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Chapter 4
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Wise Children, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Sex, Procreation, and Parenthood
Twins, Doubles, and Confused Identities
Matriarchy and Found Family
Show Business, Aging, and Memory
Comedy vs. Tragedy
Summary
Analysis
Dora, Nora and Wheelchair arrive at Melchior’s fancy house in Regent’s Park, a far more glamorous area than Brixton. There are camera crews on hand to capture the various tuxedoed celebrities who exit limousines and head into the party. On the way in, a beggar stops Dora, and she realizes with shock that it is Gorgeous George, having fallen on hard times.
George’s eventual decline was foreshadowed when his comic sensibility failed to translate to the Hollywood aesthetic of The Dream movie. Still, seeing him in this abject state reminds Dora that audiences are fickle. Even once-beloved entertainers can be left in the cold, as trends change and media evolves.
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Seeing George in this bedraggled state makes Dora think about how strangely memory works. At her age, she can never remember facts or details, but she has sense impressions—the taste of a bacon sandwich or a hand on her breast, even if she cannot remember whose hand. Dora feels another pang of grief (for Tiffany, for herself, for George), so she gives George money and urges him to “spend it all on drink.”
It is surprising that Dora, who has spent the entire book reconstructing her personal and familial history, now insists that she struggles to remember particulars. At the same time, however, this commitment to sensory memory over a more linear account of the past might reflect Dora’s new commitment to focusing on each moment as it comes, letting the momentary pleasures of bacon and lilacs linger even years into the future.
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The twins go inside, accompanied by Wheelchair, who looks—in her white ballgown and pearls—almost as glamorous as she used to when Dora knew her as the Lady A. Once she gets inside, however, the Lady A. hides behind a column and “turn[s] backed into Wheelchair as if by some bad spell.” When the twins see themselves in the mirror, they laugh at how over-the-top their makeup and outfits are. The room smells like lilacs, which makes Dora feel as if she is a virginal 17-year-old again. Like all the other party guests, Dora and Nora get in line in front of Melchior, waiting to wish him a happy birthday.
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Melchior is dressed in purple robes, an outfit that feels over the top even for this very theatrical man. When Melchior sees Dora and Nora (whom he refers to as “Peaseblossom” and “Mustardseed”), he breaks out in a smile, asking his daughters to remind him which one wears Shalimar and which Mitsouko. Dora is transported back to the summer day when she and Nora first met Melchior, how quickly they fell in love with him. Without realizing it, the twins have begun to cry, and they both call Melchior “Dad.” Melchior touches Nora’s cheek, calling the twins “my lovely girls,” and he gives them both a hug.
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Dora wonders how to explain this change in her father. When he saw Tiffany’s breakdown on Tristram’s show, did he think, for the first time in years, of Kitty, Dora and Nora’s mother? But Melchior must greet the next people in line, so Dora and Nora head to the food table, grinning ear to ear.
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Then Daisy Duck enters, accompanied, somehow, by baroque trumpet players. Daisy has had a lot of plastic surgery done, and she looks 40 years old, even though she is actually twice that age. When she comes in, Melchior gets to his feet and gives her a hug, though Dora notices how frail he seems when he walks. Melchior, too, is finally getting insecure about his age, even fretting now that he is too old to wear his precious cardboard crown.
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Finally, Tristram arrives, looking green in the face and propped up on either side by his aunts, Saskia and Imogen. When Lady A. sees her two daughters, whom she has not spoken to in years, she panics. The only way she can calm down is when Daisy gives her a flask of liquor to drink from. Dora thinks how wonderful it is that time has healed the wounds between Melchior’s first two wives, until she is distracted by Tristram, now collapsing in tears into Melchior’s lap.
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The paparazzi capture the whole thing. How awful it must be, Dora reflects, for Melchior and Tristram to have to live their entire lives in public. But then she thinks of Brenda’s face this morning when she learned of Tiffany’s death, and any sympathy Dora might have felt for Tristram instantly vanishes.
