"PREFACE TO PYGMALION.\n\nA Professor of Phonetics.\n\nAs will be seen later on, Pygmalion needs, not a preface, but a sequel,\nwhich I have supplied in its due place. The English have no respect for\ntheir language, and will not teach their children to speak it. They\nspell it so abominably that no man can teach himself what it sounds\nlike. It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without\nmaking some other Englishman hate or despise him. German and Spanish\nare accessible to foreigners: English is not accessible even to\nEnglishmen. The reformer England needs today is an energetic phonetic\nenthusiast: that is why I have made such a one the hero of a popular\nplay. There have been heroes of that kind crying in the wilderness for\nmany years past. When I became interested in the subject towards the\nend of the eighteen-seventies, Melville Bell was dead; but Alexander J.\nEllis was still a living patriarch, with an impressive head always\ncovered by a velvet skull cap, for which he would apologize to public\nmeetings in a very courtly manner. He and Tito Pagliardini, another\nphonetic veteran, were men whom it was impossible to dislike. Henry\nSweet, then a young man, lacked their sweetness of character: he was\nabout as conciliatory to conventional mortals as Ibsen or Samuel\nButler. His great ability as a phonetician (he was, I think, the best\nof them all at his job) would have entitled him to high official\nrecognition, and perhaps enabled him to popularize his subject, but for\nhis Satanic contempt for all academic dignitaries and persons in\ngeneral who thought more of Greek than of phonetics. Once, in the days\nwhen the Imperial Institute rose in South Kensington, and Joseph\nChamberlain was booming the Empire, I induced the editor of a leading\nmonthly review to commission an article from Sweet on the imperial\nimportance of his subject. When it arrived, it contained nothing but a\nsavagely derisive attack on a professor of language and literature\nwhose chair Sweet regarded as proper to a phonetic expert only. The\narticle, being libelous, had to be returned as impossible; and I had to\nrenounce my dream of dragging its author into the limelight. When I met\nhim afterwards, for the first time for many years, I found to my\nastonishment that he, who had been a quite tolerably presentable young\nman, had actually managed by sheer scorn to alter his personal\nappearance until he had become a sort of walking repudiation of Oxford\nand all its traditions. It must have been largely in his own despite\nthat he was squeezed into something called a Readership of phonetics\nthere. The future of phonetics rests probably with his pupils, who all\nswore by him; but nothing could bring the man himself into any sort of\ncompliance with the university, to which he nevertheless clung by\ndivine right in an intensely Oxonian way. I daresay his papers, if he\nhas left any, include some satires that may be published without too\ndestructive results fifty years hence. He was, I believe, not in the\nleast an ill-natured man: very much the opposite, I should say; but he\nwould not suffer fools gladly.\n\nThose who knew him will recognize in my third act the allusion to the\npatent Shorthand in which he used to write postcards, and which may be\nacquired from a four and six-penny manual published by the Clarendon\nPress. The postcards which Mrs. Higgins describes are such as I have\nreceived from Sweet. I would decipher a sound which a cockney would\nrepresent by zerr, and a Frenchman by seu, and then write demanding\nwith some heat what on earth it meant. Sweet, with boundless contempt\nfor my stupidity, would reply that it not only meant but obviously was\nthe word Result, as no other Word containing that sound, and capable of\nmaking sense with the context, existed in any language spoken on earth.\nThat less expert mortals should require fuller indications was beyond\nSweet's patience. Therefore, though the whole point of his \"Current\nShorthand\" is that it can express every sound in the language\nperfectly, vowels as well as consonants, and that your hand has to make\nno stroke except the easy and current ones with which you write m, n,\nand u, l, p, and q, scribbling them at whatever angle comes easiest to\nyou, his unfortunate determination to make this remarkable and quite\nlegible script serve also as a Shorthand reduced it in his own practice\nto the most inscrutable of cryptograms. His true objective was the\nprovision of a full, accurate, legible script for our noble but\nill-dressed language; but he was led past that by his contempt for the\npopular Pitman system of Shorthand, which he called the Pitfall system.\nThe triumph of Pitman was a triumph of business organization: there was\na weekly paper to persuade you to learn Pitman: there were cheap\ntextbooks and exercise books and transcripts of speeches for you to\ncopy, and schools where experienced teachers coached you up to the\nnecessary proficiency. Sweet could not organize his market in that\nfashion. He might as well have been the Sybil who tore up the leaves of\nprophecy that nobody would attend to. The four and six-penny manual,\nmostly in his lithographed handwriting, that was never vulgarly\nadvertized, may perhaps some day be taken up by a syndicate and pushed\nupon the public as The Times pushed the Encyclopaedia Britannica; but\nuntil then it will certainly not prevail against Pitman. I have bought\nthree copies of it during my lifetime; and I am informed by the\npublishers that its cloistered existence is still a steady and healthy\none. I actually learned the system two several times; and yet the\nshorthand in which I am writing these lines is Pitman's. And the reason\nis, that my secretary cannot transcribe Sweet, having been perforce\ntaught in the schools of Pitman. Therefore, Sweet railed at Pitman as\nvainly as Thersites railed at Ajax: his raillery, however it may have\neased his soul, gave no popular vogue to Current Shorthand. Pygmalion\nHiggins is not a portrait of Sweet, to whom the adventure of Eliza\nDoolittle would have been impossible; still, as will be seen, there are\ntouches of Sweet in the play. With Higgins's physique and temperament\nSweet might have set the Thames on fire. As it was, he impressed\nhimself professionally on Europe to an extent that made his comparative\npersonal obscurity, and the failure of Oxford to do justice to his\neminence, a puzzle to foreign specialists in his subject. I do not\nblame Oxford, because I think Oxford is quite right in demanding a\ncertain social amenity from its nurslings (heaven knows it is not\nexorbitant in its requirements!); for although I well know how hard it\nis for a man of genius with a seriously underrated subject to maintain\nserene and kindly relations with the men who underrate it, and who keep\nall the best places for less important subjects which they profess\nwithout originality and sometimes without much capacity for them,\nstill, if he overwhelms them with wrath and disdain, he cannot expect\nthem to heap honors on him.\n\nOf the later generations of phoneticians I know little. Among them\ntowers the Poet Laureate, to whom perhaps Higgins may owe his Miltonic\nsympathies, though here again I must disclaim all portraiture. But if\nthe play makes the public aware that there are such people as\nphoneticians, and that they are among the most important people in\nEngland at present, it will serve its turn.\n\nI wish to boast that Pygmalion has been an extremely successful play\nall over Europe and North America as well as at home. It is so\nintensely and deliberately didactic, and its subject is esteemed so\ndry, that I delight in throwing it at the heads of the wiseacres who\nrepeat the parrot cry that art should never be didactic. It goes to\nprove my contention that art should never be anything else.\n\nFinally, and for the encouragement of people troubled with accents that\ncut them off from all high employment, I may add that the change\nwrought by Professor Higgins in the flower girl is neither impossible\nnor uncommon. The modern concierge's daughter who fulfils her ambition\nby playing the Queen of Spain in Ruy Blas at the Theatre Francais is\nonly one of many thousands of men and women who have sloughed off their\nnative dialects and acquired a new tongue. But the thing has to be done\nscientifically, or the last state of the aspirant may be worse than the\nfirst. An honest and natural slum dialect is more tolerable than the\nattempt of a phonetically untaught person to imitate the vulgar dialect\nof the golf club; and I am sorry to say that in spite of the efforts of\nour Academy of Dramatic Art, there is still too much sham golfing\nEnglish on our stage, and too little of the noble English of Forbes\nRobertson.\n\n\n\nACT I\n\nCovent Garden at 11.15 p.m. Torrents of heavy summer rain. Cab whistles\nblowing frantically in all directions. Pedestrians running for shelter\ninto the market and under the portico of St. Paul's Church, where there\nare already several people, among them a lady and her daughter in\nevening dress. They are all peering out gloomily at the rain, except\none man with his back turned to the rest, who seems wholly preoccupied\nwith a notebook in which he is writing busily.\n\nThe church clock strikes the first quarter.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER [in the space between the central pillars, close to the\none on her left] I'm getting chilled to the bone. What can Freddy be\ndoing all this time? He's been gone twenty minutes.\n\nTHE MOTHER [on her daughter's right] Not so long. But he ought to have\ngot us a cab by this.\n\nA BYSTANDER [on the lady's right] He won't get no cab not until\nhalf-past eleven, missus, when they come back after dropping their\ntheatre fares.\n\nTHE MOTHER. But we must have a cab. We can't stand here until half-past\neleven. It's too bad.\n\nTHE BYSTANDER. Well, it ain't my fault, missus.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. If Freddy had a bit of gumption, he would have got one at\nthe theatre door.\n\nTHE MOTHER. What could he have done, poor boy?\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Other people got cabs. Why couldn't he?\n\nFreddy rushes in out of the rain from the Southampton Street side, and\ncomes between them closing a dripping umbrella. He is a young man of\ntwenty, in evening dress, very wet around the ankles.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Well, haven't you got a cab?\n\nFREDDY. There's not one to be had for love or money.\n\nTHE MOTHER. Oh, Freddy, there must be one. You can't have tried.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. It's too tiresome. Do you expect us to go and get one\nourselves?\n\nFREDDY. I tell you they're all engaged. The rain was so sudden: nobody\nwas prepared; and everybody had to take a cab. I've been to Charing\nCross one way and nearly to Ludgate Circus the other; and they were all\nengaged.\n\nTHE MOTHER. Did you try Trafalgar Square?\n\nFREDDY. There wasn't one at Trafalgar Square.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Did you try?\n\nFREDDY. I tried as far as Charing Cross Station. Did you expect me to\nwalk to Hammersmith?\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. You haven't tried at all.\n\nTHE MOTHER. You really are very helpless, Freddy. Go again; and don't\ncome back until you have found a cab.\n\nFREDDY. I shall simply get soaked for nothing.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. And what about us? Are we to stay here all night in this\ndraught, with next to nothing on. You selfish pig--\n\nFREDDY. Oh, very well: I'll go, I'll go. [He opens his umbrella and\ndashes off Strandwards, but comes into collision with a flower girl,\nwho is hurrying in for shelter, knocking her basket out of her hands. A\nblinding flash of lightning, followed instantly by a rattling peal of\nthunder, orchestrates the incident]\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Nah then, Freddy: look wh' y' gowin, deah.\n\nFREDDY. Sorry [he rushes off].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [picking up her scattered flowers and replacing them in\nthe basket] There's menners f' yer! Te-oo banches o voylets trod into\nthe mad. [She sits down on the plinth of the column, sorting her\nflowers, on the lady's right. She is not at all an attractive person.\nShe is perhaps eighteen, perhaps twenty, hardly older. She wears a\nlittle sailor hat of black straw that has long been exposed to the dust\nand soot of London and has seldom if ever been brushed. Her hair needs\nwashing rather badly: its mousy color can hardly be natural. She wears\na shoddy black coat that reaches nearly to her knees and is shaped to\nher waist. She has a brown skirt with a coarse apron. Her boots are\nmuch the worse for wear. She is no doubt as clean as she can afford to\nbe; but compared to the ladies she is very dirty. Her features are no\nworse than theirs; but their condition leaves something to be desired;\nand she needs the services of a dentist].\n\nTHE MOTHER. How do you know that my son's name is Freddy, pray?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Ow, eez ye-ooa san, is e? Wal, fewd dan y' de-ooty\nbawmz a mather should, eed now bettern to spawl a pore gel's flahrzn\nthan ran awy atbaht pyin. Will ye-oo py me f'them? [Here, with\napologies, this desperate attempt to represent her dialect without a\nphonetic alphabet must be abandoned as unintelligible outside London.]\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Do nothing of the sort, mother. The idea!\n\nTHE MOTHER. Please allow me, Clara. Have you any pennies?\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. No. I've nothing smaller than sixpence.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [hopefully] I can give you change for a tanner, kind\nlady.\n\nTHE MOTHER [to Clara] Give it to me. [Clara parts reluctantly]. Now [to\nthe girl] This is for your flowers.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Thank you kindly, lady.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Make her give you the change. These things are only a\npenny a bunch.\n\nTHE MOTHER. Do hold your tongue, Clara. [To the girl]. You can keep the\nchange.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, thank you, lady.\n\nTHE MOTHER. Now tell me how you know that young gentleman's name.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. I didn't.\n\nTHE MOTHER. I heard you call him by it. Don't try to deceive me.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [protesting] Who's trying to deceive you? I called him\nFreddy or Charlie same as you might yourself if you was talking to a\nstranger and wished to be pleasant. [She sits down beside her basket].\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Sixpence thrown away! Really, mamma, you might have\nspared Freddy that. [She retreats in disgust behind the pillar].\n\nAn elderly gentleman of the amiable military type rushes into shelter,\nand closes a dripping umbrella. He is in the same plight as Freddy,\nvery wet about the ankles. He is in evening dress, with a light\novercoat. He takes the place left vacant by the daughter's retirement.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. Phew!\n\nTHE MOTHER [to the gentleman] Oh, sir, is there any sign of its\nstopping?\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. I'm afraid not. It started worse than ever about two\nminutes ago. [He goes to the plinth beside the flower girl; puts up his\nfoot on it; and stoops to turn down his trouser ends].\n\nTHE MOTHER. Oh, dear! [She retires sadly and joins her daughter].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [taking advantage of the military gentleman's proximity\nto establish friendly relations with him]. If it's worse it's a sign\nit's nearly over. So cheer up, Captain; and buy a flower off a poor\ngirl.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. I'm sorry, I haven't any change.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. I can give you change, Captain,\n\nTHE GENTLEMEN. For a sovereign? I've nothing less.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Garn! Oh do buy a flower off me, Captain. I can change\nhalf-a-crown. Take this for tuppence.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. Now don't be troublesome: there's a good girl. [Trying\nhis pockets] I really haven't any change--Stop: here's three hapence,\nif that's any use to you [he retreats to the other pillar].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [disappointed, but thinking three halfpence better than\nnothing] Thank you, sir.\n\nTHE BYSTANDER [to the girl] You be careful: give him a flower for it.\nThere's a bloke here behind taking down every blessed word you're\nsaying. [All turn to the man who is taking notes].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [springing up terrified] I ain't done nothing wrong by\nspeaking to the gentleman. I've a right to sell flowers if I keep off\nthe kerb. [Hysterically] I'm a respectable girl: so help me, I never\nspoke to him except to ask him to buy a flower off me. [General hubbub,\nmostly sympathetic to the flower girl, but deprecating her excessive\nsensibility. Cries of Don't start hollerin. Who's hurting you? Nobody's\ngoing to touch you. What's the good of fussing? Steady on. Easy, easy,\netc., come from the elderly staid spectators, who pat her comfortingly.\nLess patient ones bid her shut her head, or ask her roughly what is\nwrong with her. A remoter group, not knowing what the matter is, crowd\nin and increase the noise with question and answer: What's the row?\nWhat she do? Where is he? A tec taking her down. What! him? Yes: him\nover there: Took money off the gentleman, etc. The flower girl,\ndistraught and mobbed, breaks through them to the gentleman, crying\nmildly] Oh, sir, don't let him charge me. You dunno what it means to\nme. They'll take away my character and drive me on the streets for\nspeaking to gentlemen. They--\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [coming forward on her right, the rest crowding after\nhim] There, there, there, there! Who's hurting you, you silly girl?\nWhat do you take me for?\n\nTHE BYSTANDER. It's all right: he's a gentleman: look at his boots.\n[Explaining to the note taker] She thought you was a copper's nark, sir.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [with quick interest] What's a copper's nark?\n\nTHE BYSTANDER [inept at definition] It's a--well, it's a copper's nark,\nas you might say. What else would you call it? A sort of informer.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [still hysterical] I take my Bible oath I never said a\nword--\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [overbearing but good-humored] Oh, shut up, shut up. Do\nI look like a policeman?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [far from reassured] Then what did you take down my\nwords for? How do I know whether you took me down right? You just show\nme what you've wrote about me. [The note taker opens his book and holds\nit steadily under her nose, though the pressure of the mob trying to\nread it over his shoulders would upset a weaker man]. What's that? That\nain't proper writing. I can't read that.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. I can. [Reads, reproducing her pronunciation exactly]\n\"Cheer ap, Keptin; n' haw ya flahr orf a pore gel.\"\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [much  distressed] It's because I called him Captain. I\nmeant no harm. [To the gentleman] Oh, sir, don't let him lay a charge\nagen me for a word like that. You--\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. Charge! I make no charge. [To the note taker] Really,\nsir, if you are a detective, you need not begin protecting me against\nmolestation by young women until I ask you. Anybody could see that the\ngirl meant no harm.\n\nTHE BYSTANDERS GENERALLY [demonstrating against police espionage]\nCourse they could. What business is it of yours? You mind your own\naffairs. He wants promotion, he does. Taking down people's words! Girl\nnever said a word to him. What harm if she did? Nice thing a girl can't\nshelter from the rain without being insulted, etc., etc., etc. [She is\nconducted by the more sympathetic demonstrators back to her plinth,\nwhere she resumes her seat and struggles with her emotion].\n\nTHE BYSTANDER. He ain't a tec. He's a blooming busybody: that's what he\nis. I tell you, look at his boots.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [turning on him genially] And how are all your people\ndown at Selsey?\n\nTHE BYSTANDER [suspiciously] Who told you my people come from Selsey?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Never you mind. They did. [To the girl] How do you come\nto be up so far east? You were born in Lisson Grove.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [appalled] Oh, what harm is there in my leaving Lisson\nGrove? It wasn't fit for a pig to live in; and I had to pay\nfour-and-six a week. [In tears] Oh, boo--hoo--oo--\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Live where you like; but stop that noise.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN [to the girl] Come, come! he can't touch you: you have a\nright to live where you please.\n\nA SARCASTIC BYSTANDER [thrusting himself between the note taker and the\ngentleman] Park Lane, for instance. I'd like to go into the Housing\nQuestion with you, I would.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [subsiding into a brooding melancholy over her basket,\nand talking very low-spiritedly to herself] I'm a good girl, I am.\n\nTHE SARCASTIC BYSTANDER [not attending to her] Do you know where _I_\ncome from?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [promptly] Hoxton.\n\nTitterings. Popular interest in the note taker's performance increases.\n\nTHE SARCASTIC ONE [amazed] Well, who said I didn't? Bly me! You know\neverything, you do.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [still nursing her sense of injury] Ain't no call to\nmeddle with me, he ain't.\n\nTHE BYSTANDER [to her] Of course he ain't. Don't you stand it from him.\n[To the note taker] See here: what call have you to know about people\nwhat never offered to meddle with you? Where's your warrant?\n\nSEVERAL BYSTANDERS [encouraged by this seeming point of law] Yes:\nwhere's your warrant?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Let him say what he likes. I don't want to have no\ntruck with him.\n\nTHE BYSTANDER. You take us for dirt under your feet, don't you? Catch\nyou taking liberties with a gentleman!\n\nTHE SARCASTIC BYSTANDER. Yes: tell HIM where he come from if you want\nto go fortune-telling.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Cheltenham, Harrow, Cambridge, and India.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. Quite right. [Great laughter. Reaction in the note\ntaker's favor. Exclamations of He knows all about it. Told him proper.\nHear him tell the toff where he come from? etc.]. May I ask, sir, do\nyou do this for your living at a music hall?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. I've thought of that. Perhaps I shall some day.\n\nThe rain has stopped; and the persons on the outside of the crowd begin\nto drop off.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [resenting the reaction] He's no gentleman, he ain't,\nto interfere with a poor girl.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER [out of patience, pushing her way rudely to the front and\ndisplacing the gentleman, who politely retires to the other side of the\npillar] What on earth is Freddy doing? I shall get pneumonia if I stay\nin this draught any longer.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [to himself, hastily making a note of her pronunciation\nof \"monia\"] Earlscourt.\n\nTHE DAUGHTER [violently] Will you please keep your impertinent remarks\nto yourself?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Did I say that out loud? I didn't mean to. I beg your\npardon. Your mother's Epsom, unmistakeably.\n\nTHE MOTHER [advancing between her daughter and the note taker] How very\ncurious! I was brought up in Largelady Park, near Epsom.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [uproariously amused] Ha! ha! What a devil of a name!\nExcuse me. [To the daughter] You want a cab, do you?\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. Don't dare speak to me.\n\nTHE MOTHER. Oh, please, please Clara. [Her daughter repudiates her with\nan angry shrug and retires haughtily.] We should be so grateful to you,\nsir, if you found us a cab. [The note taker produces a whistle]. Oh,\nthank you. [She joins her daughter]. The note taker blows a piercing\nblast.\n\nTHE SARCASTIC BYSTANDER. There! I knowed he was a plain-clothes copper.\n\nTHE BYSTANDER. That ain't a police whistle: that's a sporting whistle.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [still preoccupied with her wounded feelings] He's no\nright to take away my character. My character is the same to me as any\nlady's.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. I don't know whether you've noticed it; but the rain\nstopped about two minutes ago.