Books: Pygmalion

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HIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a
lark!

PICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you
twice.

DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue
in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman
of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me?
I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for
money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now
I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for
money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says
I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor
man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust
cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as
quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of
the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing
to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't
live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not
let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and
touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world
except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and
not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live
for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality. You
talk of losing Eliza. Don't you be anxious: I bet she's on my
doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling
flowers if I wasn't respectable. And the next one to touch me
will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn to speak middle
class language from you, instead of speaking proper English.
That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you done
it for.

MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all
this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept
this bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel
Pickering?

PICKERING. I believe so.

DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That's
the tragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I
haven't the nerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated.
Intimidated, ma'am: that's what we are. What is there for me if I
chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair
already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the
deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then
why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be
millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don't know
what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have
nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted
three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class.
(Excuse the expression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had
my provocation). They've got you every way you turn: it's a
choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of
the middle class; and I haven't the nerve for the workhouse.
Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than
me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll
look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son has
brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].

MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you're not going to do anything
foolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza's
future. You can provide for her now.

DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma'am; I'm expected
to provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.

HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he can't provide for her. He
shan't provide for her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him
five pounds for her. Doolittle: either you're an honest man or a
rogue.

DOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of
us: a little of both.

HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no
right to take her as well.

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: don't be absurd. If you really want to know
where Eliza is, she is upstairs.

HIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her
downstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door].

MRS. HIGGINS [rising and following him] Be quiet, Henry. Sit
down.

HIGGINS. I--

MRS. HIGGINS. Sit down, dear; and listen to me.

HIGGINS. Oh very well, very well, very well. [He throws himself
ungraciously on the ottoman, with his face towards the windows].
But I think you might have told me this half an hour ago.

MRS. HIGGINS. Eliza came to me this morning. She passed the night
partly walking about in a rage, partly trying to throw herself
into the river and being afraid to, and partly in the Carlton
Hotel. She told me of the brutal way you two treated her.

HIGGINS [bounding up again] What!

PICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs. Higgins, she's been telling
you stories. We didn't treat her brutally. We hardly said a word
to her; and we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on
Higgins]. Higgins did you bully her after I went to bed?

HIGGINS. Just the other way about. She threw my slippers in my
face. She behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her
the slightest provocation. The slippers came bang into my face
the moment I entered the room--before I had uttered a word. And
used perfectly awful language.

PICKERING [astonished] But why? What did we do to her?

MRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl
is naturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn't she, Mr.
Doolittle?

DOOLITTLE. Very tender-hearted, ma'am. Takes after me.

MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She
worked very hard for you, Henry! I don't think you quite realize
what anything in the nature of brain work means to a girl like
that. Well, it seems that when the great day of trial came, and
she did this wonderful thing for you without making a single
mistake, you two sat there and never said a word to her, but
talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and how
you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were
surprised because she threw your slippers at you! _I_ should have
thrown the fire-irons at you.

HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to
go to bed. Did we, Pick?

PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.

MRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?

PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.

MRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or
tell her how splendid she'd been.

HIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn't make
speeches to her, if that's what you mean.

PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little
inconsiderate. Is she very angry?

MRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well,
I'm afraid she won't go back to Wimpole Street, especially now
that Mr. Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have
thrust on her; but she says she is quite willing to meet you on
friendly terms and to let bygones be bygones.

HIGGINS [furious] Is she, by George? Ho!

MRS. HIGGINS. If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask
her to come down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite
enough of my time.

HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let
us put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we
picked out of the mud. [He flings himself sulkily into the
Elizabethan chair].

DOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, Henry Higgins! have some
consideration for my feelings as a middle class man.

MRS. HIGGINS. Remember your promise, Henry. [She presses the
bell-button on the writing-table]. Mr. Doolittle: will you be so
good as to step out on the balcony for a moment. I don't want
Eliza to have the shock of your news until she has made it up
with these two gentlemen. Would you mind?

DOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her
off my hands. [He disappears through the window].

The parlor-maid answers the bell. Pickering sits down in
Doolittle's place.

MRS. HIGGINS. Ask Miss Doolittle to come down, please.

THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam. [She goes out].

MRS. HIGGINS. Now, Henry: be good.

HIGGINS. I am behaving myself perfectly.

PICKERING. He is doing his best, Mrs. Higgins.

A pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs;
and begins to whistle.

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, dearest, you don't look at all nice in that
attitude.

HIGGINS [pulling himself together] I was not trying to look nice,
mother.

MRS. HIGGINS. It doesn't matter, dear. I only wanted to make you
speak.

HIGGINS. Why?

MRS. HIGGINS. Because you can't speak and whistle at the same
time.

Higgins groans. Another very trying pause.

HIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil is that
girl? Are we to wait here all day?

Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly
convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little
work-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much
taken aback to rise.

LIZA. How do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite well?

HIGGINS [choking] Am I-- [He can say no more].

LIZA. But of course you are: you are never ill. So glad to see
you again, Colonel Pickering. [He rises hastily; and they shake
hands]. Quite chilly this morning, isn't it? [She sits down on
his left. He sits beside her].

HIGGINS. Don't you dare try this game on me. I taught it to you;
and it doesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a
fool.

Eliza takes a piece of needlework from her basket, and begins to
stitch at it, without taking the least notice of this outburst.

MRS. HIGGINS. Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman could
resist such an invitation.

HIGGINS. You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself.
You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven't
put into her head or a word that I haven't put into her mouth. I
tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage
leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine
lady with me.

MRS. HIGGINS [placidly] Yes, dear; but you'll sit down, won't
you?

Higgins sits down again, savagely.

LIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins, and
working away deftly] Will you drop me altogether now that the
experiment is over, Colonel Pickering?

PICKERING. Oh don't. You mustn't think of it as an experiment. It
shocks me, somehow.

LIZA. Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf.

PICKERING [impulsively] No.

LIZA [continuing quietly]--but I owe so much to you that I should
be very unhappy if you forgot me.

PICKERING. It's very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle.

LIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are
generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I
learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady,
isn't it? You see it was so very difficult for me with the
example of Professor Higgins always before me. I was brought up
to be just like him, unable to control myself, and using bad
language on the slightest provocation. And I should never have
known that ladies and gentlemen didn't behave like that if you
hadn't been there.

HIGGINS. Well!!

PICKERING. Oh, that's only his way, you know. He doesn't mean it.

LIZA. Oh, I didn't mean it either, when I was a flower girl. It
was only my way. But you see I did it; and that's what makes the
difference after all.

PICKERING. No doubt. Still, he taught you to speak; and I
couldn't have done that, you know.

LIZA [trivially] Of course: that is his profession.

HIGGINS. Damnation!

LIZA [continuing] It was just like learning to dance in the
fashionable way: there was nothing more than that in it. But do
you know what began my real education?

PICKERING. What?

LIZA [stopping her work for a moment] Your calling me Miss
Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was
the beginning of self-respect for me. [She resumes her
stitching]. And there were a hundred little things you never
noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about
standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors--

PICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.

LIZA. Yes: things that showed you thought and felt about me as if
I were something better than a scullerymaid; though of course I
know you would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she
had been let in the drawing-room. You never took off your boots
in the dining room when I was there.

PICKERING. You mustn't mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all
over the place.

LIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But
it made such a difference to me that you didn't do it. You see,
really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the
dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the
difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she
behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl
to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower
girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because
you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

MRS. HIGGINS. Please don't grind your teeth, Henry.

PICKERING. Well, this is really very nice of you, Miss Doolittle.

LIZA. I should like you to call me Eliza, now, if you would.

PICKERING. Thank you. Eliza, of course.

LIZA. And I should like Professor Higgins to call me Miss
Doolittle.

HIGGINS. I'll see you damned first.