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To distract from this scene, Saskia brings out the cake, a giant model of the Globe Theatre that she herself has baked. Everyone applauds, though the Lady A., still hidden, weeps quietly. Saskia brings the cake to Melchior, and Lady Margarine urges him to blow out the candles. But before he can do so, there is a loud knocking at the front door. A thrilled hush goes through the crowd: “something unscripted is about to happen.”
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A wind blows through the house, the same wind that had knocked over Dora’s trash can that morning. And then an uninvited guest walks in, straight from Brazil: Uncle Perry, his hair still bright red. Perry is joined by hundreds of butterflies, which he tells Melchior he has named after “all our daughters.” Melchior smiles at his brother, surprising Dora with his warmth.
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Perry then turns his attention to Dora and Nora, embracing them and declaring that they haven’t changed one bit. In Dora’s eyes, Perry hasn’t changed either. When she looks at Perry, she sees his soul rather than his body. Then, Dora feels a flash of sexual desire for Perry, and she steps away to cool down.
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Perry now goes to greet Saskia and Imogen, though neither of them are particularly welcoming. And finally, Perry spots the Lady A. in her hiding place behind a column. With a flourish, Perry walks over to Lady A. and pulls of the veil she has been using to cover her face, presenting her to the room as “the Lady Atalanta Hazard. The most beautiful woman of her time.” For the first time ever, Dora realizes, all three Lady Hazards are in the same room together. Dora wonders if her mother Kitty’s ghost is present, too.
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Finally, Perry snaps his fingers, and a group of men appear, carrying a large trunk. They set the trunk in the middle of the floor, and Perry prepares to do one last magic trick. “I give you,” Perry announces, “the future of the Hazard family. If she’ll have you.” And somehow, Tiffany steps out of the trunk, having changed her clothes and cleaned herself up. Dora and Nora burst into tears and run to Tiffany, embracing her.
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Tristram acts quickly, getting down on his knees to apologize and propose to Tiffany. But she refuses the proposal, telling Tristram that he should marry his aunt instead. Tristram melts down, begging Tiffany to think of his unborn child. But Tiffany just scoffs, telling Tristram there is more to fathering than having sex. Tiffany squeezes Dora and Nora’s hands for strength.
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Then Brenda and Leroy arrive to pick Tiffany up, as Tristram cries on Saskia’s shoulder. Lady Margarine tries to do her motherly duties with Tristram by offering him a slice of cake, hoping to restore his energy. But Saskia shrieks and knocks the cake out of Tristram’s hand, inadvertently revealing that she had put poison it the cake—which she intended for Melchior. Saskia starts wailing, accusing Melchior of never having loved her.
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Suddenly, Dora cannot help herself, and she bursts out with Gorgeous George’s punchline from years ago: “don’t worry, darlin’, ‘e’s not your father!” The room falls silent, and Saskia, furious, turns on Perry and punches him. Nora and Daisy are cracking up, and Dora wonders how different many of Shakespeare’s plays would be if the characters whispered George’s punchline to each other. Hamlet, a tragedy, would become a comedy if Hamlet realized he’d had a different biological dad all along. A Winter’s Tale, originally a comedy, would become a tragedy.
Now that Melchior knows the truth of Saskia and Imogen’s parentage, he turns on Lady A. accusingly. But she is not having any of it. Instead, she unleashes decades of anger at Melchior, mocking her ex-husband’s obsession with “the precious, unique Hazard blood.” Why, the Lady A. wants to know, didn’t Melchior care about the “Hazard blood” when it came to Dora and Nora, the children of the poor girl he seduced and abandoned? Everyone at the party gasps.
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Lady A. continues her tirade, accusing Melchior of prioritizing fame and his “titanic quest” with his dead father Ranulph over his wives and children. Dora is surprised. She never realized that Melchior had a complex about his father, though now that she thinks about it, it makes sense. Finally, the Lady A. finishes, and the party guests applaud. Saskia and Imogen, ashamed, are in tears at their mother’s feet.
