Pygmalion
nerve. Which one of us has? We’re all intimidated. Intimidated, ma’am:
that’s what we are. What is there for me if I chuck it but the
workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair already to keep my job
as a dustman. If I was one of the deserving poor, and had put by a bit,
I could chuck it; but then why should I, acause the deserving poor
might as well be millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They
don’t know what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor,
have nothing between me and the pauper’s uniform but this here blasted
three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class. (Excuse the
expression, ma’am: you’d use it yourself if you had my provocation).
They’ve got you every way you turn: it’s a choice between the Skilly of
the workhouse and the Char Bydis of the middle class; and I haven’t the
nerve for the workhouse. Intimidated: that’s what I am. Broke. Bought
up. Happier men than me will call for my dust, and touch me for their
tip; and I’ll look on helpless, and envy them. And that’s what your son
has brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].
MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I’m very glad you’re not going to do anything
foolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza’s future.
You can provide for her now.
DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma’am; I’m expected to
provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.
HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he can’t provide for her. He shan’t
provide for her. She doesn’t belong to him. I paid him five pounds for
her. Doolittle: either you’re an honest man or a rogue.
DOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of us: a
little of both.
HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no right
to take her as well.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: don’t be absurd. If you really want to know where
Eliza is, she is upstairs.
HIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her
downstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door].
MRS. HIGGINS [rising and following him] Be quiet, Henry. Sit down.
HIGGINS. I—
MRS. HIGGINS. Sit down, dear; and listen to me.
HIGGINS. Oh very well, very well, very well. [He throws himself
ungraciously on the ottoman, with his face towards the windows]. But I
think you might have told me this half an hour ago.
MRS. HIGGINS. Eliza came to me this morning. She passed the night
partly walking about in a rage, partly trying to throw herself into the
river and being afraid to, and partly in the Carlton Hotel. She told me
of the brutal way you two treated her.
HIGGINS [bounding up again] What!
PICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs. Higgins, she’s been telling you
stories. We didn’t treat her brutally. We hardly said a word to her;
and we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on Higgins].
Higgins: did you bully her after I went to bed?
HIGGINS. Just the other way about. She threw my slippers in my face.
She behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her the slightest
provocation. The slippers came bang into my face the moment I entered
the room—before I had uttered a word. And used perfectly awful
language.
PICKERING [astonished] But why? What did we do to her?
MRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl is
naturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn’t she, Mr. Doolittle?
DOOLITTLE. Very tender-hearted, ma’am. Takes after me.
MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She worked
very hard for you, Henry! I don’t think you quite realize what anything
in the nature of brain work means to a girl like that. Well, it seems
that when the great day of trial came, and she did this wonderful thing
for you without making a single mistake, you two sat there and never
said a word to her, but talked together of how glad you were that it
was all over and how you had been bored with the whole thing. And then
you were surprised because she threw your slippers at you! _I_ should
have thrown the fire-irons at you.
HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to go to
bed. Did we, Pick?
PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.
MRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?
PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.
MRS. HIGGINS. You didn’t thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or tell
her how splendid she’d been.
HIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn’t make
speeches to her, if that’s what you mean.
PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little inconsiderate.
Is she very angry?
MRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well, I’m
afraid she won’t go back to Wimpole Street, especially now that Mr.
Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have thrust on her; but
she says she is quite willing to meet you on friendly terms and to let
bygones be bygones.
HIGGINS [furious] Is she, by George? Ho!
MRS. HIGGINS. If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I’ll ask her to
come down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite enough of my
time.
HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let us
put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we picked out of
the mud. [He flings himself sulkily into the Elizabethan chair].
DOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, Henry Higgins! have some
consideration for my feelings as a middle class man.
MRS. HIGGINS. Remember your promise, Henry. [She presses the
bell-button on the writing-table]. Mr. Doolittle: will you be so good
as to step out on the balcony for a moment. I don’t want Eliza to have
the shock of your news until she has made it up with these two
gentlemen. Would you mind?
DOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her off my
hands. [He disappears through the window].
The parlor-maid answers the bell. Pickering sits down in Doolittle’s
place.
MRS. HIGGINS. Ask Miss Doolittle to come down, please.
THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam. [She goes out].
MRS. HIGGINS. Now, Henry: be good.
HIGGINS. I am behaving myself perfectly.
PICKERING. He is doing his best, Mrs. Higgins.
A pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs; and
begins to whistle.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry, dearest, you don’t look at all nice in that
attitude.