\n\nTHE BYSTANDER. So it has. Why didn't you say so before? and us losing\nour time listening to your silliness. [He walks off towards the Strand].\n\nTHE SARCASTIC BYSTANDER. I can tell where you come from. You come from\nAnwell. Go back there.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [helpfully] _H_anwell.\n\nTHE SARCASTIC BYSTANDER [affecting great distinction of speech] Thenk\nyou, teacher. Haw haw! So long [he touches his hat with mock respect\nand strolls off].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Frightening people like that! How would he like it\nhimself.\n\nTHE MOTHER. It's quite fine now, Clara. We can walk to a motor bus.\nCome. [She gathers her skirts above her ankles and hurries off towards\nthe Strand].\n\nTHE DAUGHTER. But the cab--[her mother is out of hearing]. Oh, how\ntiresome! [She follows angrily].\n\nAll the rest have gone except the note taker, the gentleman, and the\nflower girl, who sits arranging her basket, and still pitying herself\nin murmurs.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Poor girl! Hard enough for her to live without being\nworrited and chivied.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN [returning to his former place on the note taker's left]\nHow do you do it, if I may ask?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Simply phonetics. The science of speech. That's my\nprofession; also my hobby. Happy is the man who can make a living by\nhis hobby! You can spot an Irishman or a Yorkshireman by his brogue. I\ncan place any man within six miles. I can place him within two miles in\nLondon. Sometimes within two streets.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Ought to be ashamed of himself, unmanly coward!\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. But is there a living in that?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Oh yes. Quite a fat one. This is an age of upstarts.\nMen begin in Kentish Town with 80 pounds a year, and end in Park Lane\nwith a hundred thousand. They want to drop Kentish Town; but they give\nthemselves away every time they open their mouths. Now I can teach\nthem--\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Let him mind his own business and leave a poor girl--\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [explosively] Woman: cease this detestable boohooing\ninstantly; or else seek the shelter of some other place of worship.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [with feeble defiance] I've a right to be here if I\nlike, same as you.\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. A woman who utters such depressing and disgusting\nsounds has no right to be anywhere--no right to live. Remember that you\nare a human being with a soul and the divine gift of articulate speech:\nthat your native language is the language of Shakespear and Milton and\nThe Bible; and don't sit there crooning like a bilious pigeon.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [quite overwhelmed, and looking up at him in mingled\nwonder and deprecation without daring to raise her head]\nAh--ah--ah--ow--ow--oo!\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [whipping out his book] Heavens! what a sound! [He\nwrites; then holds out the book and reads, reproducing her vowels\nexactly] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--ow--oo!\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [tickled by the performance, and laughing in spite of\nherself] Garn!\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. You see this creature with her kerbstone English: the\nEnglish that will keep her in the gutter to the end of her days. Well,\nsir, in three months I could pass that girl off as a duchess at an\nambassador's garden party. I could even get her a place as lady's maid\nor shop assistant, which requires better English. That's the sort of\nthing I do for commercial millionaires. And on the profits of it I do\ngenuine scientific work in phonetics, and a little as a poet on\nMiltonic lines.\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. I am myself a student of Indian dialects; and--\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER [eagerly] Are you? Do you know Colonel Pickering, the\nauthor of Spoken Sanscrit?\n\nTHE GENTLEMAN. I am Colonel Pickering. Who are you?\n\nTHE NOTE TAKER. Henry Higgins, author of Higgins's Universal Alphabet.\n\nPICKERING [with enthusiasm] I came from India to meet you.\n\nHIGGINS. I was going to India to meet you.\n\nPICKERING. Where do you live?\n\nHIGGINS. 27A Wimpole Street. Come and see me tomorrow.\n\nPICKERING. I'm at the Carlton. Come with me now and let's have a jaw\nover some supper.\n\nHIGGINS. Right you are.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [to Pickering, as he passes her] Buy a flower, kind\ngentleman. I'm short for my lodging.\n\nPICKERING. I really haven't any change. I'm sorry [he goes away].\n\nHIGGINS [shocked at girl's mendacity] Liar. You said you could change\nhalf-a-crown.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [rising in desperation] You ought to be stuffed with\nnails, you ought. [Flinging the basket at his feet] Take the whole\nblooming basket for sixpence.\n\nThe church clock strikes the second quarter.\n\nHIGGINS [hearing in it the voice of God, rebuking him for his Pharisaic\nwant of charity to the poor girl] A reminder. [He raises his hat\nsolemnly; then throws a handful of money into the basket and follows\nPickering].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [picking up a half-crown] Ah--ow--ooh! [Picking up a\ncouple of florins] Aaah--ow--ooh! [Picking up several coins]\nAaaaaah--ow--ooh! [Picking up a half-sovereign]\nAasaaaaaaaaah--ow--ooh!!!\n\nFREDDY [springing out of a taxicab] Got one at last. Hallo! [To the\ngirl] Where are the two ladies that were here?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. They walked to the bus when the rain stopped.\n\nFREDDY. And left me with a cab on my hands. Damnation!\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [with grandeur] Never you mind, young man. I'm going\nhome in a taxi. [She sails off to the cab. The driver puts his hand\nbehind him and holds the door firmly shut against her. Quite\nunderstanding his mistrust, she shows him her handful of money].\nEightpence ain't no object to me, Charlie. [He grins and opens the\ndoor]. Angel Court, Drury Lane, round the corner of Micklejohn's oil\nshop. Let's see how fast you can make her hop it. [She gets in and\npulls the door to with a slam as the taxicab starts].\n\nFREDDY. Well, I'm dashed!\n\n\n\nACT II\n\nNext day at 11 a.m.  Higgins's laboratory in Wimpole Street. It is a\nroom on the first floor, looking on the street, and was meant for the\ndrawing-room. The double doors are in the middle of the back hall; and\npersons entering find in the corner to their right two tall file\ncabinets at right angles to one another against the walls. In this\ncorner stands a flat writing-table, on which are a phonograph, a\nlaryngoscope, a row of tiny organ pipes with a bellows, a set of lamp\nchimneys for singing flames with burners attached to a gas plug in the\nwall by an indiarubber tube, several tuning-forks of different sizes, a\nlife-size image of half a human head, showing in section the vocal\norgans, and a box containing a supply of wax cylinders for the\nphonograph.\n\nFurther down the room, on the same side, is a fireplace, with a\ncomfortable leather-covered easy-chair at the side of the hearth\nnearest the door, and a coal-scuttle. There is a clock on the\nmantelpiece. Between the fireplace and the phonograph table is a stand\nfor newspapers.\n\nOn the other side of the central door, to the left of the visitor, is a\ncabinet of shallow drawers. On it is a telephone and the telephone\ndirectory. The corner beyond, and most of the side wall, is occupied by\na grand piano, with the keyboard at the end furthest from the door, and\na bench for the player extending the full length of the keyboard. On\nthe piano is a dessert dish heaped with fruit and sweets, mostly\nchocolates.\n\nThe middle of the room is clear. Besides the easy chair, the piano\nbench, and two chairs at the phonograph table, there is one stray\nchair. It stands near the fireplace. On the walls, engravings; mostly\nPiranesis and mezzotint portraits. No paintings.\n\nPickering is seated at the table, putting down some cards and a\ntuning-fork which he has been using. Higgins is standing up near him,\nclosing two or three file drawers which are hanging out. He appears in\nthe morning light as a robust, vital, appetizing sort of man of forty\nor thereabouts, dressed in a professional-looking black frock-coat with\na white linen collar and black silk tie. He is of the energetic,\nscientific type, heartily, even violently interested in everything that\ncan be studied as a scientific subject, and careless about himself and\nother people, including their feelings. He is, in fact, but for his\nyears and size, rather like a very impetuous baby \"taking notice\"\neagerly and loudly, and requiring almost as much watching to keep him\nout of unintended mischief. His manner varies from genial bullying when\nhe is in a good humor to stormy petulance when anything goes wrong; but\nhe is so entirely frank and void of malice that he remains likeable\neven in his least reasonable moments.\n\nHIGGINS [as he shuts the last drawer] Well, I think that's the whole\nshow.\n\nPICKERING. It's really amazing. I haven't taken half of it in, you know.\n\nHIGGINS. Would you like to go over any of it again?\n\nPICKERING [rising and coming to the fireplace, where he plants himself\nwith his back to the fire] No, thank you; not now. I'm quite done up\nfor this morning.\n\nHIGGINS [following him, and standing beside him on his left] Tired of\nlistening to sounds?\n\nPICKERING. Yes. It's a fearful strain. I rather fancied myself because\nI can pronounce twenty-four distinct vowel sounds; but your hundred and\nthirty beat me. I can't hear a bit of difference between most of them.\n\nHIGGINS [chuckling, and going over to the piano to eat sweets] Oh, that\ncomes with practice. You hear no difference at first; but you keep on\nlistening, and presently you find they're all as different as A from B.\n[Mrs. Pearce looks in: she is Higgins's housekeeper] What's the matter?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [hesitating, evidently perplexed] A young woman wants to\nsee you, sir.\n\nHIGGINS. A young woman! What does she want?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Well, sir, she says you'll be glad to see her when you\nknow what she's come about. She's quite a common girl, sir. Very common\nindeed. I should have sent her away, only I thought perhaps you wanted\nher to talk into your machines. I hope I've not done wrong; but really\nyou see such queer people sometimes--you'll excuse me, I'm sure, sir--\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, that's all right, Mrs. Pearce. Has she an interesting\naccent?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Oh, something dreadful, sir, really. I don't know how you\ncan take an interest in it.\n\nHIGGINS [to Pickering] Let's have her up. Show her up, Mrs. Pearce [he\nrushes across to his working table and picks out a cylinder to use on\nthe phonograph].\n\nMRS. PEARCE [only half resigned to it] Very well, sir. It's for you to\nsay. [She goes downstairs].\n\nHIGGINS. This is rather a bit of luck. I'll show you how I make\nrecords. We'll set her talking; and I'll take it down first in Bell's\nvisible Speech; then in broad Romic; and then we'll get her on the\nphonograph so that you can turn her on as often as you like with the\nwritten transcript before you.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [returning] This is the young woman, sir.\n\nThe flower girl enters in state. She has a hat with three ostrich\nfeathers, orange, sky-blue, and red. She has a nearly clean apron, and\nthe shoddy coat has been tidied a little. The pathos of this deplorable\nfigure, with its innocent vanity and consequential air, touches\nPickering, who has already straightened himself in the presence of Mrs.\nPearce. But as to Higgins, the only distinction he makes between men\nand women is that when he is neither bullying nor exclaiming to the\nheavens against some featherweight cross, he coaxes women as a child\ncoaxes its nurse when it wants to get anything out of her.\n\nHIGGINS [brusquely, recognizing her with unconcealed disappointment,\nand at once, baby-like, making an intolerable grievance of it] Why,\nthis is the girl I jotted down last night. She's no use: I've got all\nthe records I want of the Lisson Grove lingo; and I'm not going to\nwaste another cylinder on it. [To the girl] Be off with you: I don't\nwant you.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Don't you be so saucy. You ain't heard what I come for\nyet. [To Mrs. Pearce, who is waiting at the door for further\ninstruction] Did you tell him I come in a taxi?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Nonsense, girl! what do you think a gentleman like Mr.\nHiggins cares what you came in?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, we are proud! He ain't above giving lessons, not\nhim: I heard him say so. Well, I ain't come here to ask for any\ncompliment; and if my money's not good enough I can go elsewhere.\n\nHIGGINS. Good enough for what?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Good enough for ye--oo. Now you know, don't you? I'm\ncome to have lessons, I am. And to pay for em too: make no mistake.\n\nHIGGINS [stupent] WELL!!! [Recovering his breath with a gasp] What do\nyou expect me to say to you?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Well, if you was a gentleman, you might ask me to sit\ndown, I think. Don't I tell you I'm bringing you business?\n\nHIGGINS. Pickering: shall we ask this baggage to sit down or shall we\nthrow her out of the window?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [running away in terror to the piano, where she turns\nat bay] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--ow--oo! [Wounded and whimpering] I won't be\ncalled a baggage when I've offered to pay like any lady.\n\nMotionless, the two men stare at her from the other side of the room,\namazed.\n\nPICKERING [gently] What is it you want, my girl?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. I want to be a lady in a flower shop stead of selling\nat the corner of Tottenham Court Road. But they won't take me unless I\ncan talk more genteel. He said he could teach me. Well, here I am ready\nto pay him--not asking any favor--and he treats me as if I was dirt.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. How can you be such a foolish ignorant girl as to think\nyou could afford to pay Mr. Higgins?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Why shouldn't I? I know what lessons cost as well as\nyou do; and I'm ready to pay.\n\nHIGGINS. How much?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL [coming back to him, triumphant] Now you're talking! I\nthought you'd come off it when you saw a chance of getting back a bit\nof what you chucked at me last night. [Confidentially] You'd had a drop\nin, hadn't you?\n\nHIGGINS [peremptorily] Sit down.\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Oh, if you're going to make a compliment of it--\n\nHIGGINS [thundering at her] Sit down.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [severely] Sit down, girl. Do as you're told. [She places\nthe stray chair near the hearthrug between Higgins and Pickering, and\nstands behind it waiting for the girl to sit down].\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--oo! [She stands, half rebellious,\nhalf bewildered].\n\nPICKERING [very courteous] Won't you sit down?\n\nLIZA [coyly] Don't mind if I do. [She sits down. Pickering returns to\nthe hearthrug].\n\nHIGGINS. What's your name?\n\nTHE FLOWER GIRL. Liza Doolittle.\n\nHIGGINS [declaiming gravely]\n       Eliza, Elizabeth, Betsy and Bess,\n       They went to the woods to get a bird's nes':\n\nPICKERING. They found a nest with four eggs in it:\n\nHIGGINS.   They took one apiece, and left three in it.\n\nThey laugh heartily at their own wit.\n\nLIZA. Oh, don't be silly.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. You mustn't speak to the gentleman like that.\n\nLIZA. Well, why won't he speak sensible to me?\n\nHIGGINS. Come back to business. How much do you propose to pay me for\nthe lessons?\n\nLIZA. Oh, I know what's right. A lady friend of mine gets French\nlessons for eighteenpence an hour from a real French gentleman. Well,\nyou wouldn't have the face to ask me the same for teaching me my own\nlanguage as you would for French; so I won't give more than a shilling.\nTake it or leave it.\n\nHIGGINS [walking up and down the room, rattling his keys and his cash\nin his pockets] You know, Pickering, if you consider a shilling, not as\na simple shilling, but as a percentage of this girl's income, it works\nout as fully equivalent to sixty or seventy guineas from a millionaire.\n\nPICKERING. How so?\n\nHIGGINS. Figure it out. A millionaire has about 150 pounds a day. She\nearns about half-a-crown.\n\nLIZA [haughtily] Who told you I only--\n\nHIGGINS [continuing] She offers me two-fifths of her day's income for a\nlesson. Two-fifths of a millionaire's income for a day would be\nsomewhere about 60 pounds. It's handsome. By George, it's enormous!\nit's the biggest offer I ever had.\n\nLIZA [rising, terrified] Sixty pounds! What are you talking about? I\nnever offered you sixty pounds. Where would I get--\n\nHIGGINS. Hold your tongue.\n\nLIZA [weeping] But I ain't got sixty pounds. Oh--\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Don't cry, you silly girl. Sit down. Nobody is going to\ntouch your money.\n\nHIGGINS. Somebody is going to touch you, with a broomstick, if you\ndon't stop snivelling. Sit down.\n\nLIZA [obeying slowly] Ah--ah--ah--ow--oo--o! One would think you was my\nfather.\n\nHIGGINS. If I decide to teach you, I'll be worse than two fathers to\nyou. Here [he offers her his silk handkerchief]!\n\nLIZA. What's this for?\n\nHIGGINS. To wipe your eyes. To wipe any part of your face that feels\nmoist. Remember: that's your handkerchief; and that's your sleeve.\nDon't mistake the one for the other if you wish to become a lady in a\nshop.\n\nLiza, utterly bewildered, stares helplessly at him.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. It's no use talking to her like that, Mr. Higgins: she\ndoesn't understand you. Besides, you're quite wrong: she doesn't do it\nthat way at all [she takes the handkerchief].\n\nLIZA [snatching it] Here! You give me that handkerchief. He give it to\nme, not to you.\n\nPICKERING [laughing] He did. I think it must be regarded as her\nproperty, Mrs. Pearce.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [resigning herself] Serve you right, Mr. Higgins.\n\nPICKERING. Higgins: I'm interested. What about the ambassador's garden\nparty? I'll say you're the greatest teacher alive if you make that\ngood. I'll bet you all the expenses of the experiment you can't do it.\nAnd I'll pay for the lessons.\n\nLIZA. Oh, you are real good. Thank you, Captain.\n\nHIGGINS [tempted, looking at her] It's almost irresistible. She's so\ndeliciously low--so horribly dirty--\n\nLIZA [protesting extremely] Ah--ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--oooo!!! I ain't\ndirty: I washed my face and hands afore I come, I did.\n\nPICKERING. You're certainly not going to turn her head with flattery,\nHiggins.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [uneasy] Oh, don't say that, sir: there's more ways than\none of turning a girl's head; and nobody can do it better than Mr.\nHiggins, though he may not always mean it. I do hope, sir, you won't\nencourage him to do anything foolish.\n\nHIGGINS [becoming excited as the idea grows on him] What is life but a\nseries of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never\nlose a chance: it doesn't come every day. I shall make a duchess of\nthis draggletailed guttersnipe.\n\nLIZA [strongly deprecating this view of her] Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--oo!\n\nHIGGINS [carried away] Yes: in six months--in three if she has a good\near and a quick tongue--I'll take her anywhere and pass her off as\nanything. We'll start today: now! this moment! Take her away and clean\nher, Mrs. Pearce. Monkey Brand, if it won't come off any other way. Is\nthere a good fire in the kitchen?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [protesting]. Yes; but--\n\nHIGGINS [storming on] Take all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up\nWhiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper till they\ncome.\n\nLIZA. You're no gentleman, you're not, to talk of such things. I'm a\ngood girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.\n\nHIGGINS. We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman.\nYou've got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her away, Mrs.\nPearce. If she gives you any trouble wallop her.\n\nLIZA [springing up and running between Pickering and Mrs. Pearce for\nprotection] No! I'll call the police, I will.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. But I've no place to put her.\n\nHIGGINS. Put her in the dustbin.\n\nLIZA. Ah--ah--ah--ow--ow--oo!\n\nPICKERING. Oh come, Higgins! be reasonable.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [resolutely] You must be reasonable, Mr. Higgins: really\nyou must. You can't walk over everybody like this.\n\nHiggins, thus scolded, subsides. The hurricane is succeeded by a zephyr\nof amiable surprise.\n\nHIGGINS [with professional exquisiteness of modulation] I walk over\neverybody! My dear Mrs. Pearce, my dear Pickering, I never had the\nslightest intention of walking over anyone. All I propose is that we\nshould be kind to this poor girl. We must help her to prepare and fit\nherself for her new station in life. If I did not express myself\nclearly it was because I did not wish to hurt her delicacy, or yours.\n\nLiza, reassured, steals back to her chair.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [to Pickering] Well, did you ever hear anything like that,\nsir?\n\nPICKERING [laughing heartily] Never, Mrs. Pearce: never.\n\nHIGGINS [patiently] What's the matter?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Well, the matter is, sir, that you can't take a girl up\nlike that as if you were picking up a pebble on the beach.\n\nHIGGINS. Why not?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Why not! But you don't know anything about her. What about\nher parents? She may be married.\n\nLIZA. Garn!\n\nHIGGINS. There! As the girl very properly says, Garn! Married indeed!\nDon't you know that a woman of that class looks a worn out drudge of\nfifty a year after she's married.\n\nLIZA. Who'd marry me?\n\nHIGGINS [suddenly resorting to the most thrillingly beautiful low tones\nin his best elocutionary style] By George, Eliza, the streets will be\nstrewn with the bodies of men shooting themselves for your sake before\nI've done with you.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Nonsense, sir. You mustn't talk like that to her.\n\nLIZA [rising and squaring herself determinedly] I'm going away. He's\noff his chump, he is. I don't want no balmies teaching me.\n\nHIGGINS [wounded in his tenderest point by her insensibility to his\nelocution] Oh, indeed! I'm mad, am I? Very well, Mrs. Pearce: you\nneedn't order the new clothes for her. Throw her out.\n\nLIZA [whimpering] Nah--ow. You got no right to touch me.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. You see now what comes of being saucy. [Indicating the\ndoor] This way, please.\n\nLIZA [almost in tears] I didn't want no clothes. I wouldn't have taken\nthem [she throws away the handkerchief]. I can buy my own clothes.\n\nHIGGINS [deftly retrieving the handkerchief and intercepting her on her\nreluctant way to the door] You're an ungrateful wicked girl. This is my\nreturn for offering to take you out of the gutter and dress you\nbeautifully and make a lady of you.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Stop, Mr. Higgins. I won't allow it. It's you that are\nwicked. Go home to your parents, girl; and tell them to take better\ncare of you.\n\nLIZA. I ain't got no parents. They told me I was big enough to earn my\nown living and turned me out.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Where's your mother?\n\nLIZA. I ain't got no mother. Her that turned me out was my sixth\nstepmother. But I done without them. And I'm a good girl, I am.\n\nHIGGINS. Very well, then, what on earth is all this fuss about? The\ngirl doesn't belong to anybody--is no use to anybody but me. [He goes\nto Mrs. Pearce and begins coaxing]. You can adopt her, Mrs. Pearce: I'm\nsure a daughter would be a great amusement to you. Now don't make any\nmore fuss. Take her downstairs; and--\n\nMRS. PEARCE. But what's to become of her? Is she to be paid anything?\nDo be sensible, sir.