have been … and so was O’Neill’s dad. Like Mary Tyrone, O’Neill’s mother in real-life was a morphine addict. Just like in the play, she became addicted to morphine after an incompetent doctor proscribed it to her following a difficult childibrth. Jamie is modeled after O’Neill’s real-life brother, an alcoholic whoremonger who was basically a huge failure at whatever he tried. Eugene had an older brother named Edmund – who had died when he was a baby. In the play, the baby who died is named Eugene. Like Edmund, Eugene O’Neill sailed for years, living a restless peripatetic constantly-broke life. He took odd jobs. O’Neill was also not what you would call a hearty man with a hearty constitution. He was fragile, and eventually got tuberculosis. He spent 6 months in a sanatorium for treatment – turberculosis was a very dangerous disease.

So anyway. With all of these parallels – these painful parallels – it is not surprising that 1. he would emerge from his study weeping after working on the play, and 2. that the play is so unbelievably great.

Long Day’s Journey into Night was first performed in 1956, three years after O’Neill’s death. It won a Pulitzer Prize and has often been hailed as O’Neill’s greatest play.

The four members of the Tyrone family are as real to me as if I had met them at a recent barbecue. Honestly, they lift off the page. They live on. Nobody can ever convince me that the Tyrone family isn’t “out there” somewhere.

Basic plot (but honestly – the plot doesn’t capture the true power of this piece of work – you have to read it.):

It’s 1912. There’s a father, a mother, and two sons.

Father is 65 year old James Tyrone. He was once considered to be the most promising young actor in America. He squandered his talent by appearing for years in melodramas (which paid well, and were crowd-pleasers) – so until he became typecast, and couldn’t get work in anything else – and he is bitter about this. He traded artistic excellence for financial success, and this gnaws at him. He lives in constant fear of the poorhouse, so he pinches his pennies in a way that is actually dangerous to the family. He is an alcoholic. He is Irish Catholic. He is hopeless about what has happened to his wife. He knows there is no hope. He badgers his two sons about everything – how they lost their faith, their own drinking, etc. etc. Very fractious relationship with his sons.

Mother is Mary Tyrone. She was once beautiful. Her hands are now twisted up with painful rheumatism. Mary was raised in a prosperous home, and was devoted to her father. Mary was educated in a convent, and wanted to be either a nun or a concert pianist. Music was very important to her, she had a gift. But then she was introduced to James Tyrone and she fell in love immediately. They married. They were very happy – but her life was not easy from the get-go. They traveled constantly, she had to hang out in hotel rooms for weeks on end while he did gigs across the country – she was lonely. Additionally, James’ penny-pinching qualities meant that nothing was ever made comfortable for her. They traveled third class, they ate bad food, they stayed in cheap hotels … Mary gave birth to a baby who died. She went right back on the road with her husband … and again, even though she was sick, Tyrone would not spend any money on comforts for her. She got sicker. She then gave birth to Edmund, a difficult childbirth which weakened her even more. She finally went to an incompetent doctor, who proscribed morphine. Mary Tyrone becomes addicted to morphine. Despite being sent away for rest cures (and her husband would never spend the money to send her to the best doctors, or to the best sanitariums) – her addiction deepens. There’s so much going on in Mary. She is in complete denial that her son Edmund is dying of consumption. She refuses to face reality and sinks into a dream-world. By the end of the play, she has regressed completely. She is once again that young hopeful girl in the convent, playing piano for hours. Only now she can no longer play because rheumatism has ruined her hands.

She is one of THE great female characters ever written.

Jamie Tyrone is the older son. He’s in his early 30s. He is a wastoid, pretty much, although he had as much promise as his father once had. He was expelled from countless colleges, but with the help of his father he did gain some success in theatre, doing a couple of long runs on Broadway. But he always spends every penny he earns, so he is constantly broke. He spends the summers taking care of the grounds on the Tyrone summer estate. But he spends most of his time drinking and whoring. Jamie and his father constantly clash. His father is unforgiving towards his son – Jamie is an enormous disappointment to him.

Edmund Tyrone is 23 years old. He is a restless soul. He also was expelled from college, and he went to sea. He was often broke, and homeless, sleeping on park benches in, say, Buenos Aires, other ports. He is not strong like his father, and like Jamie – at least physically. He has tried to commit suicide. He takes after his mother. And he has developed consumption. He is dying. But nobody in the family will admit it. They just pretend that it’s a cold that has really been hanging on. He has come home to the family estate – basically to die. Although that is never spoken. He gets a job on a local newspaper, and his father holds out hope that maybe his son will start to be successful, start to take care. Edmund is a gloomy cynical dude. He has rejected Catholicism bitterly – something that breaks his father’s heart. He, as opposed to Jamie, holds out hope that his mother might be able to kick her addiction. He is hugely resentful of his father because his father has not spent the money to place his mother in the best care.