HIGGINS [pulling himself together] I was not trying to look nice,
mother.
MRS. HIGGINS. It doesn’t matter, dear. I only wanted to make you speak.
HIGGINS. Why?
MRS. HIGGINS. Because you can’t speak and whistle at the same time.
Higgins groans. Another very trying pause.
HIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil is that girl?
Are we to wait here all day?
Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly
convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little
work-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much taken
aback to rise.
LIZA. How do you do, Professor Higgins? Are you quite well?
HIGGINS [choking] Am I— [He can say no more].
LIZA. But of course you are: you are never ill. So glad to see you
again, Colonel Pickering. [He rises hastily; and they shake hands].
Quite chilly this morning, isn’t it? [She sits down on his left. He
sits beside her].
HIGGINS. Don’t you dare try this game on me. I taught it to you; and it
doesn’t take me in. Get up and come home; and don’t be a fool.
Eliza takes a piece of needlework from her basket, and begins to stitch
at it, without taking the least notice of this outburst.
MRS. HIGGINS. Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman could resist
such an invitation.
HIGGINS. You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself. You will
jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven’t put into her head
or a word that I haven’t put into her mouth. I tell you I have created
this thing out of the squashed cabbage leaves of Covent Garden; and now
she pretends to play the fine lady with me.
MRS. HIGGINS [placidly] Yes, dear; but you’ll sit down, won’t you?
Higgins sits down again, savagely.
LIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins, and working
away deftly] Will you drop me altogether now that the experiment is
over, Colonel Pickering?
PICKERING. Oh don’t. You mustn’t think of it as an experiment. It
shocks me, somehow.
LIZA. Oh, I’m only a squashed cabbage leaf.
PICKERING [impulsively] No.
LIZA [continuing quietly]—but I owe so much to you that I should be
very unhappy if you forgot me.
PICKERING. It’s very kind of you to say so, Miss Doolittle.
LIZA. It’s not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are generous
to everybody with money. But it was from you that I learnt really nice
manners; and that is what makes one a lady, isn’t it? You see it was so
very difficult for me with the example of Professor Higgins always
before me. I was brought up to be just like him, unable to control
myself, and using bad language on the slightest provocation. And I
should never have known that ladies and gentlemen didn’t behave like
that if you hadn’t been there.
HIGGINS. Well!!
PICKERING. Oh, that’s only his way, you know. He doesn’t mean it.
LIZA. Oh, I didn’t mean it either, when I was a flower girl. It was
only my way. But you see I did it; and that’s what makes the difference
after all.
PICKERING. No doubt. Still, he taught you to speak; and I couldn’t have
done that, you know.
LIZA [trivially] Of course: that is his profession.
HIGGINS. Damnation!
LIZA [continuing] It was just like learning to dance in the fashionable
way: there was nothing more than that in it. But do you know what began
my real education?
PICKERING. What?
LIZA [stopping her work for a moment] Your calling me Miss Doolittle
that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was the beginning of
self-respect for me. [She resumes her stitching]. And there were a
hundred little things you never noticed, because they came naturally to
you. Things about standing up and taking off your hat and opening
doors—
PICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.
LIZA. Yes: things that showed you thought and felt about me as if I
were something better than a scullery-maid; though of course I know you
would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she had been let in
the drawing-room. You never took off your boots in the dining room when
I was there.
PICKERING. You mustn’t mind that. Higgins takes off his boots all over
the place.
LIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn’t it? But it
made such a difference to me that you didn’t do it. You see, really and
truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the dressing and the
proper way of speaking, and so on), the difference between a lady and a
flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated. I shall
always be a flower girl to Professor Higgins, because he always treats
me as a flower girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to
you, because you always treat me as a lady, and always will.
MRS. HIGGINS. Please don’t grind your teeth, Henry.
PICKERING. Well, this is really very nice of you, Miss Doolittle.
LIZA. I should like you to call me Eliza, now, if you would.
PICKERING. Thank you. Eliza, of course.
LIZA. And I should like Professor Higgins to call me Miss Doolittle.
HIGGINS. I’ll see you damned first.
MRS. HIGGINS. Henry! Henry!
PICKERING [laughing] Why don’t you slang back at him? Don’t stand it.
It would do him a lot of good.
LIZA. I can’t. I could have done it once; but now I can’t go back to
it. Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to me; and I
tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was no use. You
told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a foreign country,
it picks up the language in a few weeks, and forgets its own. Well, I
am a child in your country. I have forgotten my own language, and can