Pygmalion
confirmed an old bachelor as I am.
LIZA. That’s not what I want; and don’t you think it. I’ve always had
chaps enough wanting me that way. Freddy Hill writes to me twice and
three times a day, sheets and sheets.
HIGGINS [disagreeably surprised] Damn his impudence! [He recoils and
finds himself sitting on his heels].
LIZA. He has a right to if he likes, poor lad. And he does love me.
HIGGINS [getting off the ottoman] You have no right to encourage him.
LIZA. Every girl has a right to be loved.
HIGGINS. What! By fools like that?
LIZA. Freddy’s not a fool. And if he’s weak and poor and wants me, may
be he’d make me happier than my betters that bully me and don’t want me.
HIGGINS. Can he MAKE anything of you? That’s the point.
LIZA. Perhaps I could make something of him. But I never thought of us
making anything of one another; and you never think of anything else. I
only want to be natural.
HIGGINS. In short, you want me to be as infatuated about you as Freddy?
Is that it?
LIZA. No I don’t. That’s not the sort of feeling I want from you. And
don’t you be too sure of yourself or of me. I could have been a bad
girl if I’d liked. I’ve seen more of some things than you, for all your
learning. Girls like me can drag gentlemen down to make love to them
easy enough. And they wish each other dead the next minute.
HIGGINS. Of course they do. Then what in thunder are we quarrelling
about?
LIZA [much troubled] I want a little kindness. I know I’m a common
ignorant girl, and you a book-learned gentleman; but I’m not dirt under
your feet. What I done [correcting herself] what I did was not for the
dresses and the taxis: I did it because we were pleasant together and I
come—came—to care for you; not to want you to make love to me, and
not forgetting the difference between us, but more friendly like.
HIGGINS. Well, of course. That’s just how I feel. And how Pickering
feels. Eliza: you’re a fool.
LIZA. That’s not a proper answer to give me [she sinks on the chair at
the writing-table in tears].
HIGGINS. It’s all you’ll get until you stop being a common idiot. If
you’re going to be a lady, you’ll have to give up feeling neglected if
the men you know don’t spend half their time snivelling over you and
the other half giving you black eyes. If you can’t stand the coldness
of my sort of life, and the strain of it, go back to the gutter. Work
til you are more a brute than a human being; and then cuddle and
squabble and drink til you fall asleep. Oh, it’s a fine life, the life
of the gutter. It’s real: it’s warm: it’s violent: you can feel it
through the thickest skin: you can taste it and smell it without any
training or any work. Not like Science and Literature and Classical
Music and Philosophy and Art. You find me cold, unfeeling, selfish,
don’t you? Very well: be off with you to the sort of people you like.
Marry some sentimental hog or other with lots of money, and a thick
pair of lips to kiss you with and a thick pair of boots to kick you
with. If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what
you can appreciate.
LIZA [desperate] Oh, you are a cruel tyrant. I can’t talk to you: you
turn everything against me: I’m always in the wrong. But you know very
well all the time that you’re nothing but a bully. You know I can’t go
back to the gutter, as you call it, and that I have no real friends in
the world but you and the Colonel. You know well I couldn’t bear to
live with a low common man after you two; and it’s wicked and cruel of
you to insult me by pretending I could. You think I must go back to
Wimpole Street because I have nowhere else to go but father’s. But
don’t you be too sure that you have me under your feet to be trampled
on and talked down. I’ll marry Freddy, I will, as soon as he’s able to
support me.
HIGGINS [sitting down beside her] Rubbish! you shall marry an
ambassador. You shall marry the Governor-General of India or the
Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, or somebody who wants a deputy-queen. I’m
not going to have my masterpiece thrown away on Freddy.
LIZA. You think I like you to say that. But I haven’t forgot what you
said a minute ago; and I won’t be coaxed round as if I was a baby or a
puppy. If I can’t have kindness, I’ll have independence.
HIGGINS. Independence? That’s middle class blasphemy. We are all
dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.
LIZA [rising determinedly] I’ll let you see whether I’m dependent on
you. If you can preach, I can teach. I’ll go and be a teacher.
HIGGINS. What’ll you teach, in heaven’s name?
LIZA. What you taught me. I’ll teach phonetics.
HIGGINS. Ha! Ha! Ha!
LIZA. I’ll offer myself as an assistant to Professor Nepean.
HIGGINS [rising in a fury] What! That impostor! that humbug! that
toadying ignoramus! Teach him my methods! my discoveries! You take one
step in his direction and I’ll wring your neck. [He lays hands on her].
Do you hear?
LIZA [defiantly non-resistant] Wring away. What do I care? I knew you’d
strike me some day. [He lets her go, stamping with rage at having
forgotten himself, and recoils so hastily that he stumbles back into
his seat on the ottoman]. Aha! Now I know how to deal with you. What a
fool I was not to think of it before! You can’t take away the knowledge
you gave me. You said I had a finer ear than you. And I can be civil
and kind to people, which is more than you can. Aha! That’s done you,
Henry Higgins, it has. Now I don’t care that [snapping her fingers] for
your bullying and your big talk. I’ll advertize it in the papers that
your duchess is only a flower girl that you taught, and that she’ll
teach anybody to be a duchess just the same in six months for a
thousand guineas. Oh, when I think of myself crawling under your feet
and being trampled on and called names, when all the time I had only to
lift up my finger to be as good as you, I could just kick myself.