So there you have it. The Tyrone family. In the summer of 1912, they are all under the same roof, for the summer.

The play is one long progression towards death. The long day’s journey into night.

It is a masterpiece.

The scene I’m going to excerpt is rightly famous (and also done, ad nauseum, in acting classes. It’s a great scene for two men … I’ve seen it so many times that I have basically memorized the lines).

It’s the opening of Act Four. It’s midnight. James Tyrone sits up, he has been drinking, he plays solitaire. Edmund Tyrone comes home, drunk. There is a long long late-night scene between father and son. Mary Tyrone, upstairs, lost in a morphine haze, haunts this scene – even though she never appears. Truly a great piece of writing. I’ll post just some of it. It’s a gigantic scene.

It’s one of those scenes that could only take place in the middle of the night.

EXCERPT FROM Long Day’s Journey into Night, by Eugene O’Neill

EDMUND. Perhaps it would be wise to change the subject. [A pause] You can’t accuse me of not knowing Shakespeare. Didn’t I win five dollars from you once when you bet me I couldn’t learn a leading part of his in a week, as you used to do in stock in the old days. I learned Macbeth and recited it letter perfect, with you giving me the cues.

TYRONE. [approvingly] That’s true. So you did. [He smiles teasingly and sighs] It was a terrible ordeal, I remember, hearing you murder the lines. I kept wishing I’d paid over the bet without making you provie it. [He chuckles and Edmund grins. Then he starts as he hears a sound from upstairs — with dread] Did you hear? She’s moving around. I was hoping she’d gone to sleep.

EDMUND. Forget it! How about another drink? [He reaches out and gets the bottle, pours a drink and hands it back. Then with a strained casualness, as his father pours a drink:] When did Mama go to bed?

TYRONE. Right after you left. She wouldn’t eat any dinner. What made you run away.

EDMUND. Nothing. [abruptly raising his glass] Well, here’s how.

TYRONE. [mechanically] Drink hearty, lad. [They drink. Tyrone again listens to sounds upstairs — with dread] She’s moving around a lot. I hope to God she doesn’t come down.

EDMUND. [dully] Yes. She’ll be nothing but a ghost haunting the past by this time. [He pauses — then miserably] Back before I was born —

TYRONE. Doesn’t she do the same with me? Back before she ever knew me. You’d think the only happy days she’s ever known were in her father’s home, or at the Convent, praying and playing the piano. [Jealous resentment in his bitterness] As I’ve told you before, you must take her memories with a grain of salt. Her wonderful home was ordinary enough. Her father wasn’t the great, general, noble Irish gentleman she makes out. He was a nice enough man, good company and a good talker. I liked him and he liked me. He was prosperous enough, too, in his wholesale grocery business, an able man. But he had his weakness. She condemns my drinking but she forgets his. It’s true he never touched a drop till he was forty, but after that he made up for lost time. He became a steady champagne drinker, the worst kind. That was his grand pose, to drink only champagne. Well, it finished him quick — that and the consumption — [He stops with a guilty glance at his son.]

EDMUND. We don’t seem able to avoid unpleasant topics, do we?

TYRONE. No. [then with a pathetic attempt at heartiness] What do you say to a game or two of Casino, lad?

EDMUND. All right.

TYRONE. [shuffling the cards clumsily] We can’t lock up and go to bed till Jamie comes on the last trolley — which I hope he won’t — and I don’t want to go upstairs, anyway, till she’s asleep.

EDMUND. Neither do I.

TYRONE. [keeps shuffling the cards fumblingly, forgetting to deal them] As I was saying, you must take her tales of the past with a grain of salt. The piano playing and her dream of becoming a concert pianist. That was put in her head by the nuns flattering her. She was their pet. They loved her for being so devout. They’re innocent women, anyway, when it comes to the world. They don’t know that not one in a million who shows promise ever rises to concert playing. Not that your mother didn’t play well for a schoolgril, but that’s no reason to take it for granted she could have —

EDMUND. [sharply] Why don’t you deal, if we’re going to play.

TYRONE. Eh? I am. [dealing with very uncertain judgment of distance] And the idea she might have become a nun. That’s the worst. Your mother was one of the most beautiful girls you could ever see. She knew it, too. She was a bit of a rogue and a coquette, God bless her, behind all her shyness and blushes. She was never made to renounce the world. She was bursting with health and high spirits and the love of loving.

EDMUND. For God’s sake, Papa! Why don’t you pick up your hand?

TYRONE. [picks it up — dully] Yes, let’s see what I have here. [They both stare at their cards unseeingly. Then they both start. Tyrone whipsers] Listen!

EDMUND. She’s coming downstairs.

TYRONE. [hurriedly] We’ll play the game. Pretend not to notice and she’ll soon go up again.