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry! Henry!

PICKERING [laughing] Why don't you slang back at him? Don't stand
it. It would do him a lot of good.

LIZA. I can't. I could have done it once; but now I can't go back
to it. Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to
me; and I tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was
no use. You told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a
foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and
forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I have
forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours.
That's the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court
Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.

PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you're coming back to Wimpole
Street, aren't you? You'll forgive Higgins?

HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let
her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into
the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow.

Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified
reproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his
daughter, who, with her back to the window, is unconscious of his
approach.

PICKERING. He's incorrigible, Eliza. You won't relapse, will you?

LIZA. No: Not now. Never again. I have learnt my lesson. I don't
believe I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried.
[Doolittle touches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work,
losing her self-possession utterly at the spectacle of her
father's splendor] A--a--a--a--a--ah--ow--ooh!

HIGGINS [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A--a--a--a--
ahowooh! A--a--a--a--ahowooh ! A--a--a--a--ahowooh! Victory!
Victory! [He throws himself on the divan, folding his arms, and
spraddling arrogantly].

DOOLITTLE. Can you blame the girl? Don't look at me like that,
Eliza. It ain't my fault. I've come into money.

LIZA. You must have touched a millionaire this time, dad.

DOOLITTLE. I have. But I'm dressed something special today. I'm
going to St. George's, Hanover Square. Your stepmother is going
to marry me.

LIZA [angrily] You're going to let yourself down to marry that
low common woman!

PICKERING [quietly] He ought to, Eliza. [To Doolittle] Why has
she changed her mind?

DOOLITTLE [sadly] Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle
class morality claims its victim. Won't you put on your hat,
Liza, and come and see me turned off?

LIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I--I'll [almost sobbing] I'll
demean myself. And get insulted for my pains, like enough.

DOOLITTLE. Don't be afraid: she never comes to words with anyone
now, poor woman! respectability has broke all the spirit out of
her.

PICKERING [squeezing Eliza's elbow gently] Be kind to them,
Eliza. Make the best of it.

LIZA [forcing a little smile for him through her vexation] Oh
well, just to show there's no ill feeling. I'll be back in a
moment. [She goes out].

DOOLITTLE [sitting down beside Pickering] I feel uncommon nervous
about the ceremony, Colonel. I wish you'd come and see me through
it.

PICKERING. But you've been through it before, man. You were
married to Eliza's mother.

DOOLITTLE. Who told you that, Colonel?

PICKERING. Well, nobody told me. But I concluded naturally--

DOOLITTLE. No: that ain't the natural way, Colonel: it's only the
middle class way. My way was always the undeserving way. But
don't say nothing to Eliza. She don't know: I always had a
delicacy about telling her.

PICKERING. Quite right. We'll leave it so, if you don't mind.

DOOLITTLE. And you'll come to the church, Colonel, and put me
through straight?

PICKERING. With pleasure. As far as a bachelor can.

MRS. HIGGINS. May I come, Mr. Doolittle? I should be very sorry
to miss your wedding.

DOOLITTLE. I should indeed be honored by your condescension,
ma'am; and my poor old woman would take it as a tremenjous
compliment. She's been very low, thinking of the happy days that
are no more.

MRS. HIGGINS [rising] I'll order the carriage and get ready. [The
men rise, except Higgins]. I shan't be more than fifteen minutes.
[As she goes to the door Eliza comes in, hatted and buttoning her
gloves]. I'm going to the church to see your father married,
Eliza. You had better come in the brougham with me. Colonel
Pickering can go on with the bridegroom.

Mrs. Higgins goes out. Eliza comes to the middle of the room
between the centre window and the ottoman. Pickering joins her.

DOOLITTLE. Bridegroom! What a word! It makes a man realize his
position, somehow. [He takes up his hat and goes towards the
door].

PICKERING. Before I go, Eliza, do forgive him and come back to
us.

LIZA. I don't think papa would allow me. Would you, dad?

