The Autumn Garden (1951)

"The Autumn Garden" opened on March 7th 1951 in Broadway, and ran for 102 performances. Lillian and Dashiell Hammett believe this is her best play.

Middle-aged people tend to think what their lives were, is, and will be in the winter of their lives. Such ordinary people are main characters of “The Autumn Garden”. Unlike Lillian’s another plays, no villains no heroes. Neither political nor sarcastic.

A group of middle-aged friends, mostly in their 40’s and 50’s, had a yearly gathering at a summer guest house on the Gulf of Mexico, a hundred miles from New Orleans, in 1949. The guest house’s owner Constance Tuckerman hosts her friends and relatives who face disappointments and regrets to their empty lives, and struggle to change but still be stuck.

Nicholas Denery and his wife Nina Denery. Nick had dates with Constance but ran away from her to become an artist in Paris. Constance romanticizes her memory with Nick, keeping her portrait in her youth drawn by Nick. She gets nervous to meet him again.

Carrie Ellis, her son Frederick Ellis and her witty mother in law Mrs. Mary Ellis in her seventieth. Constance’s French niece Sophie is prepared to marry Frederick though they are not in love. Sophie and Frederick are only young couple among them.

Here's conversation between Sophie and Ned Crossman.

“CROSSMAN: ……listen to me, Sophie. I say turn yourself around, girl, and go home. Beat it quick.

SOPHIE: You take many words to say simple things. All of you. And you make the simple things - like going to sleep - so hard, and the hard things - like staying awake - so easy............ Therefore I will do the best I can. And I will not cry about it and I will not speak of it again.

CROSSMAN: The best you can?

SOPHIE: I think so. Maybe you’ve never tried to do that, Mr. Ned. Maybe none of you have tried.

CROSSMAN: Sophie, lonely people talking to each other can make each other lonelier. They should be careful because maybe lonely people are the only people who can't afford to cry. I’m sorry.” - Quote from Act One

Nick has a habit to flirt with women by drawing portraits. Mrs. Ellis advises him to "try something intellectual for a change" but he does not. Moreover, he is criticized “a gifted amateur” by his wife Nina. He is drunken too much and falls asleep on Sophie’s bed in the living room. It is a big nuisance, a rumor goes around a small village. Everyone is in a panic, except Sophie. She demands five thousand dollars to Nina as “the most degrading experience from which no young girl easily recovers”.

“NINA: You are serious? Just for a word, a way of calling something, you would hurt my husband and me?

SOPHIE: For me it is more than a way of calling something.

NINA: You’re a tough little girl.

SOPHIE: Don’t you think people often say other people are tough when they do not know how to cheat them?” - Quotes from Act Three

Sophie did her best to go home…

One more couple trying to change. A retired General Ben Griggs and his ex-pretty soft-looking wife Rose. Ben wants to divorce her and Rose wants to hold on to him. Finally Rose said honestly she is ill and wants him to stay with her this year.

“ROSE: ...please stay with me this year, just this year. I will give you a divorce at the end of the year. I will swear a solemn oath - believe me I’m telling the truth now - I will give you a divorce at the end of the year without another word. I’ll go and do it without any fuss, any talk. But please help me now. I’m so scared. Help me, please. One year’s a lot to ask, I know, but -

BEN: Of course. Of course. Now don’t let’s speak of it again and we’ll do what has to be done.”

Ben made a decision to stay with her though he doesn’t love her any more.

The most significant and touching speech by Ben Griggs is:

“So at any given moment, you're only the sum of your life up to then. There are no big moments you can reach unless you've a smaller pile of moments to stand on. That big hour of decision, the turning point in your life, the someday you've counted on when you'd suddenly wipe out your past mistakes, do the work you'd never done, think the way you'd never thought, have what you'd never had - it doesn't come suddenly. You've trained yourself for it while you waited - or you've let it all run past you and frittered yourself away. I've frittered myself away..." 

Nick lied to Constance that Ned still loves her and wants to marry her. She tells Ned to marry her but he explains he is not in love with her now.

“CROSSMAN: I’ve kept myself busy looking into other people's hearts so I wouldn't have to look into my own. If I made you think I was still in love, I'm sorry. Sorry I fooled you and sorry I fooled myself. And I've never liked liars-least of all those who lie to themselves.

CONSTANCE: Never mind. Most of us lie to ourselves, darling, most of us."

These long-term friends finally said things that had remained unsaid for many decades. 

When we want to start a new life all over again, we'd go back to where we started and start from there. This may be one of messages from her.