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, pay her whatever is necessary: put it down in the\nhousekeeping book. [Impatiently] What on earth will she want with\nmoney? She'll have her food and her clothes. She'll only drink if you\ngive her money.\n\nLIZA [turning on him] Oh you are a brute. It's a lie: nobody ever saw\nthe sign of liquor on me. [She goes back to her chair and plants\nherself there defiantly].\n\nPICKERING [in good-humored remonstrance] Does it occur to you, Higgins,\nthat the girl has some feelings?\n\nHIGGINS [looking critically at her] Oh no, I don't think so. Not any\nfeelings that we need bother about. [Cheerily] Have you, Eliza?\n\nLIZA. I got my feelings same as anyone else.\n\nHIGGINS [to Pickering, reflectively] You see the difficulty?\n\nPICKERING. Eh? What difficulty?\n\nHIGGINS. To get her to talk grammar. The mere pronunciation is easy\nenough.\n\nLIZA. I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Will you please keep to the point, Mr. Higgins. I want to\nknow on what terms the girl is to be here. Is she to have any wages?\nAnd what is to become of her when you've finished your teaching? You\nmust look ahead a little.\n\nHIGGINS [impatiently] What's to become of her if I leave her in the\ngutter? Tell me that, Mrs. Pearce.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. That's her own business, not yours, Mr. Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, when I've done with her, we can throw her back into the\ngutter; and then it will be her own business again; so that's all right.\n\nLIZA. Oh, you've no feeling heart in you: you don't care for nothing\nbut yourself [she rises and takes the floor resolutely]. Here! I've had\nenough of this. I'm going [making for the door]. You ought to be\nashamed of yourself, you ought.\n\nHIGGINS [snatching a chocolate cream from the piano, his eyes suddenly\nbeginning to twinkle with mischief] Have some chocolates, Eliza.\n\nLIZA [halting, tempted] How do I know what might be in them? I've heard\nof girls being drugged by the like of you.\n\nHiggins whips out his penknife; cuts a chocolate in two; puts one half\ninto his mouth and bolts it; and offers her the other half.\n\nHIGGINS. Pledge of good faith, Eliza. I eat one half you eat the other.\n\n[Liza opens her mouth to retort: he pops the half chocolate into it].\nYou shall have boxes of them, barrels of them, every day. You shall\nlive on them. Eh?\n\nLIZA [who has disposed of the chocolate after being nearly choked by\nit] I wouldn't have ate it, only I'm too ladylike to take it out of my\nmouth.\n\nHIGGINS. Listen, Eliza. I think you said you came in a taxi.\n\nLIZA. Well, what if I did? I've as good a right to take a taxi as\nanyone else.\n\nHIGGINS. You have, Eliza; and in future you shall have as many taxis as\nyou want. You shall go up and down and round the town in a taxi every\nday. Think of that, Eliza.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Mr. Higgins: you're tempting the girl. It's not right. She\nshould think of the future.\n\nHIGGINS. At her age! Nonsense! Time enough to think of the future when\nyou haven't any future to think of. No, Eliza: do as this lady does:\nthink of other people's futures; but never think of your own. Think of\nchocolates, and taxis, and gold, and diamonds.\n\nLIZA. No: I don't want no gold and no diamonds. I'm a good girl, I am.\n[She sits down again, with an attempt at dignity].\n\nHIGGINS. You shall remain so, Eliza, under the care of Mrs. Pearce. And\nyou shall marry an officer in the Guards, with a beautiful moustache:\nthe son of a marquis, who will disinherit him for marrying you, but\nwill relent when he sees your beauty and goodness--\n\nPICKERING. Excuse me, Higgins; but I really must interfere. Mrs. Pearce\nis quite right. If this girl is to put herself in your hands for six\nmonths for an experiment in teaching, she must understand thoroughly\nwhat she's doing.\n\nHIGGINS. How can she? She's incapable of understanding anything.\nBesides, do any of us understand what we are doing? If we did, would we\never do it?\n\nPICKERING. Very clever, Higgins; but not sound sense. [To Eliza] Miss\nDoolittle--\n\nLIZA [overwhelmed] Ah--ah--ow--oo!\n\nHIGGINS. There! That's all you get out of Eliza. Ah--ah--ow--oo! No use\nexplaining. As a military man you ought to know that. Give her her\norders: that's what she wants. Eliza: you are to live here for the next\nsix months, learning how to speak beautifully, like a lady in a\nflorist's shop. If you're good and do whatever you're told, you shall\nsleep in a proper bedroom, and have lots to eat, and money to buy\nchocolates and take rides in taxis. If you're naughty and idle you will\nsleep in the back kitchen among the black beetles, and be walloped by\nMrs. Pearce with a broomstick. At the end of six months you shall go to\nBuckingham Palace in a carriage, beautifully dressed. If the King finds\nout you're not a lady, you will be taken by the police to the Tower of\nLondon, where your head will be cut off as a warning to other\npresumptuous flower girls. If you are not found out, you shall have a\npresent of seven-and-sixpence to start life with as a lady in a shop.\nIf you refuse this offer you will be a most ungrateful and wicked girl;\nand the angels will weep for you. [To Pickering] Now are you satisfied,\nPickering? [To Mrs. Pearce] Can I put it more plainly and fairly, Mrs.\nPearce?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [patiently] I think you'd better let me speak to the girl\nproperly in private. I don't know that I can take charge of her or\nconsent to the arrangement at all. Of course I know you don't mean her\nany harm; but when you get what you call interested in people's\naccents, you never think or care what may happen to them or you. Come\nwith me, Eliza.\n\nHIGGINS. That's all right. Thank you, Mrs. Pearce. Bundle her off to\nthe bath-room.\n\nLIZA [rising reluctantly and suspiciously] You're a great bully, you\nare. I won't stay here if I don't like. I won't let nobody wallop me. I\nnever asked to go to Bucknam Palace, I didn't. I was never in trouble\nwith the police, not me. I'm a good girl--\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Don't answer back, girl. You don't understand the\ngentleman. Come with me. [She leads the way to the door, and holds it\nopen for Eliza].\n\nLIZA [as she goes out] Well, what I say is right. I won't go near the\nking, not if I'm going to have my head cut off. If I'd known what I was\nletting myself in for, I wouldn't have come here. I always been a good\ngirl; and I never offered to say a word to him; and I don't owe him\nnothing; and I don't care; and I won't be put upon; and I have my\nfeelings the same as anyone else--\n\nMrs. Pearce shuts the door; and Eliza's plaints are no longer audible.\nPickering comes from the hearth to the chair and sits astride it with\nhis arms on the back.\n\nPICKERING. Excuse the straight question, Higgins. Are you a man of good\ncharacter where women are concerned?\n\nHIGGINS [moodily] Have you ever met a man of good character where women\nare concerned?\n\nPICKERING. Yes: very frequently.\n\nHIGGINS [dogmatically, lifting himself on his hands to the level of the\npiano, and sitting on it with a bounce] Well, I haven't. I find that\nthe moment I let a woman make friends with me, she becomes jealous,\nexacting, suspicious, and a damned nuisance. I find that the moment I\nlet myself make friends with a woman, I become selfish and tyrannical.\nWomen upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that\nthe woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.\n\nPICKERING. At what, for example?\n\nHIGGINS [coming off the piano restlessly] Oh, Lord knows! I suppose the\nwoman wants to live her own life; and the man wants to live his; and\neach tries to drag the other on to the wrong track. One wants to go\nnorth and the other south; and the result is that both have to go east,\nthough they both hate the east wind. [He sits down on the bench at the\nkeyboard]. So here I am, a confirmed old bachelor, and likely to remain\nso.\n\nPICKERING [rising and standing over him gravely] Come, Higgins! You\nknow what I mean. If I'm to be in this business I shall feel\nresponsible for that girl. I hope it's understood that no advantage is\nto be taken of her position.\n\nHIGGINS. What! That thing! Sacred, I assure you. [Rising to explain]\nYou see, she'll be a pupil; and teaching would be impossible unless\npupils were sacred. I've taught scores of American millionairesses how\nto speak English: the best looking women in the world. I'm seasoned.\nThey might as well be blocks of wood. I might as well be a block of\nwood. It's--\n\nMrs. Pearce opens the door. She has Eliza's hat in her hand. Pickering\nretires to the easy-chair at the hearth and sits down.\n\nHIGGINS [eagerly] Well, Mrs. Pearce: is it all right?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [at the door] I just wish to trouble you with a word, if I\nmay, Mr. Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS. Yes, certainly. Come in. [She comes forward]. Don't burn that,\nMrs. Pearce. I'll keep it as a curiosity. [He takes the hat].\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Handle it carefully, sir, please. I had to promise her not\nto burn it; but I had better put it in the oven for a while.\n\nHIGGINS [putting it down hastily on the piano] Oh! thank you. Well,\nwhat have you to say to me?\n\nPICKERING. Am I in the way?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Not at all, sir. Mr. Higgins: will you please be very\nparticular what you say before the girl?\n\nHIGGINS [sternly] Of course. I'm always particular about what I say.\nWhy do you say this to me?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [unmoved] No, sir: you're not at all particular when you've\nmislaid anything or when you get a little impatient. Now it doesn't\nmatter before me: I'm used to it. But you really must not swear before\nthe girl.\n\nHIGGINS [indignantly] I swear! [Most emphatically] I never swear. I\ndetest the habit. What the devil do you mean?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [stolidly] That's what I mean, sir. You swear a great deal\ntoo much. I don't mind your damning and blasting, and what the devil\nand where the devil and who the devil--\n\nHIGGINS. Really! Mrs. Pearce: this language from your lips!\n\nMRS. PEARCE [not to be put off]--but there is a certain word I must ask\nyou not to use. The girl has just used it herself because the bath was\ntoo hot. It begins with the same letter as bath. She knows no better:\nshe learnt it at her mother's knee. But she must not hear it from your\nlips.\n\nHIGGINS [loftily] I cannot charge myself with having ever uttered it,\nMrs. Pearce. [She looks at him steadfastly. He adds, hiding an uneasy\nconscience with a judicial air] Except perhaps in a moment of extreme\nand justifiable excitement.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Only this morning, sir, you applied it to your boots, to\nthe butter, and to the brown bread.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, that! Mere alliteration, Mrs. Pearce, natural to a poet.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Well, sir, whatever you choose to call it, I beg you not\nto let the girl hear you repeat it.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, very well, very well. Is that all?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. No, sir. We shall have to be very particular with this\ngirl as to personal cleanliness.\n\nHIGGINS. Certainly. Quite right. Most important.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. I mean not to be slovenly about her dress or untidy in\nleaving things about.\n\nHIGGINS [going to her solemnly] Just so. I intended to call your\nattention to that [He passes on to Pickering, who is enjoying the\nconversation immensely]. It is these little things that matter,\nPickering. Take care of the pence and the pounds will take care of\nthemselves is as true of personal habits as of money. [He comes to\nanchor on the hearthrug, with the air of a man in an unassailable\nposition].\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Yes, sir. Then might I ask you not to come down to\nbreakfast in your dressing-gown, or at any rate not to use it as a\nnapkin to the extent you do, sir. And if you would be so good as not to\neat everything off the same plate, and to remember not to put the\nporridge saucepan out of your hand on the clean tablecloth, it would be\na better example to the girl. You know you nearly choked yourself with\na fishbone in the jam only last week.\n\nHIGGINS [routed from the hearthrug and drifting back to the piano] I\nmay do these things sometimes in absence of mind; but surely I don't do\nthem habitually. [Angrily] By the way: my dressing-gown smells most\ndamnably of benzine.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. No doubt it does, Mr. Higgins. But if you will wipe your\nfingers--\n\nHIGGINS [yelling] Oh very well, very well: I'll wipe them in my hair in\nfuture.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. I hope you're not offended, Mr. Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS [shocked at finding himself thought capable of an unamiable\nsentiment] Not at all, not at all. You're quite right, Mrs. Pearce: I\nshall be particularly careful before the girl. Is that all?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. No, sir. Might she use some of those Japanese dresses you\nbrought from abroad? I really can't put her back into her old things.\n\nHIGGINS. Certainly. Anything you like. Is that all?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Thank you, sir. That's all. [She goes out].\n\nHIGGINS. You know, Pickering, that woman has the most extraordinary\nideas about me. Here I am, a shy, diffident sort of man. I've never\nbeen able to feel really grown-up and tremendous, like other chaps. And\nyet she's firmly persuaded that I'm an arbitrary overbearing bossing\nkind of person. I can't account for it.\n\nMrs. Pearce returns.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. If you please, sir, the trouble's beginning already.\nThere's a dustman downstairs, Alfred Doolittle, wants to see you. He\nsays you have his daughter here.\n\nPICKERING [rising] Phew! I say! [He retreats to the hearthrug].\n\nHIGGINS [promptly] Send the blackguard up.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Oh, very well, sir. [She goes out].\n\nPICKERING. He may not be a blackguard, Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS. Nonsense. Of course he's a blackguard.\n\nPICKERING. Whether he is or not, I'm afraid we shall have some trouble\nwith him.\n\nHIGGINS [confidently] Oh no: I think not. If there's any trouble he\nshall have it with me, not I with him. And we are sure to get something\ninteresting out of him.\n\nPICKERING. About the girl?\n\nHIGGINS. No. I mean his dialect.\n\nPICKERING. Oh!\n\nMRS. PEARCE [at the door] Doolittle, sir. [She admits Doolittle and\nretires].\n\nAlfred Doolittle is an elderly but vigorous dustman, clad in the\ncostume of his profession, including a hat with a back brim covering\nhis neck and shoulders. He has well marked and rather interesting\nfeatures, and seems equally free from fear and conscience. He has a\nremarkably expressive voice, the result of a habit of giving vent to\nhis feelings without reserve. His present pose is that of wounded honor\nand stern resolution.\n\nDOOLITTLE [at the door, uncertain which of the two gentlemen is his\nman] Professor Higgins?\n\nHIGGINS. Here. Good morning. Sit down.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Morning, Governor. [He sits down magisterially] I come about\na very serious matter, Governor.\n\nHIGGINS [to Pickering] Brought up in Hounslow. Mother Welsh, I should\nthink. [Doolittle opens his mouth, amazed. Higgins continues] What do\nyou want, Doolittle?\n\nDOOLITTLE [menacingly] I want my daughter: that's what I want. See?\n\nHIGGINS. Of course you do. You're her father, aren't you? You don't\nsuppose anyone else wants her, do you? I'm glad to see you have some\nspark of family feeling left. She's upstairs. Take her away at once.\n\nDOOLITTLE [rising, fearfully taken aback] What!\n\nHIGGINS. Take her away. Do you suppose I'm going to keep your daughter\nfor you?\n\nDOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, look here, Governor.  Is this\nreasonable? Is it fair to take advantage of a man like this? The girl\nbelongs to me. You got her. Where do I come in? [He sits down again].\n\nHIGGINS. Your daughter had the audacity to come to my house and ask me\nto teach her how to speak properly so that she could get a place in a\nflower-shop. This gentleman and my housekeeper have been here all the\ntime. [Bullying him] How dare you come here and attempt to blackmail\nme? You sent her here on purpose.\n\nDOOLITTLE [protesting] No, Governor.\n\nHIGGINS. You must have. How else could you possibly know that she is\nhere?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Don't take a man up like that, Governor.\n\nHIGGINS. The police shall take you up. This is a plant--a plot to\nextort money by threats. I shall telephone for the police [he goes\nresolutely to the telephone and opens the directory].\n\nDOOLITTLE. Have I asked you for a brass farthing? I leave it to the\ngentleman here: have I said a word about money?\n\nHIGGINS [throwing the book aside and marching down on Doolittle with a\nposer] What else did you come for?\n\nDOOLITTLE [sweetly] Well, what would a man come for? Be human, governor.\n\nHIGGINS [disarmed] Alfred: did you put her up to it?\n\nDOOLITTLE. So help me, Governor, I never did. I take my Bible oath I\nain't seen the girl these two months past.\n\nHIGGINS. Then how did you know she was here?\n\nDOOLITTLE [\"most musical, most melancholy\"] I'll tell you, Governor, if\nyou'll only let me get a word in. I'm willing to tell you. I'm wanting\nto tell you. I'm waiting to tell you.\n\nHIGGINS. Pickering: this chap has a certain natural gift of rhetoric.\nObserve the rhythm of his native woodnotes wild. \"I'm willing to tell\nyou: I'm wanting to tell you: I'm waiting to tell you.\" Sentimental\nrhetoric! That's the Welsh strain in him. It also accounts for his\nmendacity and dishonesty.\n\nPICKERING. Oh, PLEASE, Higgins: I'm west country myself. [To Doolittle]\nHow did you know the girl was here if you didn't send her?\n\nDOOLITTLE. It was like this, Governor. The girl took a boy in the taxi\nto give him a jaunt. Son of her landlady, he is. He hung about on the\nchance of her giving him another ride home. Well, she sent him back for\nher luggage when she heard you was willing for her to stop here. I met\nthe boy at the corner of Long Acre and Endell Street.\n\nHIGGINS. Public house. Yes?\n\nDOOLITTLE. The poor man's club, Governor: why shouldn't I?\n\nPICKERING. Do let him tell his story, Higgins.\n\nDOOLITTLE. He told me what was up. And I ask you, what was my feelings\nand my duty as a father? I says to the boy, \"You bring me the luggage,\"\nI says--\n\nPICKERING. Why didn't you go for it yourself?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Landlady wouldn't have trusted me with it, Governor. She's\nthat kind of woman: you know. I had to give the boy a penny afore he\ntrusted me with it, the little swine. I brought it to her just to\noblige you like, and make myself agreeable. That's all.\n\nHIGGINS. How much luggage?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Musical instrument, Governor. A few pictures, a trifle of\njewelry, and a bird-cage. She said she didn't want no clothes. What was\nI to think from that, Governor? I ask you as a parent what was I to\nthink?\n\nHIGGINS. So you came to rescue her from worse than death, eh?\n\nDOOLITTLE [appreciatively: relieved at being understood] Just so,\nGovernor. That's right.\n\nPICKERING. But why did you bring her luggage if you intended to take\nher away?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Have I said a word about taking her away? Have I now?\n\nHIGGINS [determinedly] You're going to take her away, double quick. [He\ncrosses to the hearth and rings the bell].\n\nDOOLITTLE [rising] No, Governor. Don't say that. I'm not the man to\nstand in my girl's light. Here's a career opening for her, as you might\nsay; and--\n\nMrs. Pearce opens the door and awaits orders.\n\nHIGGINS. Mrs. Pearce: this is Eliza's father. He has come to take her\naway. Give her to him. [He goes back to the piano, with an air of\nwashing his hands of the whole affair].\n\nDOOLITTLE. No. This is a misunderstanding. Listen here--\n\nMRS. PEARCE. He can't take her away, Mr. Higgins: how can he? You told\nme to burn her clothes.\n\nDOOLITTLE. That's right. I can't carry the girl through the streets\nlike a blooming monkey, can I? I put it to you.\n\nHIGGINS. You have put it to me that you want your daughter. Take your\ndaughter. If she has no clothes go out and buy her some.\n\nDOOLITTLE [desperate] Where's the clothes she come in? Did I burn them\nor did your missus here?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. I am the housekeeper, if you please. I have sent for some\nclothes for your girl. When they come you can take her away. You can\nwait in the kitchen. This way, please.\n\nDoolittle, much troubled, accompanies her to the door; then hesitates;\nfinally turns confidentially to Higgins.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Listen here, Governor. You and me is men of the world, ain't\nwe?\n\nHIGGINS. Oh! Men of the world, are we? You'd better go, Mrs. Pearce.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. I think so, indeed, sir. [She goes, with dignity].\n\nPICKERING. The floor is yours, Mr. Doolittle.\n\nDOOLITTLE [to Pickering] I thank you, Governor. [To Higgins, who takes\nrefuge on the piano bench, a little overwhelmed by the proximity of his\nvisitor; for Doolittle has a professional flavor of dust about him].\nWell, the truth is, I've taken a sort of fancy to you, Governor; and if\nyou want the girl, I'm not so set on having her back home again but\nwhat I might be open to an arrangement. Regarded in the light of a\nyoung woman, she's a fine handsome girl. As a daughter she's not worth\nher keep; and so I tell you straight. All I ask is my rights as a\nfather; and you're the last man alive to expect me to let her go for\nnothing; for I can see you're one of the straight sort, Governor. Well,\nwhat's a five pound note to you? And what's Eliza to me? [He returns to\nhis chair and sits down judicially].\n\nPICKERING. I think you ought to know, Doolittle, that Mr. Higgins's\nintentions are entirely honorable.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Course they are, Governor. If I thought they wasn't, I'd ask\nfifty.\n\nHIGGINS [revolted] Do you mean to say, you callous rascal, that you\nwould sell your daughter for 50 pounds?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Not in a general way I wouldn't; but to oblige a gentleman\nlike you I'd do a good deal, I do assure you.\n\nPICKERING. Have you no morals, man?\n\nDOOLITTLE [unabashed] Can't afford them, Governor. Neither could you if\nyou was as poor as me. Not that I mean any harm, you know. But if Liza\nis going to have a bit out of this, why not me too?\n\nHIGGINS [troubled] I don't know what to do, Pickering. There can be no\nquestion that as a matter of morals it's a positive crime to give this\nchap a farthing. And yet I feel a sort of rough justice in his claim.\n\nDOOLITTLE. That's it, Governor. That's all I say. A father's heart, as\nit were.\n\nPICKERING. Well, I know the feeling; but really it seems hardly right--\n\nDOOLITTLE. Don't say that, Governor. Don't look at it that way. What am\nI, Governors both? I ask you, what am I? I'm one of the undeserving\npoor: that's what I am. Think of what that means to a man. It means\nthat he's up agen middle class morality all the time. If there's\nanything going, and I put in for a bit of it, it's always the same\nstory: \"You're undeserving; so you can't have it.\" But my needs is as\ngreat as the most deserving widow's that ever got money out of six\ndifferent charities in one week for the death of the same husband. I\ndon't need less than a deserving man: I need more. I don't eat less\nhearty than him; and I drink a lot more. I want a bit of amusement,\ncause I'm a thinking man. I want cheerfulness and a song and a band\nwhen I feel low. Well, they charge me just the same for everything as\nthey charge the deserving. What is middle class morality? Just an\nexcuse for never giving me anything. Therefore, I ask you, as two\ngentlemen, not to play that game on me. I'm playing straight with you.\nI ain't pretending to be deserving. I'm undeserving; and I mean to go\non being undeserving. I like it; and that's the truth. Will you take\nadvantage of a man's nature to do him out of the price of his own\ndaughter what he's brought up and fed and clothed by the sweat of his\nbrow until she's growed big enough to be interesting to you two\ngentlemen? Is five pounds unreasonable? I put it to you; and I leave it\nto you.\n\nHIGGINS [rising, and going over to Pickering] Pickering: if we were to\ntake this man in hand for three months, he could choose between a seat\nin the Cabinet and a popular pulpit in Wales.