Pygmalion
speak nothing but yours. That’s the real break-off with the corner of
Tottenham Court Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.
PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you’re coming back to Wimpole Street,
aren’t you? You’ll forgive Higgins?
HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let her find
out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into the gutter in
three weeks without me at her elbow.
Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified
reproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his daughter, who,
with her back to the window, is unconscious of his approach.
PICKERING. He’s incorrigible, Eliza. You won’t relapse, will you?
LIZA. No: Not now. Never again. I have learnt my lesson. I don’t
believe I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried. [Doolittle
touches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work, losing her
self-possession utterly at the spectacle of her father’s splendor]
A—a—a—a—a—ah—ow—ooh!
HIGGINS [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A—a—a—a—ahowooh!
A—a—a—a—ahowooh ! A—a—a—a—ahowooh! Victory! Victory! [He throws
himself on the divan, folding his arms, and spraddling arrogantly].
DOOLITTLE. Can you blame the girl? Don’t look at me like that, Eliza.
It ain’t my fault. I’ve come into money.
LIZA. You must have touched a millionaire this time, dad.
DOOLITTLE. I have. But I’m dressed something special today. I’m going
to St. George’s, Hanover Square. Your stepmother is going to marry me.
LIZA [angrily] You’re going to let yourself down to marry that low
common woman!
PICKERING [quietly] He ought to, Eliza. [To Doolittle] Why has she
changed her mind?
DOOLITTLE [sadly] Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle class
morality claims its victim. Won’t you put on your hat, Liza, and come
and see me turned off?
LIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I—I’ll [almost sobbing] I’ll demean
myself. And get insulted for my pains, like enough.
DOOLITTLE. Don’t be afraid: she never comes to words with anyone now,
poor woman! respectability has broke all the spirit out of her.
PICKERING [squeezing Eliza’s elbow gently] Be kind to them, Eliza. Make
the best of it.
LIZA [forcing a little smile for him through her vexation] Oh well,
just to show there’s no ill feeling. I’ll be back in a moment. [She
goes out].
DOOLITTLE [sitting down beside Pickering] I feel uncommon nervous about
the ceremony, Colonel. I wish you’d come and see me through it.
PICKERING. But you’ve been through it before, man. You were married to
Eliza’s mother.
DOOLITTLE. Who told you that, Colonel?
PICKERING. Well, nobody told me. But I concluded naturally—
DOOLITTLE. No: that ain’t the natural way, Colonel: it’s only the
middle class way. My way was always the undeserving way. But don’t say
nothing to Eliza. She don’t know: I always had a delicacy about telling
her.
PICKERING. Quite right. We’ll leave it so, if you don’t mind.
DOOLITTLE. And you’ll come to the church, Colonel, and put me through
straight?
PICKERING. With pleasure. As far as a bachelor can.
MRS. HIGGINS. May I come, Mr. Doolittle? I should be very sorry to miss
your wedding.
DOOLITTLE. I should indeed be honored by your condescension, ma’am; and
my poor old woman would take it as a tremenjous compliment. She’s been
very low, thinking of the happy days that are no more.
MRS. HIGGINS [rising] I’ll order the carriage and get ready. [The men
rise, except Higgins]. I shan’t be more than fifteen minutes. [As she
goes to the door Eliza comes in, hatted and buttoning her gloves]. I’m
going to the church to see your father married, Eliza. You had better
come in the brougham with me. Colonel Pickering can go on with the
bridegroom.
Mrs. Higgins goes out. Eliza comes to the middle of the room between
the centre window and the ottoman. Pickering joins her.
DOOLITTLE. Bridegroom! What a word! It makes a man realize his
position, somehow. [He takes up his hat and goes towards the door].
PICKERING. Before I go, Eliza, do forgive him and come back to us.
LIZA. I don’t think papa would allow me. Would you, dad?
DOOLITTLE [sad but magnanimous] They played you off very cunning,
Eliza, them two sportsmen. If it had been only one of them, you could
have nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of them chaperoned
the other, as you might say. [To Pickering] It was artful of you,
Colonel; but I bear no malice: I should have done the same myself. I
been the victim of one woman after another all my life; and I don’t
grudge you two getting the better of Eliza. I shan’t interfere. It’s
time for us to go, Colonel. So long, Henry. See you in St. George’s,
Eliza. [He goes out].
PICKERING [coaxing] Do stay with us, Eliza. [He follows Doolittle].
Eliza goes out on the balcony to avoid being alone with Higgins. He
rises and joins her there. She immediately comes back into the room and
makes for the door; but he goes along the balcony quickly and gets his
back to the door before she reaches it.
