(I see that this play in on an Indian curriculum. Interesting for the Hindus who have so many markers for who’s in and who’s out and their well know admiration for the ‘pukka sahib’.)
It was Groucho Marx who famously said - “I wouldn’t want to belong to a club that would have me for a member. Here’s De Levis who wants to belong to a club that doesn’t want him for a member. Really he doesn’t want to be a member of that club either in the sense that he does not share the ethos of that club. Dancy underlines this aspect of decency which De Levis does not share:
(Act III)
It was a crazy thing to do; but, damn it, I was only looting a looter. The money was as much mine as his. A decent chap would have offered me half. You didn't see the brute look at me that night at dinner as much as to say: "You blasted fool!" It made me mad. That wasn't a bad jump-twice over. Nothing in the war took quite such nerve. [Grimly] I rather enjoyed that evening.
De Levis could not resist taking a free horse and to maximise the deal ‘tried her high’ to test what quality she had. Now the idea that Dancy thought he was getting rid of a ‘weed’ that he had not the keep of is specious rationalisation. Dancy is described in the play directions as a ‘riding man’ friend of the landed gentleman Winsor and in a cavalry regiment. That he would not be aware that a filly had potential is nonsense. So he knew De Levis would grab the chance and had the money to keep her in his stable. True. but the bitter remark ‘he would’ shows that DeL. against all the ethos of respect for the noble animal, the horse, was prepared to risk ruining her by hard training. Again ‘not decent’. … a decent house…..a decent club. Decent is a key value in that world that De L. is trying to crash.
Winsor: He sold that weed you gave him, Dancy, to Kentman, the bookie, and these were the proceeds.
DANCY. Oh!
WINSOR. He'd tried her high, he said.
DANCY. [Grimly] He would.
Recollect also that De L. ascribes chagrin to Dancy on account of this parting with an excellent filly which won two races and was sold to a bookmaker for £1000 (£73,000 in todays money) a far from negligible sum but for a very wealthy man, not an amount that would cause him to impugn the name of a ‘decent house’ as being the sort of place that you might have money stolen in.
CANYNGE. Without any proof. This is very ugly, De Levis. I must tell WINSOR.
DE LEVIS. [Angrily] Tell the whole blooming lot. You think I've no feelers, but I've felt the atmosphere here, I can tell you, General. If I were in Dancy's shoes and he in mine, your tone to me would be very different.
CANYNGE. [Suavely frigid] I'm not aware of using any tone, as you call it. But this is a private house, Mr De Levis, and something is due to our host and to the esprit de corps that exists among gentlemen.
When the so called weed that De L. sells then goes on to win the Classic race ‘The Cambridgeshire’ his fury at missing that coup causes him to blurt out the tale of his stolen money to the club at large - a decent quiet club.
COLFORD. It makes no odds, General. Four of us in there heard him. He's saying it was Ronald Dancy robbed him down at WINSOR's. The fellow's mad over losing the price of that filly now she's won the Cambridgeshire.
Any critique of his attitude is met with the accusation that it arises from antiSemitism. There’s a clash of values certainly but unless you espouse the ethos of the club why attempt to join it. Doing so makes you a bounder, a pushy, flashy sort of fellow. A man like that is not clubable. The conventional view that this play is about antiSemitism does not hold water. As St Erth puts it:
DE LEVIS. Well, I shall tell people that you and Lord St Erth backed me up for one Club, and asked me to resign from another.
CANYNGE. It's a matter of indifference to me, sir, what you tell people.
ST ERTH. [Drily] You seem a venomous young man.
DE LEVIS. I'll tell you what seems to me venomous, my lord—chasing a man like a pack of hounds because he isn't your breed.
CANYNGE. You appear to have your breed on the brain, sir. Nobody else does, so far as I know.
DE LEVIS. Suppose I had robbed Dancy, would you chase him out for complaining of it?
Indeed. What of Dancy, if he gotten away with the repatriation of his money as he saw it? If someone from the same class as the country house set had so far forgotten himself as to steal that money would the theft have been pursued by legal means or would they have gone a different way about it. The important thing is not to make a fuss, a damnable scene. That would have been to no one’s benefit. Without accusing anyone, using some formula derived from public school practice, the money would find its way back to its owner. No more need be said and the whole thing would be forgotten. No scandal would be attached to the house. Nevertheless some association with ‘Dancy’ would be generally known and the chill of decent society would be felt. A previous case:
MARGARET. Do you remember St Offert—cards? No, you wouldn't—you were in high frocks. Well, St Offert got damages, but he also got the hoof, underneath. He lives in Ireland. There isn't the slightest connection, so far as I can see, Mabel, between innocence and reputation. Look at me!
What would Rabbi Bonder in his disquisition on wealth ‘The Kabbalah of Money’ have to say? De Levis had to an extent taken advantage of the impecunious Dancy. He might have balanced the scales of the universe by doing the ‘decent’ thing.
‘Listen old chap, that filly you gave me. I know you were stuck then. I sold her on and got the price she was really worth. I’d like to split the difference with you. It would be on my conscience if I didn’t.’
A brilliant play one that ran for a year when it was first put on.