\n\nPICKERING. What do you say to that, Doolittle?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, thank you kindly. I've heard all the\npreachers and all the prime ministers--for I'm a thinking man and game\nfor politics or religion or social reform same as all the other\namusements--and I tell you it's a dog's life anyway you look at it.\nUndeserving poverty is my line. Taking one station in society with\nanother, it's--it's--well, it's the only one that has any ginger in it,\nto my taste.\n\nHIGGINS. I suppose we must give him a fiver.\n\nPICKERING. He'll make a bad use of it, I'm afraid.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Not me, Governor, so help me I won't. Don't you be afraid\nthat I'll save it and spare it and live idle on it. There won't be a\npenny of it left by Monday: I'll have to go to work same as if I'd\nnever had it. It won't pauperize me, you bet. Just one good spree for\nmyself and the missus, giving pleasure to ourselves and employment to\nothers, and satisfaction to you to think it's not been throwed away.\nYou couldn't spend it better.\n\nHIGGINS [taking out his pocket book and coming between Doolittle and\nthe piano] This is irresistible. Let's give him ten. [He offers two\nnotes to the dustman].\n\nDOOLITTLE. No, Governor. She wouldn't have the heart to spend ten; and\nperhaps I shouldn't neither. Ten pounds is a lot of money: it makes a\nman feel prudent like; and then goodbye to happiness. You give me what\nI ask you, Governor: not a penny more, and not a penny less.\n\nPICKERING. Why don't you marry that missus of yours? I rather draw the\nline at encouraging that sort of immorality.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Tell her so, Governor: tell her so. I'm willing. It's me\nthat suffers by it. I've no hold on her. I got to be agreeable to her.\nI got to give her presents. I got to buy her clothes something sinful.\nI'm a slave to that woman, Governor, just because I'm not her lawful\nhusband. And she knows it too. Catch her marrying me! Take my advice,\nGovernor: marry Eliza while she's young and don't know no better. If\nyou don't you'll be sorry for it after. If you do, she'll be sorry for\nit after; but better you than her, because you're a man, and she's only\na woman and don't know how to be happy anyhow.\n\nHIGGINS. Pickering: if we listen to this man another minute, we shall\nhave no convictions left. [To Doolittle] Five pounds I think you said.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Thank you kindly, Governor.\n\nHIGGINS. You're sure you won't take ten?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Not now. Another time, Governor.\n\nHIGGINS [handing him a five-pound note] Here you are.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Thank you, Governor. Good morning.\n\n[He hurries to the door, anxious to get away with his booty. When he\nopens it he is confronted with a dainty and exquisitely clean young\nJapanese lady in a simple blue cotton kimono printed cunningly with\nsmall white jasmine blossoms. Mrs. Pearce is with her. He gets out of\nher way deferentially and apologizes]. Beg pardon, miss.\n\nTHE JAPANESE LADY. Garn! Don't you know your own daughter?\n\n  DOOLITTLE   {exclaiming  Bly me! it's Eliza!\n  HIGGINS     {simul-      What's that! This!\n  PICKERING   {taneously   By Jove!\n\nLIZA. Don't I look silly?\n\nHIGGINS. Silly?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [at the door] Now, Mr. Higgins, please don't say anything\nto make the girl conceited about herself.\n\nHIGGINS [conscientiously] Oh! Quite right, Mrs. Pearce. [To Eliza] Yes:\ndamned silly.\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Please, sir.\n\nHIGGINS [correcting himself] I mean extremely silly.\n\nLIZA. I should look all right with my hat on. [She takes up her hat;\nputs it on; and walks across the room to the fireplace with a\nfashionable air].\n\nHIGGINS. A new fashion, by George! And it ought to look horrible!\n\nDOOLITTLE [with fatherly pride] Well, I never thought she'd clean up as\ngood looking as that, Governor. She's a credit to me, ain't she?\n\nLIZA. I tell you, it's easy to clean up here. Hot and cold water on\ntap, just as much as you like, there is. Woolly towels, there is; and a\ntowel horse so hot, it burns your fingers. Soft brushes to scrub\nyourself, and a wooden bowl of soap smelling like primroses. Now I know\nwhy ladies is so clean. Washing's a treat for them. Wish they saw what\nit is for the like of me!\n\nHIGGINS. I'm glad the bath-room met with your approval.\n\nLIZA. It didn't: not all of it; and I don't care who hears me say it.\nMrs. Pearce knows.\n\nHIGGINS. What was wrong, Mrs. Pearce?\n\nMRS. PEARCE [blandly] Oh, nothing, sir. It doesn't matter.\n\nLIZA. I had a good mind to break it. I didn't know which way to look.\nBut I hung a towel over it, I did.\n\nHIGGINS. Over what?\n\nMRS. PEARCE. Over the looking-glass, sir.\n\nHIGGINS. Doolittle: you have brought your daughter up too strictly.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Me! I never brought her up at all, except to give her a lick\nof a strap now and again. Don't put it on me, Governor. She ain't\naccustomed to it, you see: that's all. But she'll soon pick up your\nfree-and-easy ways.\n\nLIZA. I'm a good girl, I am; and I won't pick up no free and easy ways.\n\nHIGGINS. Eliza: if you say again that you're a good girl, your father\nshall take you home.\n\nLIZA. Not him. You don't know my father. All he come here for was to\ntouch you for some money to get drunk on.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Well, what else would I want money for? To put into the\nplate in church, I suppose. [She puts out her tongue at him. He is so\nincensed by this that Pickering presently finds it necessary to step\nbetween them]. Don't you give me none of your lip; and don't let me\nhear you giving this gentleman any of it neither, or you'll hear from\nme about it. See?\n\nHIGGINS. Have you any further advice to give her before you go,\nDoolittle? Your blessing, for instance.\n\nDOOLITTLE. No, Governor: I ain't such a mug as to put up my children to\nall I know myself. Hard enough to hold them in without that. If you\nwant Eliza's mind improved, Governor, you do it yourself with a strap.\nSo long, gentlemen. [He turns to go].\n\nHIGGINS [impressively] Stop. You'll come regularly to see your\ndaughter. It's your duty, you know. My brother is a clergyman; and he\ncould help you in your talks with her.\n\nDOOLITTLE [evasively] Certainly. I'll come, Governor. Not just this\nweek, because I have a job at a distance. But later on you may depend\non me. Afternoon, gentlemen. Afternoon, ma'am. [He takes off his hat to\nMrs. Pearce, who disdains the salutation and goes out. He winks at\nHiggins, thinking him probably a fellow sufferer from Mrs. Pearce's\ndifficult disposition, and follows her].\n\nLIZA. Don't you believe the old liar. He'd as soon you set a bull-dog\non him as a clergyman. You won't see him again in a hurry.\n\nHIGGINS. I don't want to, Eliza. Do you?\n\nLIZA. Not me. I don't want never to see him again, I don't. He's a\ndisgrace to me, he is, collecting dust, instead of working at his trade.\n\nPICKERING. What is his trade, Eliza?\n\nLIZA. Talking money out of other people's pockets into his own. His\nproper trade's a navvy; and he works at it sometimes too--for\nexercise--and earns good money at it. Ain't you going to call me Miss\nDoolittle any more?\n\nPICKERING. I beg your pardon, Miss Doolittle. It was a slip of the\ntongue.\n\nLIZA. Oh, I don't mind; only it sounded so genteel. I should just like\nto take a taxi to the corner of Tottenham Court Road and get out there\nand tell it to wait for me, just to put the girls in their place a bit.\nI wouldn't speak to them, you know.\n\nPICKERING. Better wait til we get you something really fashionable.\n\nHIGGINS. Besides, you shouldn't cut your old friends now that you have\nrisen in the world. That's what we call snobbery.\n\nLIZA. You don't call the like of them my friends now, I should hope.\nThey've took it out of me often enough with their ridicule when they\nhad the chance; and now I mean to get a bit of my own back. But if I'm\nto have fashionable clothes, I'll wait. I should like to have some.\nMrs. Pearce says you're going to give me some to wear in bed at night\ndifferent to what I wear in the daytime; but it do seem a waste of\nmoney when you could get something to show. Besides, I never could\nfancy changing into cold things on a winter night.\n\nMRS. PEARCE [coming back] Now, Eliza. The new things have come for you\nto try on.\n\nLIZA. Ah--ow--oo--ooh! [She rushes out].\n\nMRS. PEARCE [following her] Oh, don't rush about like that, girl [She\nshuts the door behind her].\n\nHIGGINS. Pickering: we have taken on a stiff job.\n\nPICKERING [with conviction] Higgins: we have.\n\n\n\nACT III\n\nIt is Mrs. Higgins's at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her\ndrawing-room, in a flat on Chelsea embankment, has three windows\nlooking on the river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in\nan older house of the same pretension. The windows are open, giving\naccess to a balcony with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face\nto the windows, you have the fireplace on your left and the door in the\nright-hand wall close to the corner nearest the windows.\n\nMrs. Higgins was brought up on Morris and Burne Jones; and her room,\nwhich is very unlike her son's room in Wimpole Street, is not crowded\nwith furniture and little tables and nicknacks. In the middle of the\nroom there is a big ottoman; and this, with the carpet, the Morris\nwall-papers, and the Morris chintz window curtains and brocade covers\nof the ottoman and its cushions, supply all the ornament, and are much\ntoo handsome to be hidden by odds and ends of useless things. A few\ngood oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery thirty\nyears ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler side of them) are on the\nwalls. The only landscape is a Cecil Lawson on the scale of a Rubens.\nThere is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion\nin her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian costumes which, when\ncaricatured by people who did not understand, led to the absurdities of\npopular estheticism in the eighteen-seventies.\n\nIn the corner diagonally opposite the door Mrs. Higgins, now over sixty\nand long past taking the trouble to dress out of the fashion, sits\nwriting at an elegantly simple writing-table with a bell button within\nreach of her hand. There is a Chippendale chair further back in the\nroom between her and the window nearest her side. At the other side of\nthe room, further forward, is an Elizabethan chair roughly carved in\nthe taste of Inigo Jones. On the same side a piano in a decorated case.\nThe corner between the fireplace and the window is occupied by a divan\ncushioned in Morris chintz.\n\nIt is between four and five in the afternoon.\n\nThe door is opened violently; and Higgins enters with his hat on.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [dismayed] Henry [scolding him]! What are you doing here\nto-day? It is my at home day: you promised not to come. [As he bends to\nkiss her, she takes his hat off, and presents it to him].\n\nHIGGINS. Oh bother! [He throws the hat down on the table].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Go home at once.\n\nHIGGINS [kissing her] I know, mother. I came on purpose.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. But you mustn't. I'm serious, Henry. You offend all my\nfriends: they stop coming whenever they meet you.\n\nHIGGINS. Nonsense! I know I have no small talk; but people don't mind.\n[He sits on the settee].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Oh! don't they? Small talk indeed! What about your large\ntalk? Really, dear, you mustn't stay.\n\nHIGGINS. I must. I've a job for you. A phonetic job.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. No use, dear. I'm sorry; but I can't get round your\nvowels; and though I like to get pretty postcards in your patent\nshorthand, I always have to read the copies in ordinary writing you so\nthoughtfully send me.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, this isn't a phonetic job.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. You said it was.\n\nHIGGINS. Not your part of it. I've picked up a girl.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Does that mean that some girl has picked you up?\n\nHIGGINS. Not at all. I don't mean a love affair.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. What a pity!\n\nHIGGINS. Why?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Well, you never fall in love with anyone under\nforty-five. When will you discover that there are some rather\nnice-looking young women about?\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, I can't be bothered with young women. My idea of a\nloveable woman is something as like you as possible. I shall never get\ninto the way of seriously liking young women: some habits lie too deep\nto be changed. [Rising abruptly and walking about, jingling his money\nand his keys in his trouser pockets] Besides, they're all idiots.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Do you know what you would do if you really loved me,\nHenry?\n\nHIGGINS. Oh bother! What? Marry, I suppose?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. No. Stop fidgeting and take your hands out of your\npockets. [With a gesture of despair, he obeys and sits down again].\nThat's a good boy. Now tell me about the girl.\n\nHIGGINS. She's coming to see you.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. I don't remember asking her.\n\nHIGGINS. You didn't. I asked her. If you'd known her you wouldn't have\nasked her.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Indeed! Why?\n\nHIGGINS. Well, it's like this. She's a common flower girl. I picked her\noff the kerbstone.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. And invited her to my at-home!\n\nHIGGINS [rising and coming to her to coax her] Oh, that'll be all\nright. I've taught her to speak properly; and she has strict orders as\nto her behavior. She's to keep to two subjects: the weather and\neverybody's health--Fine day and How do you do, you know--and not to\nlet herself go on things in general. That will be safe.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Safe! To talk about our health! about our insides!\nperhaps about our outsides! How could you be so silly, Henry?\n\nHIGGINS [impatiently] Well, she must talk about something. [He controls\nhimself and sits down again]. Oh, she'll be all right: don't you fuss.\nPickering is in it with me. I've a sort of bet on that I'll pass her\noff as a duchess in six months. I started on her some months ago; and\nshe's getting on like a house on fire. I shall win my bet. She has a\nquick ear; and she's been easier to teach than my middle-class pupils\nbecause she's had to learn a complete new language. She talks English\nalmost as you talk French.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. That's satisfactory, at all events.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, it is and it isn't.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. What does that mean?\n\nHIGGINS. You see, I've got her pronunciation all right; but you have to\nconsider not only how a girl pronounces, but what she pronounces; and\nthat's where--\n\nThey are interrupted by the parlor-maid, announcing guests.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill. [She withdraws].\n\nHIGGINS. Oh Lord! [He rises; snatches his hat from the table; and makes\nfor the door; but before he reaches it his mother introduces him].\n\nMrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill are the mother and daughter who sheltered\nfrom the rain in Covent Garden. The mother is well bred, quiet, and has\nthe habitual anxiety of straitened means. The daughter has acquired a\ngay air of being very much at home in society: the bravado of genteel\npoverty.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Mrs. Higgins] How do you do? [They shake hands].\n\nMISS EYNSFORD HILL. How d'you do? [She shakes].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [introducing] My son Henry.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Your celebrated son! I have so longed to meet you,\nProfessor Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS [glumly, making no movement in her direction] Delighted. [He\nbacks against the piano and bows brusquely].\n\nMiss EYNSFORD HILL [going to him with confident familiarity] How do you\ndo?\n\nHIGGINS [staring at her] I've seen you before somewhere. I haven't the\nghost of a notion where; but I've heard your voice. [Drearily] It\ndoesn't matter. You'd better sit down.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. I'm sorry to say that my celebrated son has no manners.\nYou mustn't mind him.\n\nMISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] I don't. [She sits in the Elizabethan chair].\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [a little bewildered] Not at all. [She sits on the\nottoman between her daughter and Mrs. Higgins, who has turned her chair\naway from the writing-table].\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, have I been rude? I didn't mean to be. [He goes to the\ncentral window, through which, with his back to the company, he\ncontemplates the river and the flowers in Battersea Park on the\nopposite bank as if they were a frozen dessert.]\n\nThe parlor-maid returns, ushering in Pickering.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Colonel Pickering [She withdraws].\n\nPICKERING. How do you do, Mrs. Higgins?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. So glad you've come. Do you know Mrs. Eynsford Hill--Miss\nEynsford Hill? [Exchange of bows. The Colonel brings the Chippendale\nchair a little forward between Mrs. Hill and Mrs. Higgins, and sits\ndown].\n\nPICKERING. Has Henry told you what we've come for?\n\nHIGGINS [over his shoulder] We were interrupted: damn it!\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Oh Henry, Henry, really!\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [half rising] Are we in the way?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [rising and making her sit down again] No, no. You\ncouldn't have come more fortunately: we want you to meet a friend of\nours.\n\nHIGGINS [turning hopefully] Yes, by George! We want two or three\npeople. You'll do as well as anybody else.\n\nThe parlor-maid returns, ushering Freddy.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Mr. Eynsford Hill.\n\nHIGGINS [almost audibly, past endurance] God of Heaven! another of them.\n\nFREDDY [shaking hands with Mrs. Higgins] Ahdedo?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Very good of you to come. [Introducing] Colonel Pickering.\n\nFREDDY [bowing] Ahdedo?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. I don't think you know my son, Professor Higgins.\n\nFREDDY [going to Higgins] Ahdedo?\n\nHIGGINS [looking at him much as if he were a pickpocket] I'll take my\noath I've met you before somewhere. Where was it?\n\nFREDDY. I don't think so.\n\nHIGGINS [resignedly] It don't matter, anyhow. Sit down. He shakes\nFreddy's hand, and almost slings him on the ottoman with his face to\nthe windows; then comes round to the other side of it.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, here we are, anyhow! [He sits down on the ottoman next\nMrs. Eynsford Hill, on her left.] And now, what the devil are we going\nto talk about until Eliza comes?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Henry: you are the life and soul of the Royal Society's\nsoirees; but really you're rather trying on more commonplace occasions.\n\nHIGGINS. Am I? Very sorry. [Beaming suddenly] I suppose I am, you know.\n[Uproariously] Ha, ha!\n\nMISS EYNSFORD HILL [who considers Higgins quite eligible matrimonially]\nI sympathize. I haven't any small talk. If people would only be frank\nand say what they really think!\n\nHIGGINS [relapsing into gloom] Lord forbid!\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [taking up her daughter's cue] But why?\n\nHIGGINS. What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows;\nbut what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you\nsuppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with\nwhat I really think?\n\nMISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] Is it so very cynical?\n\nHIGGINS. Cynical! Who the dickens said it was cynical? I mean it\nwouldn't be decent.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [seriously] Oh! I'm sure you don't mean that, Mr.\nHiggins.\n\nHIGGINS. You see, we're all savages, more or less. We're supposed to be\ncivilized and cultured--to know all about poetry and philosophy and art\nand science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of\nthese names? [To Miss Hill] What do you know of poetry? [To Mrs. Hill]\nWhat do you know of science? [Indicating Freddy] What does he know of\nart or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know\nof philosophy?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [warningly] Or of manners, Henry?\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID [opening the door] Miss Doolittle. [She withdraws].\n\nHIGGINS [rising hastily and running to Mrs. Higgins] Here she is,\nmother. [He stands on tiptoe and makes signs over his mother's head to\nEliza to indicate to her which lady is her hostess].\n\nEliza, who is exquisitely dressed, produces an impression of such\nremarkable distinction and beauty as she enters that they all rise,\nquite flustered. Guided by Higgins's signals, she comes to Mrs. Higgins\nwith studied grace.\n\nLIZA [speaking with pedantic correctness of pronunciation and great\nbeauty of tone] How do you do, Mrs. Higgins? [She gasps slightly in\nmaking sure of the H in Higgins, but is quite successful]. Mr. Higgins\ntold me I might come.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [cordially] Quite right: I'm very glad indeed to see you.\n\nPICKERING. How do you do, Miss Doolittle?\n\nLIZA [shaking hands with him] Colonel Pickering, is it not?\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I feel sure we have met before, Miss Doolittle. I\nremember your eyes.\n\nLIZA. How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman gracefully in the\nplace just left vacant by Higgins].\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My daughter Clara.\n\nLIZA. How do you do?\n\nCLARA [impulsively] How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman beside\nEliza, devouring her with her eyes].\n\nFREDDY [coming to their side of the ottoman] I've certainly had the\npleasure.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My son Freddy.\n\nLIZA. How do you do?\n\nFreddy bows and sits down in the Elizabethan chair, infatuated.\n\nHIGGINS [suddenly] By George, yes: it all comes back to me! [They stare\nat him]. Covent Garden! [Lamentably] What a damned thing!\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Henry, please! [He is about to sit on the edge of the\ntable]. Don't sit on my writing-table: you'll break it.\n\nHIGGINS [sulkily] Sorry.\n\nHe goes to the divan, stumbling into the fender and over the fire-irons\non his way; extricating himself with muttered imprecations; and\nfinishing his disastrous journey by throwing himself so impatiently on\nthe divan that he almost breaks it. Mrs. Higgins looks at him, but\ncontrols herself and says nothing.\n\nA long and painful pause ensues.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [at last, conversationally] Will it rain, do you think?\n\nLIZA. The shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to\nmove slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any\ngreat change in the barometrical situation.\n\nFREDDY. Ha! ha! how awfully funny!\n\nLIZA. What is wrong with that, young man? I bet I got it right.\n\nFREDDY. Killing!\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I'm sure I hope it won't turn cold. There's so much\ninfluenza about. It runs right through our whole family regularly every\nspring.\n\nLIZA [darkly] My aunt died of influenza: so they said.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [clicks her tongue sympathetically]!!!\n\nLIZA [in the same tragic tone] But it's my belief they done the old\nwoman in.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [puzzled] Done her in?\n\nLIZA. Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She\ncome through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my\nown eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead;\nbut my father he kept ladling gin down her throat til she came to so\nsudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [startled] Dear me!\n\nLIZA [piling up the indictment] What call would a woman with that\nstrength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw\nhat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say\nis, them as pinched it done her in.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. What does doing her in mean?