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Then, Daisy Duck’s new husband starts singing, and Dora realizes that it is none other than the actor who played Puck, now the recipient of an Academy Award. Nora and Dora walk over to Melchior, who at last acknowledges them as his daughters, weeping over the years they have lost together. Dora feels like the curtain will come down and the audience will applaud, but Nora gently reminds her that this is real life, not a play.
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Then, the musicians start playing songs from Melchior’s old revue, What? You Will!?! Nora asks Melchior to dance, mirroring the twins’ 17th birthday, when Dora and Melchior waltzed. The smell of lilac is in the air as other duos take to the dance floor: Daisy and Puck, Tristram and Lady Margarine. Perry asks Dora to dance, and she instinctively replies that she would rather have sex. Perry acquiesces, and they slip away to the Lady Margarine’s bedroom upstairs.
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Once they get to the bedroom Perry asks how long it has been since they had sex, and Dora realizes that she can’t remember whether she has ever had sex with Perry before. Perry, she guesses, doesn’t know either. Then, Perry and Dora get right to it, bouncing so vigorously that (as Nora will later report) the chandelier downstairs starts to sway back and forth. As they have sex, Dora pictures Perry the first day she met him, when he showed up at their door at the end of World War I. Dora wonders if Perry is picturing her at 13, the day he took her and Nora to the beach, the day the twins met Melchior for the first time.
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When Dora and Perry are finished, Dora panics: what if Perry is actually her father, too? Perry assures her that he is not her father, although for many years he wished he was. But Perry also asks Dora if she knows who her real mother is. Is it the mysterious Pretty Kitty, dead on the day Dora and Nora were born? Or is it possible that Grandma Chance herself might have had sex with Melchior and given birth to the girls? Nora doubts this idea, given that Grandma was 50 when she and Nora were born, but she can’t dismiss it entirely.
Before Perry and Dora go back downstairs, they peek in the bedroom where Melchior sleeps, separate from My Lady Margarine. On Melchior’s wall, Dora sees a huge picture of Ranulph, dressed in purple robes exactly like the ones Melchior is wearing tonight. His whole life, Dora realizes, the fatherless Melchior had been waiting to become “the father of himself.” For the first time, Dora understands Melchior’s own familial wounds. But Dora also wonders how mothers fit into these generational stories. Nobody, she points out, ever talks about Mrs. Lear.
Perry finds Ranulph’s old cardboard crown, and he hands it to Dora, suggesting that she present it to Melchior as a birthday gesture. When Dora places the crown on Melchior’s head, she feels a bit like Cordelia, even if she is a little too old for the role. Before Dora can get lost in the tragedy, however, Perry presents her and Nora with their birthday gifts: two sleeping twin babies, whom he reveals as Gareth’s children. Perry knows that Nora has always wanted to have children, and now, he has given her a chance.
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My Lady Margarine panics, demanding to know Gareth’s whereabouts and who the mother is. But Dora is firm that these questions “do not belong to the world of comedy.” Instead, Dora is determined to end her story here, at one of life’s “glorious pauses.” In refusing to say more, Dora explains, she is ensuring that her memoirs have “a happy ending.” When Old Nanny changes the twins’ diapers, she sees that one is a boy, and one is a girl—a first in the Hazard family.
The Lady A. is exhausted, so Perry carries her up to the spare bedroom, a touching sight. Before he does so, Perry asks Tristram to come to South America with him, and Tristram agrees. Saskia, feeling ashamed of her behavior tonight, offers to give Nora and Dora a ride home, and they accept. And then Nora and Dora are alone with their new babies. “We’re both of us mothers and both of us fathers,” Nora sighs happily. “They’ll be wise children, all right.”
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Dora remarks that Melchior’s kindness tonight seemed out of character. Nora replies that sometimes, she feels as if Melchior is really a character of their own creation: “just a collection of our hopes and dreams and wishful thinking in the afternoons.” Then, Nora suggests that she and Dora should sing to the babies. After all, they are the Chance sisters, London’s famous song-and-dance girls. In their house at 49 Bard Road, Dora and Nora start humming tunes from the What You Will revue, and the babies stir happily. “What a joy it is,” Dora declares, “to dance and sing!”