HIGGINS [wondering at her] You damned impudent slut, you! But it’s
better than snivelling; better than fetching slippers and finding
spectacles, isn’t it? [Rising] By George, Eliza, I said I’d make a
woman of you; and I have. I like you like this.
LIZA. Yes: you turn round and make up to me now that I’m not afraid of
you, and can do without you.
HIGGINS. Of course I do, you little fool. Five minutes ago you were
like a millstone round my neck. Now you’re a tower of strength: a
consort battleship. You and I and Pickering will be three old bachelors
together instead of only two men and a silly girl.
Mrs. Higgins returns, dressed for the wedding. Eliza instantly becomes
cool and elegant.
MRS. HIGGINS. The carriage is waiting, Eliza. Are you ready?
LIZA. Quite. Is the Professor coming?
MRS. HIGGINS. Certainly not. He can’t behave himself in church. He
makes remarks out loud all the time on the clergyman’s pronunciation.
LIZA. Then I shall not see you again, Professor. Good bye. [She goes to
the door].
MRS. HIGGINS [coming to Higgins] Good-bye, dear.
HIGGINS. Good-bye, mother. [He is about to kiss her, when he recollects
something]. Oh, by the way, Eliza, order a ham and a Stilton cheese,
will you? And buy me a pair of reindeer gloves, number eights, and a
tie to match that new suit of mine, at Eale & Binman’s. You can choose
the color. [His cheerful, careless, vigorous voice shows that he is
incorrigible].
LIZA [disdainfully] Buy them yourself. [She sweeps out].
MRS. HIGGINS. I’m afraid you’ve spoiled that girl, Henry. But never
mind, dear: I’ll buy you the tie and gloves.
HIGGINS [sunnily] Oh, don’t bother. She’ll buy em all right enough.
Good-bye.
They kiss. Mrs. Higgins runs out. Higgins, left alone, rattles his cash
in his pocket; chuckles; and disports himself in a highly
self-satisfied manner.
***********************
The rest of the story need not be shown in action, and indeed, would
hardly need telling if our imaginations were not so enfeebled by their
lazy dependence on the ready-makes and reach-me-downs of the ragshop in
which Romance keeps its stock of “happy endings” to misfit all stories.
Now, the history of Eliza Doolittle, though called a romance because of
the transfiguration it records seems exceedingly improbable, is common
enough. Such transfigurations have been achieved by hundreds of
resolutely ambitious young women since Nell Gwynne set them the example
by playing queens and fascinating kings in the theatre in which she
began by selling oranges. Nevertheless, people in all directions have
assumed, for no other reason than that she became the heroine of a
romance, that she must have married the hero of it. This is unbearable,
not only because her little drama, if acted on such a thoughtless
assumption, must be spoiled, but because the true sequel is patent to
anyone with a sense of human nature in general, and of feminine
instinct in particular.
Eliza, in telling Higgins she would not marry him if he asked her, was
not coquetting: she was announcing a well-considered decision. When a
bachelor interests, and dominates, and teaches, and becomes important
to a spinster, as Higgins with Eliza, she always, if she has character
enough to be capable of it, considers very seriously indeed whether she
will play for becoming that bachelor’s wife, especially if he is so
little interested in marriage that a determined and devoted woman might
capture him if she set herself resolutely to do it. Her decision will
depend a good deal on whether she is really free to choose; and that,
again, will depend on her age and income. If she is at the end of her
youth, and has no security for her livelihood, she will marry him
because she must marry anybody who will provide for her. But at Eliza’s
age a good-looking girl does not feel that pressure; she feels free to
pick and choose. She is therefore guided by her instinct in the matter.
Eliza’s instinct tells her not to marry Higgins. It does not tell her
to give him up. It is not in the slightest doubt as to his remaining
one of the strongest personal interests in her life. It would be very
sorely strained if there was another woman likely to supplant her with
him. But as she feels sure of him on that last point, she has no doubt
at all as to her course, and would not have any, even if the difference
of twenty years in age, which seems so great to youth, did not exist
between them.
As our own instincts are not appealed to by her conclusion, let us see
whether we cannot discover some reason in it. When Higgins excused his
indifference to young women on the ground that they had an irresistible
rival in his mother, he gave the clue to his inveterate
old-bachelordom. The case is uncommon only to the extent that
remarkable mothers are uncommon. If an imaginative boy has a
sufficiently rich mother who has intelligence, personal grace, dignity
of character without harshness, and a cultivated sense of the best art
of her time to enable her to make her house beautiful, she sets a
standard for him against which very few women can struggle, besides
effecting for him a disengagement of his affections, his sense of
beauty, and his idealism from his specifically sexual impulses. This
makes him a standing puzzle to the huge number of uncultivated people
who have been brought up in tasteless homes by commonplace or
disagreeable parents, and to whom, consequently, literature, painting,
sculpture, music, and affectionate personal relations come as modes of
sex if they come at all. The word passion means nothing else to them;
and that Higgins could have a passion for phonetics and idealize his
mother instead of Eliza, would seem to them absurd and unnatural.
Nevertheless, when we look round and see that hardly anyone is too ugly
or disagreeable to find a wife or a husband if he or she wants one,