\n\nHIGGINS [hastily] Oh, that's the new small talk. To do a person in\nmeans to kill them.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Eliza, horrified] You surely don't believe that\nyour aunt was killed?\n\nLIZA. Do I not! Them she lived with would have killed her for a\nhat-pin, let alone a hat.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. But it can't have been right for your father to\npour spirits down her throat like that. It might have killed her.\n\nLIZA. Not her. Gin was mother's milk to her. Besides, he'd poured so\nmuch down his own throat that he knew the good of it.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Do you mean that he drank?\n\nLIZA. Drank! My word! Something chronic.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. How dreadful for you!\n\nLIZA. Not a bit. It never did him no harm what I could see. But then he\ndid not keep it up regular. [Cheerfully] On the burst, as you might\nsay, from time to time. And always more agreeable when he had a drop\nin. When he was out of work, my mother used to give him fourpence and\ntell him to go out and not come back until he'd drunk himself cheerful\nand loving-like. There's lots of women has to make their husbands drunk\nto make them fit to live with. [Now quite at her ease] You see, it's\nlike this. If a man has a bit of a conscience, it always takes him when\nhe's sober; and then it makes him low-spirited. A drop of booze just\ntakes that off and makes him happy. [To Freddy, who is in convulsions\nof suppressed laughter] Here! what are you sniggering at?\n\nFREDDY. The new small talk. You do it so awfully well.\n\nLIZA. If I was doing it proper, what was you laughing at? [To Higgins]\nHave I said anything I oughtn't?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [interposing] Not at all, Miss Doolittle.\n\nLIZA. Well, that's a mercy, anyhow. [Expansively] What I always say is--\n\nHIGGINS [rising and looking at his watch] Ahem!\n\nLIZA [looking round at him; taking the hint; and rising] Well: I must\ngo. [They all rise. Freddy goes to the door]. So pleased to have met\nyou. Good-bye. [She shakes hands with Mrs. Higgins].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Good-bye.\n\nLIZA. Good-bye, Colonel Pickering.\n\nPICKERING. Good-bye, Miss Doolittle. [They shake hands].\n\nLIZA [nodding to the others] Good-bye, all.\n\nFREDDY [opening the door for her] Are you walking across the Park, Miss\nDoolittle? If so--\n\nLIZA. Walk! Not bloody likely. [Sensation]. I am going in a taxi. [She\ngoes out].\n\nPickering gasps and sits down. Freddy goes out on the balcony to catch\nanother glimpse of Eliza.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [suffering from shock] Well, I really can't get used\nto the new ways.\n\nCLARA [throwing herself discontentedly into the Elizabethan chair]. Oh,\nit's all right, mamma, quite right. People will think we never go\nanywhere or see anybody if you are so old-fashioned.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. I daresay I am very old-fashioned; but I do hope\nyou won't begin using that expression, Clara. I have got accustomed to\nhear you talking about men as rotters, and calling everything filthy\nand beastly; though I do think it horrible and unladylike. But this\nlast is really too much. Don't you think so, Colonel Pickering?\n\nPICKERING. Don't ask me. I've been away in India for several years; and\nmanners have changed so much that I sometimes don't know whether I'm at\na respectable dinner-table or in a ship's forecastle.\n\nCLARA. It's all a matter of habit. There's no right or wrong in it.\nNobody means anything by it. And it's so quaint, and gives such a smart\nemphasis to things that are not in themselves very witty. I find the\nnew small talk delightful and quite innocent.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [rising] Well, after that, I think it's time for us\nto go.\n\nPickering and Higgins rise.\n\nCLARA [rising] Oh yes: we have three at homes to go to still. Good-bye,\nMrs. Higgins. Good-bye, Colonel Pickering. Good-bye, Professor Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS [coming grimly at her from the divan, and accompanying her to\nthe door] Good-bye. Be sure you try on that small talk at the three\nat-homes. Don't be nervous about it. Pitch it in strong.\n\nCLARA [all smiles] I will. Good-bye. Such nonsense, all this early\nVictorian prudery!\n\nHIGGINS [tempting her] Such damned nonsense!\n\nCLARA. Such bloody nonsense!\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [convulsively] Clara!\n\nCLARA. Ha! ha! [She goes out radiant, conscious of being thoroughly up\nto date, and is heard descending the stairs in a stream of silvery\nlaughter].\n\nFREDDY [to the heavens at large] Well, I ask you [He gives it up, and\ncomes to Mrs. Higgins]. Good-bye.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [shaking hands] Good-bye. Would you like to meet Miss\nDoolittle again?\n\nFREDDY [eagerly] Yes, I should, most awfully.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Well, you know my days.\n\nFREDDY. Yes. Thanks awfully. Good-bye. [He goes out].\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Good-bye, Mr. Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS. Good-bye. Good-bye.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Pickering] It's no use. I shall never be able to\nbring myself to use that word.\n\nPICKERING. Don't. It's not compulsory, you know. You'll get on quite\nwell without it.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Only, Clara is so down on me if I am not positively\nreeking with the latest slang. Good-bye.\n\nPICKERING. Good-bye [They shake hands].\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to Mrs. Higgins] You mustn't mind Clara.\n[Pickering, catching from her lowered tone that this is not meant for\nhim to hear, discreetly joins Higgins at the window]. We're so poor!\nand she gets so few parties, poor child! She doesn't quite know. [Mrs.\nHiggins, seeing that her eyes are moist, takes her hand sympathetically\nand goes with her to the door]. But the boy is nice. Don't you think so?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Oh, quite nice. I shall always be delighted to see him.\n\nMRS. EYNSFORD HILL. Thank you, dear. Good-bye. [She goes out].\n\nHIGGINS [eagerly] Well? Is Eliza presentable [he swoops on his mother\nand drags her to the ottoman, where she sits down in Eliza's place with\nher son on her left]?\n\nPickering returns to his chair on her right.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. You silly boy, of course she's not presentable. She's a\ntriumph of your art and of her dressmaker's; but if you suppose for a\nmoment that she doesn't give herself away in every sentence she utters,\nyou must be perfectly cracked about her.\n\nPICKERING. But don't you think something might be done? I mean\nsomething to eliminate the sanguinary element from her conversation.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Not as long as she is in Henry's hands.\n\nHIGGINS [aggrieved] Do you mean that my language is improper?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. No, dearest: it would be quite proper--say on a canal\nbarge; but it would not be proper for her at a garden party.\n\nHIGGINS [deeply injured] Well I must say--\n\nPICKERING [interrupting him] Come, Higgins: you must learn to know\nyourself. I haven't heard such language as yours since we used to\nreview the volunteers in Hyde Park twenty years ago.\n\nHIGGINS [sulkily] Oh, well, if you say so, I suppose I don't always\ntalk like a bishop.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [quieting Henry with a touch] Colonel Pickering: will you\ntell me what is the exact state of things in Wimpole Street?\n\nPICKERING [cheerfully: as if this completely changed the subject] Well,\nI have come to live there with Henry. We work together at my Indian\nDialects; and we think it more convenient--\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Quite so. I know all about that: it's an excellent\narrangement. But where does this girl live?\n\nHIGGINS. With us, of course. Where would she live?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. But on what terms? Is she a servant? If not, what is she?\n\nPICKERING [slowly] I think I know what you mean, Mrs. Higgins.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, dash me if I do! I've had to work at the girl every day\nfor months to get her to her present pitch. Besides, she's useful. She\nknows where my things are, and remembers my appointments and so forth.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. How does your housekeeper get on with her?\n\nHIGGINS. Mrs. Pearce? Oh, she's jolly glad to get so much taken off her\nhands; for before Eliza came, she had to have to find things and remind\nme of my appointments. But she's got some silly bee in her bonnet about\nEliza. She keeps saying \"You don't think, sir\": doesn't she, Pick?\n\nPICKERING. Yes: that's the formula. \"You don't think, sir.\" That's the\nend of every conversation about Eliza.\n\nHIGGINS. As if I ever stop thinking about the girl and her confounded\nvowels and consonants. I'm worn out, thinking about her, and watching\nher lips and her teeth and her tongue, not to mention her soul, which\nis the quaintest of the lot.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. You certainly are a pretty pair of babies, playing with\nyour live doll.\n\nHIGGINS. Playing! The hardest job I ever tackled: make no mistake about\nthat, mother. But you have no idea how frightfully interesting it is to\ntake a human being and change her into a quite different human being by\ncreating a new speech for her. It's filling up the deepest gulf that\nseparates class from class and soul from soul.\n\nPICKERING [drawing his chair closer to Mrs. Higgins and bending over to\nher eagerly] Yes: it's enormously interesting. I assure you, Mrs.\nHiggins, we take Eliza very seriously. Every week--every day\nalmost--there is some new change. [Closer again] We keep records of\nevery stage--dozens of gramophone disks and photographs--\n\nHIGGINS [assailing her at the other ear] Yes, by George: it's the most\nabsorbing experiment I ever tackled. She regularly fills our lives up;\ndoesn't she, Pick?\n\nPICKERING. We're always talking Eliza.\n\nHIGGINS. Teaching Eliza.\n\nPICKERING. Dressing Eliza.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. What!\n\nHIGGINS. Inventing new Elizas.\n\nHiggins and Pickering, speaking together:\n\n  HIGGINS.    You know, she has the most extraordinary quickness of ear:\n  PICKERING.  I assure you, my dear Mrs. Higgins, that girl\n  HIGGINS.    just like a parrot. I've tried her with every\n  PICKERING.  is a genius. She can play the piano quite beautifully\n  HIGGINS.    possible sort of sound that a human being can make--\n  PICKERING.  We have taken her to classical concerts and to music\n  HIGGINS.    Continental dialects, African dialects, Hottentot\n  PICKERING.  halls; and it's all the same to her: she plays everything\n  HIGGINS.    clicks, things it took me years to get hold of; and\n  PICKERING.  she hears right off when she comes home, whether it's\n  HIGGINS.    she picks them up like a shot, right away, as if she had\n  PICKERING.  Beethoven and Brahms or Lehar and Lionel Morickton;\n  HIGGINS.    been at it all her life.\n  PICKERING.  though six months ago, she'd never as much as touched\n              a piano.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [putting her fingers in her ears, as they are by this time\nshouting one another down with an intolerable noise] Sh--sh--sh--sh!\n[They stop].\n\nPICKERING. I beg your pardon. [He draws his chair back apologetically].\n\nHIGGINS. Sorry. When Pickering starts shouting nobody can get a word in\nedgeways.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Be quiet, Henry. Colonel Pickering: don't you realize\nthat when Eliza walked into Wimpole Street, something walked in with\nher?\n\nPICKERING. Her father did. But Henry soon got rid of him.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. It would have been more to the point if her mother had.\nBut as her mother didn't something else did.\n\nPICKERING. But what?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [unconsciously dating herself by the word] A problem.\n\nPICKERING. Oh, I see. The problem of how to pass her off as a lady.\n\nHIGGINS. I'll solve that problem. I've half solved it already.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. No, you two infinitely stupid male creatures: the problem\nof what is to be done with her afterwards.\n\nHIGGINS. I don't see anything in that. She can go her own way, with all\nthe advantages I have given her.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. The advantages of that poor woman who was here just now!\nThe manners and habits that disqualify a fine lady from earning her own\nliving without giving her a fine lady's income! Is that what you mean?\n\nPICKERING [indulgently, being rather bored] Oh, that will be all right,\nMrs. Higgins. [He rises to go].\n\nHIGGINS [rising also] We'll find her some light employment.\n\nPICKERING. She's happy enough. Don't you worry about her. Good-bye. [He\nshakes hands as if he were consoling a frightened child, and makes for\nthe door].\n\nHIGGINS. Anyhow, there's no good bothering now. The thing's done.\nGood-bye, mother. [He kisses her, and follows Pickering].\n\nPICKERING [turning for a final consolation] There are plenty of\nopenings. We'll do what's right. Good-bye.\n\nHIGGINS [to Pickering as they go out together] Let's take her to the\nShakespear exhibition at Earls Court.\n\nPICKERING. Yes: let's. Her remarks will be delicious.\n\nHIGGINS. She'll mimic all the people for us when we get home.\n\nPICKERING. Ripping. [Both are heard laughing as they go downstairs].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [rises with an impatient bounce, and returns to her work\nat the writing-table. She sweeps a litter of disarranged papers out of\nher way; snatches a sheet of paper from her stationery case; and tries\nresolutely to write. At the third line she gives it up; flings down her\npen; grips the table angrily and exclaims] Oh, men! men!! men!!!\n\n\n\nACT IV\n\nThe Wimpole Street laboratory. Midnight. Nobody in the room. The clock\non the mantelpiece strikes twelve. The fire is not alight: it is a\nsummer night.\n\nPresently Higgins and Pickering are heard on the stairs.\n\nHIGGINS [calling down to Pickering] I say, Pick: lock up, will you. I\nshan't be going out again.\n\nPICKERING. Right. Can Mrs. Pearce go to bed? We don't want anything\nmore, do we?\n\nHIGGINS. Lord, no!\n\nEliza opens the door and is seen on the lighted landing in opera cloak,\nbrilliant evening dress, and diamonds, with fan, flowers, and all\naccessories. She comes to the hearth, and switches on the electric\nlights there. She is tired: her pallor contrasts strongly with her dark\neyes and hair; and her expression is almost tragic. She takes off her\ncloak; puts her fan and flowers on the piano; and sits down on the\nbench, brooding and silent. Higgins, in evening dress, with overcoat\nand hat, comes in, carrying a smoking jacket which he has picked up\ndownstairs. He takes off the hat and overcoat; throws them carelessly\non the newspaper stand; disposes of his coat in the same way; puts on\nthe smoking jacket; and throws himself wearily into the easy-chair at\nthe hearth. Pickering, similarly attired, comes in. He also takes off\nhis hat and overcoat, and is about to throw them on Higgins's when he\nhesitates.\n\nPICKERING. I say: Mrs. Pearce will row if we leave these things lying\nabout in the drawing-room.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, chuck them over the bannisters into the hall. She'll find\nthem there in the morning and put them away all right. She'll think we\nwere drunk.\n\nPICKERING. We are, slightly. Are there any letters?\n\nHIGGINS. I didn't look. [Pickering takes the overcoats and hats and\ngoes down stairs. Higgins begins half singing half yawning an air from\nLa Fanciulla del Golden West. Suddenly he stops and exclaims] I wonder\nwhere the devil my slippers are!\n\nEliza looks at him darkly; then leaves the room.\n\nHiggins yawns again, and resumes his song. Pickering returns, with the\ncontents of the letter-box in his hand.\n\nPICKERING. Only circulars, and this coroneted billet-doux for you. [He\nthrows the circulars into the fender, and posts himself on the\nhearthrug, with his back to the grate].\n\nHIGGINS [glancing at the billet-doux] Money-lender. [He throws the\nletter after the circulars].\n\nEliza returns with a pair of large down-at-heel slippers. She places\nthem on the carpet before Higgins, and sits as before without a word.\n\nHIGGINS [yawning again] Oh Lord! What an evening! What a crew! What a\nsilly tomfoollery! [He raises his shoe to unlace it, and catches sight\nof the slippers. He stops unlacing and looks at them as if they had\nappeared there of their own accord]. Oh! they're there, are they?\n\nPICKERING [stretching himself] Well, I feel a bit tired. It's been a\nlong day. The garden party, a dinner party, and the opera! Rather too\nmuch of a good thing. But you've won your bet, Higgins. Eliza did the\ntrick, and something to spare, eh?\n\nHIGGINS [fervently] Thank God it's over!\n\nEliza flinches violently; but they take no notice of her; and she\nrecovers herself and sits stonily as before.\n\nPICKERING. Were you nervous at the garden party? I was. Eliza didn't\nseem a bit nervous.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, she wasn't nervous. I knew she'd be all right. No, it's\nthe strain of putting the job through all these months that has told on\nme. It was interesting enough at first, while we were at the phonetics;\nbut after that I got deadly sick of it. If I hadn't backed myself to do\nit I should have chucked the whole thing up two months ago. It was a\nsilly notion: the whole thing has been a bore.\n\nPICKERING. Oh come! the garden party was frightfully exciting. My heart\nbegan beating like anything.\n\nHIGGINS. Yes, for the first three minutes. But when I saw we were going\nto win hands down, I felt like a bear in a cage, hanging about doing\nnothing. The dinner was worse: sitting gorging there for over an hour,\nwith nobody but a damned fool of a fashionable woman to talk to! I tell\nyou, Pickering, never again for me. No more artificial duchesses. The\nwhole thing has been simple purgatory.\n\nPICKERING. You've never been broken in properly to the social routine.\n[Strolling over to the piano] I rather enjoy dipping into it\noccasionally myself: it makes me feel young again. Anyhow, it was a\ngreat success: an immense success. I was quite frightened once or twice\nbecause Eliza was doing it so well. You see, lots of the real people\ncan't do it at all: they're such fools that they think style comes by\nnature to people in their position; and so they never learn. There's\nalways something professional about doing a thing superlatively well.\n\nHIGGINS. Yes: that's what drives me mad: the silly people don't know\ntheir own silly business. [Rising] However, it's over and done with;\nand now I can go to bed at last without dreading tomorrow.\n\nEliza's beauty becomes murderous.\n\nPICKERING. I think I shall turn in too. Still, it's been a great\noccasion: a triumph for you. Good-night. [He goes].\n\nHIGGINS [following him] Good-night. [Over his shoulder, at the door]\nPut out the lights, Eliza; and tell Mrs. Pearce not to make coffee for\nme in the morning: I'll take tea. [He goes out].\n\nEliza tries to control herself and feel indifferent as she rises and\nwalks across to the hearth to switch off the lights. By the time she\ngets there she is on the point of screaming. She sits down in Higgins's\nchair and holds on hard to the arms. Finally she gives way and flings\nherself furiously on the floor raging.\n\nHIGGINS [in despairing wrath outside] What the devil have I done with\nmy slippers? [He appears at the door].\n\nLIZA [snatching up the slippers, and hurling them at him one after the\nother with all her force] There are your slippers. And there. Take your\nslippers; and may you never have a day's luck with them!\n\nHIGGINS [astounded] What on earth--! [He comes to her]. What's the\nmatter? Get up. [He pulls her up]. Anything wrong?\n\nLIZA [breathless] Nothing wrong--with YOU. I've won your bet for you,\nhaven't I? That's enough for you. _I_ don't matter, I suppose.\n\nHIGGINS. YOU won my bet! You! Presumptuous insect! _I_ won it. What did\nyou throw those slippers at me for?\n\nLIZA. Because I wanted to smash your face. I'd like to kill you, you\nselfish brute. Why didn't you leave me where you picked me out of--in\nthe gutter? You thank God it's all over, and that now you can throw me\nback again there, do you? [She crisps her fingers, frantically].\n\nHIGGINS [looking at her in cool wonder] The creature IS nervous, after\nall.\n\nLIZA [gives a suffocated scream of fury, and instinctively darts her\nnails at his face]!!\n\nHIGGINS [catching her wrists] Ah! would you? Claws in, you cat. How\ndare you show your temper to me? Sit down and be quiet. [He throws her\nroughly into the easy-chair].\n\nLIZA [crushed by superior strength and weight] What's to become of me?\nWhat's to become of me?\n\nHIGGINS. How the devil do I know what's to become of you? What does it\nmatter what becomes of you?\n\nLIZA. You don't care. I know you don't care. You wouldn't care if I was\ndead. I'm nothing to you--not so much as them slippers.\n\nHIGGINS [thundering] THOSE slippers.\n\nLIZA [with bitter submission] Those slippers. I didn't think it made\nany difference now.\n\nA pause. Eliza hopeless and crushed. Higgins a little uneasy.\n\nHIGGINS [in his loftiest manner] Why have you begun going on like this?\nMay I ask whether you complain of your treatment here?\n\nLIZA. No.\n\nHIGGINS. Has anybody behaved badly to you? Colonel Pickering? Mrs.\nPearce? Any of the servants?\n\nLIZA. No.\n\nHIGGINS. I presume you don't pretend that I have treated you badly.\n\nLIZA. No.\n\nHIGGINS. I am glad to hear it. [He moderates his tone]. Perhaps you're\ntired after the strain of the day. Will you have a glass of champagne?\n[He moves towards the door].\n\nLIZA. No. [Recollecting her manners] Thank you.\n\nHIGGINS [good-humored again] This has been coming on you for some days.\nI suppose it was natural for you to be anxious about the garden party.\nBut that's all over now. [He pats her kindly on the shoulder. She\nwrithes]. There's nothing more to worry about.\n\nLIZA. No. Nothing more for you to worry about. [She suddenly rises and\ngets away from him by going to the piano bench, where she sits and\nhides her face]. Oh God! I wish I was dead.\n\nHIGGINS [staring after her in sincere surprise] Why? in heaven's name,\nwhy? [Reasonably, going to her] Listen to me, Eliza. All this\nirritation is purely subjective.\n\nLIZA. I don't understand. I'm too ignorant.\n\nHIGGINS. It's only imagination. Low spirits and nothing else. Nobody's\nhurting you. Nothing's wrong. You go to bed like a good girl and sleep\nit off. Have a little cry and say your prayers: that will make you\ncomfortable.\n\nLIZA. I heard YOUR prayers. \"Thank God it's all over!\"\n\nHIGGINS [impatiently] Well, don't you thank God it's all over? Now you\nare free and can do what you like.\n\nLIZA [pulling herself together in desperation] What am I fit for? What\nhave you left me fit for? Where am I to go? What am I to do? What's to\nbecome of me?\n\nHIGGINS [enlightened, but not at all impressed] Oh, that's what's\nworrying you, is it? [He thrusts his hands into his pockets, and walks\nabout in his usual manner, rattling the contents of his pockets, as if\ncondescending to a trivial subject out of pure kindness]. I shouldn't\nbother about it if I were you. I should imagine you won't have much\ndifficulty in settling yourself, somewhere or other, though I hadn't\nquite realized that you were going away. [She looks quickly at him: he\ndoes not look at her, but examines the dessert stand on the piano and\ndecides that he will eat an apple]. You might marry, you know. [He\nbites a large piece out of the apple, and munches it noisily]. You see,\nEliza, all men are not confirmed old bachelors like me and the Colonel.\nMost men are the marrying sort (poor devils!); and you're not\nbad-looking; it's quite a pleasure to look at you sometimes--not now,\nof course, because you're crying and looking as ugly as the very devil;\nbut when you're all right and quite yourself, you're what I should call\nattractive. That is, to the people in the marrying line, you\nunderstand. You go to bed and have a good nice rest; and then get up\nand look at yourself in the glass; and you won't feel so cheap.\n\nEliza again looks at him, speechless, and does not stir.\n\nThe look is quite lost on him: he eats his apple with a dreamy\nexpression of happiness, as it is quite a good one.\n\nHIGGINS [a genial afterthought occurring to him] I daresay my mother\ncould find some chap or other who would do very well--\n\nLIZA. We were above that at the corner of Tottenham Court Road.