HIGGINS. Well, Eliza, you’ve had a bit of your own back, as you call
it. Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable? Or do you
want any more?
LIZA. You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up with
your tempers and fetch and carry for you.
HIGGINS. I haven’t said I wanted you back at all.
LIZA. Oh, indeed. Then what are we talking about?
HIGGINS. About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat you
just as I have always treated you. I can’t change my nature; and I
don’t intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly the same as
Colonel Pickering’s.
LIZA. That’s not true. He treats a flower girl as if she was a duchess.
HIGGINS. And I treat a duchess as if she was a flower girl.
LIZA. I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman,
facing the window]. The same to everybody.
HIGGINS. Just so.
LIZA. Like father.
HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the
comparison at all points, Eliza, it’s quite true that your father is
not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station of life to
which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously] The great secret,
Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other
particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human
souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no
third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.
LIZA. Amen. You are a born preacher.
HIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you rudely, but
whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.
LIZA [with sudden sincerity] I don’t care how you treat me. I don’t
mind your swearing at me. I don’t mind a black eye: I’ve had one before
this. But [standing up and facing him] I won’t be passed over.
HIGGINS. Then get out of my way; for I won’t stop for you. You talk
about me as if I were a motor bus.
LIZA. So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no consideration
for anyone. But I can do without you: don’t think I can’t.
HIGGINS. I know you can. I told you you could.
LIZA [wounded, getting away from him to the other side of the ottoman
with her face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute. You wanted to
get rid of me.
HIGGINS. Liar.
LIZA. Thank you. [She sits down with dignity].
HIGGINS. You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do
without YOU.
LIZA [earnestly] Don’t you try to get round me. You’ll HAVE to do
without me.
HIGGINS [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul: my own
spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall miss you,
Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have learnt something
from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly and gratefully. And I
have grown accustomed to your voice and appearance. I like them, rather.
LIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your book
of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can turn the
machine on. It’s got no feelings to hurt.
HIGGINS. I can’t turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you
can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.
LIZA. Oh, you ARE a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as easy as
some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned me. Time and
again she has wanted to leave you; and you always got round her at the
last minute. And you don’t care a bit for her. And you don’t care a bit
for me.
HIGGINS. I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it that
has come my way and been built into my house. What more can you or
anyone ask?
LIZA. I won’t care for anybody that doesn’t care for me.
HIGGINS. Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her Covent
Garden pronunciation with professional exactness] s’yollin voylets
[selling violets], isn’t it?
LIZA. Don’t sneer at me. It’s mean to sneer at me.
HIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn’t become
either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my righteous
contempt for Commercialism. I don’t and won’t trade in affection. You
call me a brute because you couldn’t buy a claim on me by fetching my
slippers and finding my spectacles. You were a fool: I think a woman
fetching a man’s slippers is a disgusting sight: did I ever fetch YOUR
slippers? I think a good deal more of you for throwing them in my face.
No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who
cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good
fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else. You’ve had a thousand times as
much out of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your
little dog’s tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my
creation of a Duchess Eliza, I’ll slam the door in your silly face.
LIZA. What did you do it for if you didn’t care for me?
HIGGINS [heartily] Why, because it was my job.
LIZA. You never thought of the trouble it would make for me.
HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had been
afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble. There’s
only one way of escaping trouble; and that’s killing things. Cowards,
you notice, are always shrieking to have troublesome people killed.
LIZA. I’m no preacher: I don’t notice things like that. I notice that
you don’t notice me.
HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: you’re an
idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading them
before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do my work
without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am not
intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can come back
or go to the devil: which you please.
LIZA. What am I to come back for?
HIGGINS [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over it to
her] For the fun of it. That’s why I took you on.
LIZA [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I don’t
do everything you want me to?
HIGGINS. Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don’t do everything
YOU want me to.
LIZA. And live with my stepmother?
HIGGINS. Yes, or sell flowers.
LIZA. Oh! if I only COULD go back to my flower basket! I should be
independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did you take
my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I’m a slave now, for all
my fine clothes.
HIGGINS. Not a bit. I’ll adopt you as my daughter and settle money on
you if you like. Or would you rather marry Pickering?
LIZA [looking fiercely round at him] I wouldn’t marry YOU if you asked
me; and you’re nearer my age than what he is.
HIGGINS [gently] Than he is: not “than what he is.”
LIZA [losing her temper and rising] I’ll talk as I like. You’re not my
teacher now.
HIGGINS [reflectively] I don’t suppose Pickering would, though. He’s as