DOOLITTLE [sad but magnanimous] They played you off very cunning,
Eliza, them two sportsmen. If it had been only one of them, you
could have nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of
them chaperoned the other, as you might say. [To Pickering] It
was artful of you, Colonel; but I bear no malice: I should have
done the same myself. I been the victim of one woman after
another all my life; and I don't grudge you two getting the
better of Eliza. I shan't interfere. It's time for us to go,
Colonel. So long, Henry. See you in St. George's, Eliza. [He goes
out].

PICKERING [coaxing] Do stay with us, Eliza. [He follows
Doolittle].

Eliza goes out on the balcony to avoid being alone with Higgins.
He rises and joins her there. She immediately comes back into the
room and makes for the door; but he goes along the balcony
quickly and gets his back to the door before she reaches it.

HIGGINS. Well, Eliza, you've had a bit of your own back, as you
call it. Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable?
Or do you want any more?

LIZA. You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up
with your tempers and fetch and carry for you.

HIGGINS. I haven't said I wanted you back at all.

LIZA. Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?

HIGGINS. About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat
you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature;
and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly
the same as Colonel Pickering's.

LIZA. That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a
duchess.

HIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.

LIZA. I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman,
facing the window]. The same to everybody.

HIGGINS. Just so.

LIZA. Like father.

HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the
comparison at all points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father
is not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station
of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously]
The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good
manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the
same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you
were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one
soul is as good as another.

LIZA. Amen. You are a born preacher.

HIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you
rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.

LIZA [with sudden sincerity] I don't care how you treat me. I
don't mind your swearing at me. I don't mind a black eye: I've
had one before this. But [standing up and facing him] I won't be
passed over.

HIGGINS. Then get out of my way; for I won't stop for you. You
talk about me as if I were a motor bus.

LIZA. So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no
consideration for anyone. But I can do without you: don't think I
can't.

HIGGINS. I know you can. I told you you could.

LIZA [wounded, getting away from him to the other side of the
ottoman with her face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute.
You wanted to get rid of me.

HIGGINS. Liar.

LIZA. Thank you. [She sits down with dignity].

HIGGINS. You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do
without YOU.

LIZA [earnestly] Don't you try to get round me. You'll HAVE to do
without me.

HIGGINS [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul:
my own spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall
miss you, Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have
learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly
and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and
appearance. I like them, rather.

LIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your
book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can
turn the machine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.

HIGGINS. I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and
you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

LIZA. Oh, you ARE a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as
easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned
me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always
got round her at the last minute. And you don't care a bit for
her. And you don't care a bit for me.

HIGGINS. I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it
that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can
you or anyone ask?

LIZA. I won't care for anybody that doesn't care for me.

HIGGINS. Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her
Covent Garden pronunciation with professional exactness] s'yollin
voylets [selling violets], isn't it?

LIZA. Don't sneer at me. It's mean to sneer at me.

HIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become
either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my
righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don't and won't trade in
affection. You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim
on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were
a fool: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting
sight: did I ever fetch YOUR slippers? I think a good deal more
of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and
then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If
you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for
you'll get nothing else. You've had a thousand times as much out
of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little
dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my
creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly
face.

LIZA. What did you do it for if you didn't care for me?

HIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job.

LIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.

HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had
been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble.
There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing
things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have
troublesome people killed.

LIZA. I'm no preacher: I don't notice things like that. I notice
that you don't notice me.

HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: you're
an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading
them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do
my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am
not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can
come back or go to the devil: which you please.

LIZA. What am I to come back for?

HIGGINS [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over
it to her] For the fun of it. That's why I took you on.

LIZA [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I
don't do everything you want me to?

HIGGINS. Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don't do
everything YOU want me to.

LIZA. And live with my stepmother?

HIGGINS. Yes, or sell flowers.

LIZA. Oh! if I only COULD go back to my flower basket! I should
be independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did
you take my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I'm a
slave now, for all my fine clothes.

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