\n\nHIGGINS [waking up] What do you mean?\n\nLIZA. I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of\nme I'm not fit to sell anything else. I wish you'd left me where you\nfound me.\n\nHIGGINS [slinging the core of the apple decisively into the grate]\nTosh, Eliza. Don't you insult human relations by dragging all this cant\nabout buying and selling into it. You needn't marry the fellow if you\ndon't like him.\n\nLIZA. What else am I to do?\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, lots of things. What about your old idea of a florist's\nshop? Pickering could set you up in one: he's lots of money.\n[Chuckling] He'll have to pay for all those togs you have been wearing\ntoday; and that, with the hire of the jewellery, will make a big hole\nin two hundred pounds. Why, six months ago you would have thought it\nthe millennium to have a flower shop of your own. Come! you'll be all\nright. I must clear off to bed: I'm devilish sleepy. By the way, I came\ndown for something: I forget what it was.\n\nLIZA. Your slippers.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh yes, of course. You shied them at me. [He picks them up,\nand is going out when she rises and speaks to him].\n\nLIZA. Before you go, sir--\n\nHIGGINS [dropping the slippers in his surprise at her calling him sir]\nEh?\n\nLIZA. Do my clothes belong to me or to Colonel Pickering?\n\nHIGGINS [coming back into the room as if her question were the very\nclimax of unreason] What the devil use would they be to Pickering?\n\nLIZA. He might want them for the next girl you pick up to experiment on.\n\nHIGGINS [shocked and hurt] Is THAT the way you feel towards us?\n\nLIZA. I don't want to hear anything more about that. All I want to know\nis whether anything belongs to me. My own clothes were burnt.\n\nHIGGINS. But what does it matter? Why need you start bothering about\nthat in the middle of the night?\n\nLIZA. I want to know what I may take away with me. I don't want to be\naccused of stealing.\n\nHIGGINS [now deeply wounded] Stealing! You shouldn't have said that,\nEliza. That shows a want of feeling.\n\nLIZA. I'm sorry. I'm only a common ignorant girl; and in my station I\nhave to be careful. There can't be any feelings between the like of you\nand the like of me. Please will you tell me what belongs to me and what\ndoesn't?\n\nHIGGINS [very sulky] You may take the whole damned houseful if you\nlike. Except the jewels. They're hired. Will that satisfy you? [He\nturns on his heel and is about to go in extreme dudgeon].\n\nLIZA [drinking in his emotion like nectar, and nagging him to provoke a\nfurther supply] Stop, please. [She takes off her jewels]. Will you take\nthese to your room and keep them safe? I don't want to run the risk of\ntheir being missing.\n\nHIGGINS [furious] Hand them over. [She puts them into his hands]. If\nthese belonged to me instead of to the jeweler, I'd ram them down your\nungrateful throat. [He perfunctorily thrusts them into his pockets,\nunconsciously decorating himself with the protruding ends of the\nchains].\n\nLIZA [taking a ring off] This ring isn't the jeweler's: it's the one\nyou bought me in Brighton. I don't want it now. [Higgins dashes the\nring violently into the fireplace, and turns on her so threateningly\nthat she crouches over the piano with her hands over her face, and\nexclaims] Don't you hit me.\n\nHIGGINS. Hit you! You infamous creature, how dare you accuse me of such\na thing? It is you who have hit me. You have wounded me to the heart.\n\nLIZA [thrilling with hidden joy] I'm glad. I've got a little of my own\nback, anyhow.\n\nHIGGINS [with dignity, in his finest professional style] You have\ncaused me to lose my temper: a thing that has hardly ever happened to\nme before. I prefer to say nothing more tonight. I am going to bed.\n\nLIZA [pertly] You'd better leave a note for Mrs. Pearce about the\ncoffee; for she won't be told by me.\n\nHIGGINS [formally] Damn Mrs. Pearce; and damn the coffee; and damn you;\nand damn my own folly in having lavished MY hard-earned knowledge and\nthe treasure of my regard and intimacy on a heartless guttersnipe. [He\ngoes out with impressive decorum, and spoils it by slamming the door\nsavagely].\n\nEliza smiles for the first time; expresses her feelings by a wild\npantomime in which an imitation of Higgins's exit is confused with her\nown triumph; and finally goes down on her knees on the hearthrug to\nlook for the ring.\n\n\n\nACT V\n\nMrs. Higgins's drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as before. The\nparlor-maid comes in.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID [at the door]  Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with\nColonel Pickering.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Well, show them up.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. They're using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to the\npolice, I think.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. What!\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr. Henry's\nin a state, mam. I thought I'd better tell you.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a state it\nwould have been more surprising. Tell them to come up when they've\nfinished with the police. I suppose he's lost something.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, maam [going].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry and\nthe Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send for her.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam.\n\nHiggins bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a state.\n\nHIGGINS. Look here, mother: here's a confounded thing!\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience and\nkisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it?\n\nHIGGINS. Eliza's bolted.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have frightened\nher.\n\nHIGGINS. Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as usual,\nto turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going to bed she\nchanged her clothes and went right off: her bed wasn't slept in. She\ncame in a cab for her things before seven this morning; and that fool\nMrs. Pearce let her have them without telling me a word about it. What\nam I to do?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Do without, I'm afraid, Henry. The girl has a perfect\nright to leave if she chooses.\n\nHIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I can't find\nanything. I don't know what appointments I've got. I'm-- [Pickering\ncomes in. Mrs. Higgins puts down her pen and turns away from the\nwriting-table].\n\nPICKERING [shaking hands] Good-morning, Mrs. Higgins. Has Henry told\nyou? [He sits down on the ottoman].\n\nHIGGINS. What does that ass of an inspector say? Have you offered a\nreward?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You don't mean to say you\nhave set the police after Eliza?\n\nHIGGINS. Of course. What are the police for? What else could we do? [He\nsits in the Elizabethan chair].\n\nPICKERING. The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really think he\nsuspected us of some improper purpose.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Well, of course he did. What right have you to go to the\npolice and give the girl's name as if she were a thief, or a lost\numbrella, or something? Really! [She sits down again, deeply vexed].\n\nHIGGINS. But we want to find her.\n\nPICKERING. We can't let her go like this, you know, Mrs. Higgins. What\nwere we to do?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. You have no more sense, either of you, than two children.\nWhy--\n\nThe parlor-maid comes in and breaks off the conversation.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Mr. Henry: a gentleman wants to see you very\nparticular. He's been sent on from Wimpole Street.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, bother! I can't see anyone now. Who is it?\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. A Mr. Doolittle, Sir.\n\nPICKERING. Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman?\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Dustman! Oh no, sir: a gentleman.\n\nHIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it's some relative of\nhers that she's gone to. Somebody we know nothing about. [To the\nparlor-maid] Send him up, quick.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, Sir. [She goes].\n\nHIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives! now we shall\nhear something. [He sits down in the Chippendale chair].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Do you know any of her people?\n\nPICKERING. Only her father: the fellow we told you about.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID [announcing] Mr. Doolittle. [She withdraws].\n\nDoolittle enters. He is brilliantly dressed in a new fashionable\nfrock-coat, with white waistcoat and grey trousers. A flower in his\nbuttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, and patent leather shoes complete the\neffect. He is too concerned with the business he has come on to notice\nMrs. Higgins. He walks straight to Higgins, and accosts him with\nvehement reproach.\n\nDOOLITTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this? You\ndone this.\n\nHIGGINS. Done what, man?\n\nDOOLITTLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat. Look at this\ncoat.\n\nPICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Eliza! not she. Not half. Why would she buy me clothes?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Good-morning, Mr. Doolittle. Won't you sit down?\n\nDOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has forgotten\nhis hostess] Asking your pardon, ma'am. [He approaches her and shakes\nher proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on the ottoman, on\nPickering's right]. I am that full of what has happened to me that I\ncan't think of anything else.\n\nHIGGINS. What the dickens has happened to you?\n\nDOOLITTLE. I shouldn't mind if it had only happened to me: anything\nmight happen to anybody and nobody to blame but Providence, as you\nmight say. But this is something that you done to me: yes, you, Henry\nHiggins.\n\nHIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? That's the point.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Have you lost her?\n\nHIGGINS. Yes.\n\nDOOLITTLE. You have all the luck, you have. I ain't found her; but\nshe'll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me up\nand delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.\n\nHIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over Doolittle] You're\nraving. You're drunk. You're mad. I gave you five pounds. After that I\nhad two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour. I've never\nseen you since.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or did you\nnot write a letter to an old blighter in America that was giving five\nmillions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the world, and that\nwanted you to invent a universal language for him?\n\nHIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down again\ncarelessly].\n\nDOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did you not\nwrite a letter to him to say that the most original moralist at present\nin England, to the best of your knowledge, was Alfred Doolittle, a\ncommon dustman.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly joke of\nthe kind.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid on me\nright enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show that Americans\nis not like us: that they recognize and respect merit in every class of\nlife, however humble. Them words is in his blooming will, in which,\nHenry Higgins, thanks to your silly joking, he leaves me a share in his\nPre-digested Cheese Trust worth three thousand a year on condition that\nI lecture for his Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as\nthey ask me up to six times a year.\n\nHIGGINS. The devil he does! Whew! [Brightening suddenly] What a lark!\n\nPICKERING. A safe thing for you, Doolittle. They won't ask you twice.\n\nDOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue in the\nface, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman of me that I\nobject to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me? I was happy. I was\nfree. I touched pretty nigh everybody for money when I wanted it, same\nas I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now I am worrited; tied neck and\nheels; and everybody touches me for money. It's a fine thing for you,\nsays my solicitor. Is it? says I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I\nsays. When I was a poor man and had a solicitor once when they found a\npram in the dust cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me\nshut of him as quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove\nme out of the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and\nnothing to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't\nlive unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not let\ndo a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and touch me for\nit. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world except two or three\nthat wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and not a decent week's\nwages among the lot of them. I have to live for others and not for\nmyself: that's middle class morality. You talk of losing Eliza. Don't\nyou be anxious: I bet she's on my doorstep by this: she that could\nsupport herself easy by selling flowers if I wasn't respectable. And\nthe next one to touch me will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn\nto speak middle class language from you, instead of speaking proper\nEnglish. That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you\ndone it for.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all this\nif you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept this\nbequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel Pickering?\n\nPICKERING. I believe so.\n\nDOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That's the\ntragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I haven't the\nnerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated. Intimidated, ma'am:\nthat's what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the\nworkhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job\nas a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit,\nI could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor\nmight as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They\ndon't know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor,\nhave nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted\nthree thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the\nexpression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had my provocation).\nThey've got you every way you turn: it's a choice between the Skilly of\nthe workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven't the\nnerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought\nup. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their\ntip; and I'll look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son\nhas brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you're not going to do anything\nfoolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza's future.\nYou can provide for her now.\n\nDOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma'am; I'm expected to\nprovide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.\n\nHIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he can't provide for her. He shan't\nprovide for her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him five pounds for\nher. Doolittle: either you're an honest man or a rogue.\n\nDOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us: a\nlittle of both.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no right\nto take her as well.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Henry: don't be absurd. If you really want to know where\nEliza is, she is upstairs.\n\nHIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her\ndownstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [rising and following him] Be quiet, Henry. Sit down.\n\nHIGGINS. I--\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Sit down, dear; and listen to me.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh very well, very well, very well. [He throws himself\nungraciously on the ottoman, with his face towards the windows]. But I\nthink you might have told me this half an hour ago.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Eliza came to me this morning. She passed the night\npartly walking about in a rage, partly trying to throw herself into the\nriver and being afraid to, and partly in the Carlton Hotel. She told me\nof the brutal way you two treated her.\n\nHIGGINS [bounding up again] What!\n\nPICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs. Higgins, she's been telling you\nstories. We didn't treat her brutally. We hardly said a word to her;\nand we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on Higgins].\nHiggins: did you bully her after I went to bed?\n\nHIGGINS. Just the other way about. She threw my slippers in my face.\nShe behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her the slightest\nprovocation. The slippers came bang into my face the moment I entered\nthe room--before I had uttered a word. And used perfectly awful\nlanguage.\n\nPICKERING [astonished] But why? What did we do to her?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl is\nnaturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn't she, Mr. Doolittle?\n\nDOOLITTLE. Very tender-hearted, ma'am. Takes after me.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She worked\nvery hard for you, Henry! I don't think you quite realize what anything\nin the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems\nthat when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing\nfor you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never\nsaid a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it\nwas all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then\nyou were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! _I_ should\nhave thrown the fire-irons at you.\n\nHIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to\nbed. Did we, Pick?\n\nPICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?\n\nPICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell\nher how splendid she'd been.\n\nHIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn't make\nspeeches to her, if that's what you mean.\n\nPICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate.\nIs she very angry?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well, I'm\nafraid she won't go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr.\nDoolittle is able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but\nshe says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let\nbygones be bygones.\n\nHIGGINS [furious] Is she, by George? Ho!\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask her to\ncome down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite enough of my\ntime.\n\nHIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let us\nput on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of\nthe mud. [He flings himself sulkily into the Elizabethan chair].\n\nDOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, Henry Higgins! have some\nconsideration for my feelings as a middle class man.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Remember your promise, Henry. [She presses the\nbell-button on the writing-table]. Mr. Doolittle: will you be so good\nas to step out on the balcony for a moment. I don't want Eliza to have\nthe shock of your news until she has made it up with these two\ngentlemen. Would you mind?\n\nDOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her off my\nhands. [He disappears through the window].\n\nThe parlor-maid answers the bell. Pickering sits down in Doolittle's\nplace.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Ask Miss Doolittle to come down, please.\n\nTHE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam. [She goes out].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Now, Henry: be good.\n\nHIGGINS. I am behaving myself perfectly.\n\nPICKERING. He is doing his best, Mrs. Higgins.\n\nA pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs; and\nbegins to whistle.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Henry, dearest, you don't look at all nice in that\nattitude.\n\nHIGGINS [pulling himself together] I was not trying to look nice,\nmother.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. It doesn't matter, dear. I only wanted to make you speak.\n\nHIGGINS. Why?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Because you can't speak and whistle at the same time.\n\nHiggins groans. Another very trying pause.\n\nHIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil is that girl?\nAre we to wait here all day?\n\nEliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly\nconvincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little\nwork-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much taken\naback to rise.\n\nLIZA. How do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite well?\n\nHIGGINS [choking] Am I-- [He can say no more].\n\nLIZA. But of course you are: you are never ill. So glad to see you\nagain, Colonel Pickering. [He rises hastily; and they shake hands].\nQuite chilly this morning, isn't it? [She sits down on his left. He\nsits beside her].\n\nHIGGINS. Don't you dare try this game on me. I taught it to you; and it\ndoesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a fool.\n\nEliza takes a piece of needlework from her basket, and begins to stitch\nat it, without taking the least notice of this outburst.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman could resist\nsuch an invitation.\n\nHIGGINS. You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will\njolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven't put into her head\nor a word that I haven't put into her mouth. I tell you I have created\nthis thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now\nshe pretends to play the fine lady with me.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [placidly] Yes, dear; but you'll sit down, won't you?\n\nHiggins sits down again, savagely.\n\nLIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins, and working\naway deftly] Will you drop me altogether now that the experiment is\nover, Colonel Pickering?\n\nPICKERING. Oh don't. You mustn't think of it as an experiment. It\nshocks me, somehow.\n\nLIZA. Oh, I'm only a squashed cabbage leaf.\n\nPICKERING [impulsively] No.\n\nLIZA [continuing quietly]--but I owe so much to you that I should be\nvery unhappy if you forgot me.\n\nPICKERING. It's very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle.\n\nLIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous\nto everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice\nmanners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn't it? You see it was so\nvery difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always\nbefore me. I was brought up to be just like him, unable to control\nmyself, and using bad language on the slightest provocation. And I\nshould never have known that ladies and gentlemen didn't behave like\nthat if you hadn't been there.\n\nHIGGINS. Well!!\n\nPICKERING. Oh, that's only his way, you know. He doesn't mean it.\n\nLIZA. Oh, I didn't mean it either, when I was a flower girl. It was\nonly my way. But you see I did it; and that's what makes the difference\nafter all.\n\nPICKERING. No doubt. Still, he taught you to speak; and I couldn't have\ndone that, you know.\n\nLIZA [trivially] Of course: that is his profession.\n\nHIGGINS. Damnation!\n\nLIZA [continuing] It was just like learning to dance in the fashionable\nway: there was nothing more than that in it. But do you know what began\nmy real education?\n\nPICKERING. What?\n\nLIZA [stopping her work for a moment] Your calling me Miss Doolittle\nthat day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of\nself-respect for me. [She resumes her stitching]. And there were a\nhundred little things you never noticed, because they came naturally to\nyou. Things about standing up and taking off your hat and opening\ndoors--\n\nPICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.\n\nLIZA. Yes: things that showed you thought and felt about me as if I\nwere something better than a scullerymaid; though of course I know you\nwould have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had been let in\nthe drawing-room. You never took off your boots in the dining room when\nI was there.\n\nPICKERING. You mustn't mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over\nthe place.