EDMUND. [staring through the front parlor — with relief] I don’t see her. She must have started down and then turned back.

TYRONE. Thank God.

EDMUND. Yes. It’s pretty horrible to see her the way she must be now. [with bitter misery] The hardest thing to take is the blank wall she builds around her. Or it’s more like a bank of fog in which she hides and loses herself. Deliberately, that’s the hell of it! You know something in her does it deliberately — to get beyond our reach, to be rid of us, to forget we’re alive! It’s as if, in spite of loving us, she hated us!

TYRONE. Now, now, lad. It’s not her. It’s the damned poison.

EDMUND. She takes it to get that effect. At least, I know she did this time! [abruptly] My play, isn’t it? Here. [He plays a card]

TYRONE. [plays mechanically] She’s been terribly frightened about your illness, for all her pretending. Don’t be too hard on her, lad. Remember she’s not responsible. Once that cursed poison gets a hold on anyone —

EDMUND. [his face grows hard and he stares at his father with bitter accusation] It never should have gotten a hold on her! I know damned well she’s not to blame! And I know who is! You are! Your damned stinginess! If you’d spent money for a decent doctor when she was so sick after I was born, she’d never have known morphine existed! Instead you put her in the hands of a hotel quack who wouldn’t admit his ignorance and took the easiest way out, not giving a damn what happened to her afterwards! All because his fee was cheap! Another one of your bargains!

TYRONE. [stung — angrily] Be quiet! How dare you talk of something you know nothing about! [Trying to control his temper] You must try to see my side of it too, lad. How was I to know he was that kind of a doctor? He had a good reputation —

EDMUND. Among the souses in the hotel bar, I suppose!

TYRONE. That’s a lie! I asked the hotel proprietor to recommend the best —

EDMUND. Yes! At the same time crying poorhouse and making it plain you wanted a cheap one! I know your system! By God, I ought to after this afternoon.

TYRONE. What about this afternoon?

EDMUND. Never mind now. We’re talking about Mama! I’m saying no matter how you excuse yourself you know damned well your stinginess is to blame —

TYRONE. And I say you’re a liar! Shut your mouth right now, or —

EDMUND. After you found out she’d been made a morphine addict, why didn’t you send her to a cure then, at the start, while she still had a chance? No, that would have meant spending some money! I’ll bet you told her all she had to do was use a little will power! That’s why you still believe in your heart, in spite of what doctors, who really know something about it, have told you!

TYRONE. You lie again! I know better than that now! But how was I to know then? What did I know of morphine? It was years before I discovered what was wrong. I thought she’d never got over her sickness, that’s all. Why didn’t I send her to a cure, you say? Haven’t I? I’ve spent thousands upon thousands in cures! A waste. What good have they done her? She’s always started again.

EDMUND. Because you’ve never given her anything that would help her want to stay off it! No home except this summer dump in a place she hates and you’ve refused even to spend money to make this look decent, while you keep buying more property, and playing sucker for every con man with a gold mine, or a silver mine, or any kind of get-rich-quick swindle! You’ve dragged her around on the road, season after season, on one-night stands, with no one she could talk to, waiting night after night in dirty hotel rooms for you to come back with a bun on after the bars closed! Christ, is it any wonder she didn’t want to be cured? Jesus, when I think of it I hate your guts!

TYRONE. Edmund! [then in a rage] How dare you talk to your father like that, you insolent young cub! After all I’ve done for you.

EDMUND. We’ll come to that, what you’re doing for me!

TYRONE. [Loooking guilty again — ignoring this] Will you stop repeating your mother’s crazy accusations, which she never makes unless it’s the poison talking? I never dragged her on the road against her will. Naturally, I wanted her with me. I loved her. And she came because she loved me and wanted to be with me. That’s the truth, no matter what she says when she’s not herself. And she needn’t have been lonely. There was always the members of my company to talk to, if she’d wanted. She had her children, too, and I insisted, in spite of the expense, on having a nurse to travel with her.

EDMUND. Yes, your one generosity, and that because you were jealous of her paying too much attention to us, and wanted us out of your way! It was another mistake, too! If she’d had to take care of me all by herself, and had that to occupy her mind, maybe she’d have been able to —

TYRONE. [goaded into vindictiveness] Or for that matter, if you insist on judging things by what she says when she’s not in her right mind, if you hadn’t been born, she’d never — [He stops, ashamed]

EDMUND. [suddenly spent and miserable] Sure. I know that’s what she feels, Papa.

TYRONE. She doesn’t! She loves you as dearly as ever mother loved a son! I only said that because you put me in such a God-damned rage, raking up the past, and saying you hate me —

EDMUND. [dully] I didn’t mean it, Papa. [He suddenly smiles — kidding a bit drunkenly] I’m like Mama, I can’t help liking you, in spite of everything.