\n\nLIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But it\nmade such a difference to me that you didn't do it. You see, really and\ntruly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the\nproper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a\nflower girl is not how she behaves, but how she's treated. I shall\nalways be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats\nme as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to\nyou, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Please don't grind your teeth, Henry.\n\nPICKERING. Well, this is really very nice of you, Miss Doolittle.\n\nLIZA. I should like you to call me Eliza, now, if you would.\n\nPICKERING. Thank you. Eliza, of course.\n\nLIZA. And I should like Professor Higgins to call me Miss Doolittle.\n\nHIGGINS. I'll see you damned first.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Henry! Henry!\n\nPICKERING [laughing] Why don't you slang back at him? Don't stand it.\nIt would do him a lot of good.\n\nLIZA. I can't. I could have done it once; but now I can't go back to\nit. Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I\ntried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You\ntold me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country,\nit picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I\nam a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can\nspeak nothing but yours. That's the real break-off with the corner of\nTottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.\n\nPICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you're coming back to Wimpole Street,\naren't you? You'll forgive Higgins?\n\nHIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find\nout how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in\nthree weeks without me at her elbow.\n\nDoolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified\nreproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his daughter, who,\nwith her back to the window, is unconscious of his approach.\n\nPICKERING. He's incorrigible, Eliza. You won't relapse, will you?\n\nLIZA. No: Not now. Never again. I have learnt my lesson. I don't\nbelieve I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried. [Doolittle\ntouches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work, losing her\nself-possession utterly at the spectacle of her father's splendor]\nA--a--a--a--a--ah--ow--ooh!\n\nHIGGINS [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A--a--a--a--ahowooh!\nA--a--a--a--ahowooh ! A--a--a--a--ahowooh! Victory! Victory! [He throws\nhimself on the divan, folding his arms, and spraddling arrogantly].\n\nDOOLITTLE. Can you blame the girl? Don't look at me like that, Eliza.\nIt ain't my fault. I've come into money.\n\nLIZA.  You must have touched a millionaire this time, dad.\n\nDOOLITTLE. I have. But I'm dressed something special today. I'm going\nto St. George's, Hanover Square. Your stepmother is going to marry me.\n\nLIZA [angrily] You're going to let yourself down to marry that low\ncommon woman!\n\nPICKERING [quietly] He ought to, Eliza. [To Doolittle] Why has she\nchanged her mind?\n\nDOOLITTLE [sadly] Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle class\nmorality claims its victim. Won't you put on your hat, Liza, and come\nand see me turned off?\n\nLIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I--I'll [almost sobbing] I'll demean\nmyself. And get insulted for my pains, like enough.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Don't be afraid: she never comes to words with anyone now,\npoor woman! respectability has broke all the spirit out of her.\n\nPICKERING [squeezing Eliza's elbow gently] Be kind to them, Eliza. Make\nthe best of it.\n\nLIZA [forcing a little smile for him through her vexation] Oh well,\njust to show there's no ill feeling. I'll be back in a moment. [She\ngoes out].\n\nDOOLITTLE [sitting down beside Pickering] I feel uncommon nervous about\nthe ceremony, Colonel. I wish you'd come and see me through it.\n\nPICKERING. But you've been through it before, man. You were married to\nEliza's mother.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Who told you that, Colonel?\n\nPICKERING. Well, nobody told me. But I concluded naturally--\n\nDOOLITTLE. No: that ain't the natural way, Colonel: it's only the\nmiddle class way. My way was always the undeserving way. But don't say\nnothing to Eliza. She don't know: I always had a delicacy about telling\nher.\n\nPICKERING. Quite right. We'll leave it so, if you don't mind.\n\nDOOLITTLE. And you'll come to the church, Colonel, and put me through\nstraight?\n\nPICKERING. With pleasure. As far as a bachelor can.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. May I come, Mr. Doolittle? I should be very sorry to miss\nyour wedding.\n\nDOOLITTLE. I should indeed be honored by your condescension, ma'am; and\nmy poor old woman would take it as a tremenjous compliment. She's been\nvery low, thinking of the happy days that are no more.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [rising] I'll order the carriage and get ready. [The men\nrise, except Higgins]. I shan't be more than fifteen minutes. [As she\ngoes to the door Eliza comes in, hatted and buttoning her gloves]. I'm\ngoing to the church to see your father married, Eliza. You had better\ncome in the brougham with me. Colonel Pickering can go on with the\nbridegroom.\n\nMrs. Higgins goes out. Eliza comes to the middle of the room between\nthe centre window and the ottoman. Pickering joins her.\n\nDOOLITTLE. Bridegroom! What a word! It makes a man realize his\nposition, somehow. [He takes up his hat and goes towards the door].\n\nPICKERING. Before I go, Eliza, do forgive him and come back to us.\n\nLIZA. I don't think papa would allow me. Would you, dad?\n\nDOOLITTLE [sad but magnanimous] They played you off very cunning,\nEliza, them two sportsmen. If it had been only one of them, you could\nhave nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of them chaperoned\nthe other, as you might say. [To Pickering] It was artful of you,\nColonel; but I bear no malice: I should have done the same myself. I\nbeen the victim of one woman after another all my life; and I don't\ngrudge you two getting the better of Eliza. I shan't interfere. It's\ntime for us to go, Colonel. So long, Henry. See you in St. George's,\nEliza. [He goes out].\n\nPICKERING [coaxing] Do stay with us, Eliza. [He follows Doolittle].\n\nEliza goes out on the balcony to avoid being alone with Higgins. He\nrises and joins her there. She immediately comes back into the room and\nmakes for the door; but he goes along the balcony quickly and gets his\nback to the door before she reaches it.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, Eliza, you've had a bit of your own back, as you call\nit. Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable? Or do you\nwant any more?\n\nLIZA. You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with\nyour tempers and fetch and carry for you.\n\nHIGGINS. I haven't said I wanted you back at all.\n\nLIZA. Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?\n\nHIGGINS. About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you\njust as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature; and I\ndon't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as\nColonel Pickering's.\n\nLIZA. That's not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.\n\nHIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.\n\nLIZA. I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman,\nfacing the window]. The same to everybody.\n\nHIGGINS. Just so.\n\nLIZA. Like father.\n\nHIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the\ncomparison at all points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father is\nnot a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station of life to\nwhich his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously] The great secret,\nEliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other\nparticular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human\nsouls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no\nthird-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.\n\nLIZA. Amen. You are a born preacher.\n\nHIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but\nwhether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.\n\nLIZA [with sudden sincerity] I don't care how you treat me. I don't\nmind your swearing at me. I don't mind a black eye: I've had one before\nthis. But [standing up and facing him] I won't be passed over.\n\nHIGGINS. Then get out of my way; for I won't stop for you. You talk\nabout me as if I were a motor bus.\n\nLIZA. So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no consideration\nfor anyone. But I can do without you: don't think I can't.\n\nHIGGINS. I know you can. I told you you could.\n\nLIZA [wounded, getting away from him to the other side of the ottoman\nwith her face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute. You wanted to\nget rid of me.\n\nHIGGINS. Liar.\n\nLIZA. Thank you. [She sits down with dignity].\n\nHIGGINS. You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do\nwithout YOU.\n\nLIZA [earnestly] Don't you try to get round me. You'll HAVE to do\nwithout me.\n\nHIGGINS [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own\nspark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you,\nEliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something\nfrom your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I\nhave grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.\n\nLIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book\nof photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the\nmachine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.\n\nHIGGINS. I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you\ncan take away the voice and the face. They are not you.\n\nLIZA. Oh, you ARE a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as\nsome could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and\nagain she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the\nlast minute. And you don't care a bit for her. And you don't care a bit\nfor me.\n\nHIGGINS. I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that\nhas come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or\nanyone ask?\n\nLIZA. I won't care for anybody that doesn't care for me.\n\nHIGGINS. Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her Covent\nGarden pronunciation with professional exactness] s'yollin voylets\n[selling violets], isn't it?\n\nLIZA. Don't sneer at me. It's mean to sneer at me.\n\nHIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become\neither the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous\ncontempt for Commercialism. I don't and won't trade in affection. You\ncall me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim on me by fetching my\nslippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman\nfetching a man's slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch YOUR\nslippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face.\nNo use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who\ncares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good\nfellowship; for you'll get nothing else. You've had a thousand times as\nmuch out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your\nlittle dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my\ncreation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly face.\n\nLIZA. What did you do it for if you didn't care for me?\n\nHIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job.\n\nLIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.\n\nHIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been\nafraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There's\nonly one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing things. Cowards,\nyou notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.\n\nLIZA. I'm no preacher: I don't notice things like that. I notice that\nyou don't notice me.\n\nHIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: you're an\nidiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them\nbefore you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work\nwithout caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not\nintimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back\nor go to the devil: which you please.\n\nLIZA. What am I to come back for?\n\nHIGGINS [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to\nher] For the fun of it. That's why I took you on.\n\nLIZA [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I don't\ndo everything you want me to?\n\nHIGGINS. Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don't do everything\nYOU want me to.\n\nLIZA. And live with my stepmother?\n\nHIGGINS. Yes, or sell flowers.\n\nLIZA. Oh! if I only COULD go back to my flower basket! I should be\nindependent of both you and father and all the world! Why did you take\nmy independence from me? Why did I give it up? I'm a slave now, for all\nmy fine clothes.\n\nHIGGINS. Not a bit. I'll adopt you as my daughter and settle money on\nyou if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering?\n\nLIZA [looking fiercely round at him] I wouldn't marry YOU if you asked\nme; and you're nearer my age than what he is.\n\nHIGGINS [gently] Than he is: not \"than what he is.\"\n\nLIZA [losing her temper and rising] I'll talk as I like. You're not my\nteacher now.\n\nHIGGINS [reflectively] I don't suppose Pickering would, though. He's as\nconfirmed an old bachelor as I am.\n\nLIZA. That's not what I want; and don't you think it. I've always had\nchaps enough wanting me that way. Freddy Hill writes to me twice and\nthree times a day, sheets and sheets.\n\nHIGGINS [disagreeably surprised] Damn his impudence! [He recoils and\nfinds himself sitting on his heels].\n\nLIZA. He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me.\n\nHIGGINS [getting off the ottoman] You have no right to encourage him.\n\nLIZA. Every girl has a right to be loved.\n\nHIGGINS. What! By fools like that?\n\nLIZA. Freddy's not a fool. And if he's weak and poor and wants me, may\nbe he'd make me happier than my betters that bully me and don't want me.\n\nHIGGINS. Can he MAKE anything of you? That's the point.\n\nLIZA. Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us\nmaking anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I\nonly want to be natural.\n\nHIGGINS. In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy?\nIs that it?\n\nLIZA. No I don't. That's not the sort of feeling I want from you. And\ndon't you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad\ngirl if I'd liked. I've seen more of some things than you, for all your\nlearning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them\neasy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute.\n\nHIGGINS. Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling\nabout?\n\nLIZA [much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I'm a common\nignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I'm not dirt under\nyour feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the\ndresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I\ncome--came--to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and\nnot forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like.\n\nHIGGINS. Well, of course. That's just how I feel. And how Pickering\nfeels. Eliza: you're a fool.\n\nLIZA. That's not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at\nthe writing-table in tears].\n\nHIGGINS. It's all you'll get until you stop being a common idiot. If\nyou're going to be a lady, you'll have to give up feeling neglected if\nthe men you know don't spend half their time snivelling over you and\nthe other half giving you black eyes. If you can't stand the coldness\nof my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work\ntil you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and\nsquabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it's a fine life, the life\nof the gutter. It's real: it's warm: it's violent: you can feel it\nthrough the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any\ntraining or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical\nMusic and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish,\ndon't you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like.\nMarry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick\npair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you\nwith. If you can't appreciate what you've got, you'd better get what\nyou can appreciate.\n\nLIZA [desperate] Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I can't talk to you: you\nturn everything against me: I'm always in the wrong. But you know very\nwell all the time that you're nothing but a bully. You know I can't go\nback to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in\nthe world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn't bear to\nlive with a low common man after you two; and it's wicked and cruel of\nyou to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to\nWimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father's. But\ndon't you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled\non and talked down. I'll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he's able to\nsupport me.\n\nHIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an\nambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the\nLord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I'm\nnot going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.\n\nLIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven't forgot what you\nsaid a minute ago; and I won't be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a\npuppy. If I can't have kindness, I'll have independence.\n\nHIGGINS. Independence? That's middle class blasphemy. We are all\ndependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.\n\nLIZA [rising determinedly] I'll let you see whether I'm dependent on\nyou. If you can preach, I can teach. I'll go and be a teacher.\n\nHIGGINS. What'll you teach, in heaven's name?\n\nLIZA. What you taught me. I'll teach phonetics.\n\nHIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha!\n\nLIZA. I'll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean.\n\nHIGGINS [rising in a fury] What! That impostor! that humbug! that\ntoadying ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries! You take one\nstep in his direction and I'll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her].\nDo you hear?\n\nLIZA [defiantly non-resistant] Wring away. What do I care? I knew you'd\nstrike me some day. [He lets her go, stamping with rage at having\nforgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that he stumbles back into\nhis seat on the ottoman]. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a\nfool I was not to think of it before! You can't take away the knowledge\nyou gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil\nand kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That's done you,\nHenry Higgins, it has. Now I don't care that [snapping her fingers] for\nyour bullying and your big talk. I'll advertize it in the papers that\nyour duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she'll\nteach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a\nthousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet\nand being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to\nlift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.\n\nHIGGINS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But it's\nbetter than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding\nspectacles, isn't it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said I'd make a\nwoman of you; and I have. I like you like this.\n\nLIZA. Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I'm not afraid of\nyou, and can do without you.\n\nHIGGINS. Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were\nlike a millstone round my neck. Now you're a tower of strength: a\nconsort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors\ntogether instead of only two men and a silly girl.\n\nMrs. Higgins returns, dressed for the wedding. Eliza instantly becomes\ncool and elegant.\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. The carriage is waiting, Eliza. Are you ready?\n\nLIZA. Quite. Is the Professor coming?\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. Certainly not. He can't behave himself in church. He\nmakes remarks out loud all the time on the clergyman's pronunciation.\n\nLIZA. Then I shall not see you again, Professor. Good bye. [She goes to\nthe door].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS [coming to Higgins] Good-bye, dear.\n\nHIGGINS. Good-bye, mother. [He is about to kiss her, when he recollects\nsomething]. Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stilton cheese,\nwill you? And buy me a pair of reindeer gloves, number eights, and a\ntie to match that new suit of mine, at Eale & Binman's. You can choose\nthe color. [His cheerful, careless, vigorous voice shows that he is\nincorrigible].\n\nLIZA [disdainfully] Buy them yourself. [She sweeps out].\n\nMRS. HIGGINS. I'm afraid you've spoiled that girl, Henry. But never\nmind, dear: I'll buy you the tie and gloves.\n\nHIGGINS [sunnily] Oh, don't bother. She'll buy em all right enough.\nGood-bye.\n\nThey kiss. Mrs. Higgins runs out. Higgins, left alone, rattles his cash\nin his pocket; chuckles; and disports himself in a highly\nself-satisfied manner.\n\n                    ***********************\n\nThe rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed, would\nhardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their\nlazy dependence on the ready-makes and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in\nwhich Romance keeps its stock of \"happy endings\" to misfit all stories.\nNow, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of\nthe transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common\nenough. Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of\nresolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne set them the example\nby playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she\nbegan by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions have\nassumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a\nromance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable,\nnot only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless\nassumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to\nanyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine\ninstinct in particular.\n\nEliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was\nnot coquetting: she was announcing a well-considered decision. When a\nbachelor interests, and dominates, and teaches, and becomes important\nto a spinster, as Higgins with Eliza, she always, if she has character\nenough to be capable of it, considers very seriously indeed whether she\nwill play for becoming that bachelor's wife, especially if he is so\nlittle interested in marriage that a determined and devoted woman might\ncapture him if she set herself resolutely to do it. Her decision will\ndepend a good deal on whether she is really free to choose; and that,\nagain, will depend on her age and income. If she is at the end of her\nyouth, and has no security for her livelihood, she will marry him\nbecause she must marry anybody who will provide for her. But at Eliza's\nage a good-looking girl does not feel that pressure; she feels free to\npick and choose. She is therefore guided by her instinct in the matter.\nEliza's instinct tells her not to marry Higgins. It does not tell her\nto give him up. It is not in the slightest doubt as to his remaining\none of the strongest personal interests in her life. It would be very\nsorely strained if there was another woman likely to supplant her with\nhim. But as she feels sure of him on that last point, she has no doubt\nat all as to her course, and would not have any, even if the difference\nof twenty years in age, which seems so great to youth, did not exist\nbetween them.\n\nAs our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion, let us see\nwhether we cannot discover some reason in it. When Higgins excused his\nindifference to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible\nrival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate\nold-bachelordom. The case is uncommon only to the extent that\nremarkable mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a\nsufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity\nof character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art\nof her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a\nstandard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides\neffecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of\nbeauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This\nmakes him a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people\nwho have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or\ndisagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting,\nsculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of\nsex if they come at all. The word passion means nothing else to them;\nand that Higgins could have a passion for phonetics and idealize his\nmother instead of Eliza, would seem to them absurd and unnatural.\nNevertheless, when we look round and see that hardly anyone is too ugly\nor disagreeable to find a wife or a husband if he or she wants one,\nwhilst many old maids and bachelors are above the average in quality\nand culture, we cannot help suspecting that the disentanglement of sex\nfrom the associations with which it is so commonly confused, a\ndisentanglement which persons of genius achieve by sheer intellectual\nanalysis, is sometimes produced or aided by parental fascination.\n\nNow, though Eliza was incapable of thus explaining to herself Higgins's\nformidable powers of resistance to the charm that prostrated Freddy at\nthe first glance, she was instinctively aware that she could never\nobtain a complete grip of him, or come between him and his mother (the\nfirst necessity of the married woman). To put it shortly, she knew that\nfor some mysterious reason he had not the makings of a married man in\nhim, according to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would\nbe his nearest and fondest and warmest interest. Even had there been no\nmother-rival, she would still have refused to accept an interest in\nherself that was secondary to philosophic interests. Had Mrs. Higgins\ndied, there would still have been Milton and the Universal Alphabet.\nLandor's remark that to those who have the greatest power of loving,\nlove is a secondary affair, would not have recommended Landor to Eliza.\nPut that along with her resentment of Higgins's domineering\nsuperiority, and her mistrust of his coaxing cleverness in getting\nround her and evading her wrath when he had gone too far with his\nimpetuous bullying, and you will see that Eliza's instinct had good\ngrounds for warning her not to marry her Pygmalion.\n\nAnd now, whom did Eliza marry? For if Higgins was a predestinate old\nbachelor, she was most certainly not a predestinate old maid. Well,\nthat can be told very shortly to those who have not guessed it from the\nindications she has herself given them.\n\nAlmost immediately after Eliza is stung into proclaiming her considered\ndetermination not to marry Higgins, she mentions the fact that young\nMr. Frederick Eynsford Hill is pouring out his love for her daily\nthrough the post. Now Freddy is young, practically twenty years younger\nthan Higgins: he is a gentleman (or, as Eliza would qualify him, a\ntoff), and speaks like one; he is nicely dressed, is treated by the\nColonel as an equal, loves her unaffectedly, and is not her master, nor\never likely to dominate her in spite of his advantage of social\nstanding. Eliza has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all\nwomen love to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. \"When\nyou go to women,\" says Nietzsche, \"take your whip with you.\" Sensible\ndespots have never confined that precaution to women: they have taken\ntheir whips with them when they have dealt with men, and been slavishly\nidealized by the men over whom they have flourished the whip much more\nthan by women. No doubt there are slavish women as well as slavish men;\nand women, like men, admire those that are stronger than themselves.\nBut to admire a strong person and to live under that strong person's\nthumb are two different things. The weak may not be admired and\nhero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they\nnever seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too\ngood for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long\nemergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional\nstrength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if\nthey have a stronger partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a\ntruth everywhere in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine,\nnot only do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference\nfor them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a\nlouder roar \"the first lion thinks the last a bore.\" The man or woman\nwho feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other quality in a\npartner than strength.\n\nThe converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong people who\ndo not frighten them too much; and this often leads them to make the\nmistake we describe metaphorically as \"biting off more than they can\nchew.\" They want too much for too little; and when the bargain is\nunreasonable beyond all bearing, the union becomes impossible: it ends\nin the weaker party being either discarded or borne as a cross, which\nis worse. People who are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well,\nare often in these difficulties.\n\nThis being the state of human affairs, what is Eliza fairly sure to do\nwhen she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she look forward to\na lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers or to a lifetime of Freddy\nfetching hers? There can be no doubt about the answer. Unless Freddy is\nbiologically repulsive to her, and Higgins biologically attractive to a\ndegree that overwhelms all her other instincts, she will, if she\nmarries either of them, marry Freddy.\n\nAnd that is just what Eliza did.\n\nComplications ensued; but they were economic, not romantic. Freddy had\nno money and no occupation. His mother's jointure, a last relic of the\nopulence of Largelady Park, had enabled her to struggle along in\nEarlscourt with an air of gentility, but not to procure any serious\nsecondary education for her children, much less give the boy a\nprofession. A clerkship at thirty shillings a week was beneath Freddy's\ndignity, and extremely distasteful to him besides. His prospects\nconsisted of a hope that if he kept up appearances somebody would do\nsomething for him. The something appeared vaguely to his imagination as\na private secretaryship or a sinecure of some sort. To his mother it\nperhaps appeared as a marriage to some lady of means who could not\nresist her boy's niceness. Fancy her feelings when he married a flower\ngirl who had become declassee under extraordinary circumstances which\nwere now notorious!\n\nIt is true that Eliza's situation did not seem wholly ineligible. Her\nfather, though formerly a dustman, and now fantastically disclassed,\nhad become extremely popular in the smartest society by a social talent\nwhich triumphed over every prejudice and every disadvantage. Rejected\nby the middle class, which he loathed, he had shot up at once into the\nhighest circles by his wit, his dustmanship (which he carried like a\nbanner), and his Nietzschean transcendence of good and evil. At\nintimate ducal dinners he sat on the right hand of the Duchess; and in\ncountry houses he smoked in the pantry and was made much of by the\nbutler when he was not feeding in the dining-room and being consulted\nby cabinet ministers. But he found it almost as hard to do all this on\nfour thousand a year as Mrs. Eynsford Hill to live in Earlscourt on an\nincome so pitiably smaller that I have not the heart to disclose its\nexact figure. He absolutely refused to add the last straw to his burden\nby contributing to Eliza's support.\n\nThus Freddy and Eliza, now Mr. and Mrs. Eynsford Hill, would have spent\na penniless honeymoon but for a wedding present of 500 pounds from the\nColonel to Eliza. It lasted a long time because Freddy did not know how\nto spend money, never having had any to spend, and Eliza, socially\ntrained by a pair of old bachelors, wore her clothes as long as they\nheld together and looked pretty, without the least regard to their\nbeing many months out of fashion. Still, 500 pounds will not last two\nyoung people for ever; and they both knew, and Eliza felt as well, that\nthey must shift for themselves in the end. She could quarter herself on\nWimpole Street because it had come to be her home; but she was quite\naware that she ought not to quarter Freddy there, and that it would not\nbe good for his character if she did.\n\nNot that the Wimpole Street bachelors objected. When she consulted\nthem, Higgins declined to be bothered about her housing problem when\nthat solution was so simple. Eliza's desire to have Freddy in the house\nwith her seemed of no more importance than if she had wanted an extra\npiece of bedroom furniture. Pleas as to Freddy's character, and the\nmoral obligation on him to earn his own living, were lost on Higgins.\nHe denied that Freddy had any character, and declared that if he tried\nto do any useful work some competent person would have the trouble of\nundoing it: a procedure involving a net loss to the community, and\ngreat unhappiness to Freddy himself, who was obviously intended by\nNature for such light work as amusing Eliza, which, Higgins declared,\nwas a much more useful and honorable occupation than working in the\ncity. When Eliza referred again to her project of teaching phonetics,\nHiggins abated not a jot of his violent opposition to it. He said she\nwas not within ten years of being qualified to meddle with his pet\nsubject; and as it was evident that the Colonel agreed with him, she\nfelt she could not go against them in this grave matter, and that she\nhad no right, without Higgins's consent, to exploit the knowledge he\nhad given her; for his knowledge seemed to her as much his private\nproperty as his watch: Eliza was no communist. Besides, she was\nsuperstitiously devoted to them both, more entirely and frankly after\nher marriage than before it.\n\nIt was the Colonel who finally solved the problem, which had cost him\nmuch perplexed cogitation. He one day asked Eliza, rather shyly,\nwhether she had quite given up her notion of keeping a flower shop. She\nreplied that she had thought of it, but had put it out of her head,\nbecause the Colonel had said, that day at Mrs. Higgins's, that it would\nnever do. The Colonel confessed that when he said that, he had not\nquite recovered from the dazzling impression of the day before. They\nbroke the matter to Higgins that evening. The sole comment vouchsafed\nby him very nearly led to a serious quarrel with Eliza. It was to the\neffect that she would have in Freddy an ideal errand boy.\n\nFreddy himself was next sounded on the subject. He said he had been\nthinking of a shop himself; though it had presented itself to his\npennilessness as a small place in which Eliza should sell tobacco at\none counter whilst he sold newspapers at the opposite one. But he\nagreed that it would be extraordinarily jolly to go early every morning\nwith Eliza to Covent Garden and buy flowers on the scene of their first\nmeeting: a sentiment which earned him many kisses from his wife. He\nadded that he had always been afraid to propose anything of the sort,\nbecause Clara would make an awful row about a step that must damage her\nmatrimonial chances, and his mother could not be expected to like it\nafter clinging for so many years to that step of the social ladder on\nwhich retail trade is impossible.\n\nThis difficulty was removed by an event highly unexpected by Freddy's\nmother. Clara, in the course of her incursions into those artistic\ncircles which were the highest within her reach, discovered that her\nconversational qualifications were expected to include a grounding in\nthe novels of Mr. H.G. Wells. She borrowed them in various directions\nso energetically that she swallowed them all within two months. The\nresult was a conversion of a kind quite common today. A modern Acts of\nthe Apostles would fill fifty whole Bibles if anyone were capable of\nwriting it.\n\nPoor Clara, who appeared to Higgins and his mother as a disagreeable\nand ridiculous person, and to her own mother as in some inexplicable\nway a social failure, had never seen herself in either light; for,\nthough to some extent ridiculed and mimicked in West Kensington like\neverybody else there, she was accepted as a rational and normal--or\nshall we say inevitable?--sort of human being. At worst they called her\nThe Pusher; but to them no more than to herself had it ever occurred\nthat she was pushing the air, and pushing it in a wrong direction.\nStill, she was not happy. She was growing desperate. Her one asset, the\nfact that her mother was what the Epsom greengrocer called a carriage\nlady had no exchange value, apparently. It had prevented her from\ngetting educated, because the only education she could have afforded\nwas education with the Earlscourt green grocer's daughter. It had led\nher to seek the society of her mother's class; and that class simply\nwould not have her, because she was much poorer than the greengrocer,\nand, far from being able to afford a maid, could not afford even a\nhousemaid, and had to scrape along at home with an illiberally treated\ngeneral servant. Under such circumstances nothing could give her an air\nof being a genuine product of Largelady Park. And yet its tradition\nmade her regard a marriage with anyone within her reach as an\nunbearable humiliation. Commercial people and professional people in a\nsmall way were odious to her. She ran after painters and novelists; but\nshe did not charm them; and her bold attempts to pick up and practise\nartistic and literary talk irritated them. She was, in short, an utter\nfailure, an ignorant, incompetent, pretentious, unwelcome, penniless,\nuseless little snob; and though she did not admit these\ndisqualifications (for nobody ever faces unpleasant truths of this kind\nuntil the possibility of a way out dawns on them) she felt their\neffects too keenly to be satisfied with her position.\n\nClara had a startling eyeopener when, on being suddenly wakened to\nenthusiasm by a girl of her own age who dazzled her and produced in her\na gushing desire to take her for a model, and gain her friendship, she\ndiscovered that this exquisite apparition had graduated from the gutter\nin a few months' time. It shook her so violently, that when Mr. H. G.\nWells lifted her on the point of his puissant pen, and placed her at\nthe angle of view from which the life she was leading and the society\nto which she clung appeared in its true relation to real human needs\nand worthy social structure, he effected a conversion and a conviction\nof sin comparable to the most sensational feats of General Booth or\nGypsy Smith. Clara's snobbery went bang. Life suddenly began to move\nwith her. Without knowing how or why, she began to make friends and\nenemies. Some of the acquaintances to whom she had been a tedious or\nindifferent or ridiculous affliction, dropped her: others became\ncordial. To her amazement she found that some \"quite nice\" people were\nsaturated with Wells, and that this accessibility to ideas was the\nsecret of their niceness. People she had thought deeply religious, and\nhad tried to conciliate on that tack with disastrous results, suddenly\ntook an interest in her, and revealed a hostility to conventional\nreligion which she had never conceived possible except among the most\ndesperate characters. They made her read Galsworthy; and Galsworthy\nexposed the vanity of Largelady Park and finished her. It exasperated\nher to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many\nunhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she\nhad so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping\nwell with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have\ncome into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these\ndiscoveries, and the tumult of their reaction, she made a fool of\nherself as freely and conspicuously as when she so rashly adopted\nEliza's expletive in Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room; for the new-born\nWellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously as a baby; but\nnobody hates a baby for its ineptitudes, or thinks the worse of it for\ntrying to eat the matches; and Clara lost no friends by her follies.\nThey laughed at her to her face this time; and she had to defend\nherself and fight it out as best she could.\n\nWhen Freddy paid a visit to Earlscourt (which he never did when he\ncould possibly help it) to make the desolating announcement that he and\nhis Eliza were thinking of blackening the Largelady scutcheon by\nopening a shop, he found the little household already convulsed by a\nprior announcement from Clara that she also was going to work in an old\nfurniture shop in Dover Street, which had been started by a fellow\nWellsian. This appointment Clara owed, after all, to her old social\naccomplishment of Push. She had made up her mind that, cost what it\nmight, she would see Mr. Wells in the flesh; and she had achieved her\nend at a garden party. She had better luck than so rash an enterprise\ndeserved. Mr. Wells came up to her expectations. Age had not withered\nhim, nor could custom stale his infinite variety in half an hour. His\npleasant neatness and compactness, his small hands and feet, his\nteeming ready brain, his unaffected accessibility, and a certain fine\napprehensiveness which stamped him as susceptible from his topmost hair\nto his tipmost toe, proved irresistible. Clara talked of nothing else\nfor weeks and weeks afterwards. And as she happened to talk to the lady\nof the furniture shop, and that lady also desired above all things to\nknow Mr. Wells and sell pretty things to him, she offered Clara a job\non the chance of achieving that end through her.\n\nAnd so it came about that Eliza's luck held, and the expected\nopposition to the flower shop melted away. The shop is in the arcade of\na railway station not very far from the Victoria and Albert Museum; and\nif you live in that neighborhood you may go there any day and buy a\nbuttonhole from Eliza.\n\nNow here is a last opportunity for romance. Would you not like to be\nassured that the shop was an immense success, thanks to Eliza's charms\nand her early business experience in Covent Garden? Alas! the truth is\nthe truth: the shop did not pay for a long time, simply because Eliza\nand her Freddy did not know how to keep it. True, Eliza had not to\nbegin at the very beginning: she knew the names and prices of the\ncheaper flowers; and her elation was unbounded when she found that\nFreddy, like all youths educated at cheap, pretentious, and thoroughly\ninefficient schools, knew a little Latin. It was very little, but\nenough to make him appear to her a Porson or Bentley, and to put him at\nhis ease with botanical nomenclature. Unfortunately he knew nothing\nelse; and Eliza, though she could count money up to eighteen shillings\nor so, and had acquired a certain familiarity with the language of\nMilton from her struggles to qualify herself for winning Higgins's bet,\ncould not write out a bill without utterly disgracing the\nestablishment. Freddy's power of stating in Latin that Balbus built a\nwall and that Gaul was divided into three parts did not carry with it\nthe slightest knowledge of accounts or business: Colonel Pickering had\nto explain to him what a cheque book and a bank account meant. And the\npair were by no means easily teachable. Freddy backed up Eliza in her\nobstinate refusal to believe that they could save money by engaging a\nbookkeeper with some knowledge of the business. How, they argued, could\nyou possibly save money by going to extra expense when you already\ncould not make both ends meet? But the Colonel, after making the ends\nmeet over and over again, at last gently insisted; and Eliza, humbled\nto the dust by having to beg from him so often, and stung by the\nuproarious derision of Higgins, to whom the notion of Freddy succeeding\nat anything was a joke that never palled, grasped the fact that\nbusiness, like phonetics, has to be learned.\n\nOn the piteous spectacle of the pair spending their evenings in\nshorthand schools and polytechnic classes, learning bookkeeping and\ntypewriting with incipient junior clerks, male and female, from the\nelementary schools, let me not dwell. There were even classes at the\nLondon School of Economics, and a humble personal appeal to the\ndirector of that institution to recommend a course bearing on the\nflower business. He, being a humorist, explained to them the method of\nthe celebrated Dickensian essay on Chinese Metaphysics by the gentleman\nwho read an article on China and an article on Metaphysics and combined\nthe information. He suggested that they should combine the London\nSchool with Kew Gardens. Eliza, to whom the procedure of the Dickensian\ngentleman seemed perfectly correct (as in fact it was) and not in the\nleast funny (which was only her ignorance) took his advice with entire\ngravity. But the effort that cost her the deepest humiliation was a\nrequest to Higgins, whose pet artistic fancy, next to Milton's verse,\nwas calligraphy, and who himself wrote a most beautiful Italian hand,\nthat he would teach her to write. He declared that she was congenitally\nincapable of forming a single letter worthy of the least of Milton's\nwords; but she persisted; and again he suddenly threw himself into the\ntask of teaching her with a combination of stormy intensity,\nconcentrated patience, and occasional bursts of interesting\ndisquisition on the beauty and nobility, the august mission and\ndestiny, of human handwriting. Eliza ended by acquiring an extremely\nuncommercial script which was a positive extension of her personal\nbeauty, and spending three times as much on stationery as anyone else\nbecause certain qualities and shapes of paper became indispensable to\nher. She could not even address an envelope in the usual way because it\nmade the margins all wrong.\n\nTheir commercial school days were a period of disgrace and despair for\nthe young couple. They seemed to be learning nothing about flower\nshops. At last they gave it up as hopeless, and shook the dust of the\nshorthand schools, and the polytechnics, and the London School of\nEconomics from their feet for ever. Besides, the business was in some\nmysterious way beginning to take care of itself. They had somehow\nforgotten their objections to employing other people. They came to the\nconclusion that their own way was the best, and that they had really a\nremarkable talent for business. The Colonel, who had been compelled for\nsome years to keep a sufficient sum on current account at his bankers\nto make up their deficits, found that the provision was unnecessary:\nthe young people were prospering. It is true that there was not quite\nfair play between them and their competitors in trade. Their week-ends\nin the country cost them nothing, and saved them the price of their\nSunday dinners; for the motor car was the Colonel's; and he and Higgins\npaid the hotel bills. Mr. F. Hill, florist and greengrocer (they soon\ndiscovered that there was money in asparagus; and asparagus led to\nother vegetables), had an air which stamped the business as classy; and\nin private life he was still Frederick Eynsford Hill, Esquire. Not that\nthere was any swank about him: nobody but Eliza knew that he had been\nchristened Frederick Challoner. Eliza herself swanked like anything.\n\nThat is all. That is how it has turned out. It is astonishing how much\nEliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole Street in\nspite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable that though she\nnever nags her husband, and frankly loves the Colonel as if she were\nhis favorite daughter, she has never got out of the habit of nagging\nHiggins that was established on the fatal night when she won his bet\nfor him. She snaps his head off on the faintest provocation, or on\nnone. He no longer dares to tease her by assuming an abysmal\ninferiority of Freddy's mind to his own. He storms and bullies and\nderides; but she stands up to him so ruthlessly that the Colonel has to\nask her from time to time to be kinder to Higgins; and it is the only\nrequest of his that brings a mulish expression into her face. Nothing\nbut some emergency or calamity great enough to break down all likes and\ndislikes, and throw them both back on their common humanity--and may\nthey be spared any such trial!--will ever alter this. She knows that\nHiggins does not need her, just as her father did not need her. The\nvery scrupulousness with which he told her that day that he had become\nused to having her there, and dependent on her for all sorts of little\nservices, and that he should miss her if she went away (it would never\nhave occurred to Freddy or the Colonel to say anything of the sort)\ndeepens her inner certainty that she is \"no more to him than them\nslippers\", yet she has a sense, too, that his indifference is deeper\nthan the infatuation of commoner souls. She is immensely interested in\nhim. She has even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she\ncould get him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with\nnobody else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his\npedestal and see him making love like any common man. We all have\nprivate imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to\nthe life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of dreams\nand fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel; and she does\nnot like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never does quite like\nPygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to be altogether\nagreeable."