SparkNotes

Act V

Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room. She is at her writing-table as

before. The parlor-maid comes in.

THE PARLOR-MAID [at the door] Mr. Henry, mam, is downstairs with

Colonel Pickering.

MRS. HIGGINS. Well, show them up.

THE PARLOR-MAID. They're using the telephone, mam. Telephoning to

the police, I think.

MRS. HIGGINS. What!

THE PARLOR-MAID [coming further in and lowering her voice] Mr.

Henry's in a state, mam. I thought I'd better tell you.

MRS. HIGGINS. If you had told me that Mr. Henry was not in a

state it would have been more surprising. Tell them to come up

when they've finished with the police. I suppose he's lost

something.

THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam [going].

MRS. HIGGINS. Go upstairs and tell Miss Doolittle that Mr. Henry

and the Colonel are here. Ask her not to come down till I send

for her.

THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, mam.

Higgins bursts in. He is, as the parlor-maid has said, in a

state.

HIGGINS. Look here, mother: here's a confounded thing!

MRS. HIGGINS. Yes, dear. Good-morning. [He checks his impatience

and kisses her, whilst the parlor-maid goes out]. What is it?

HIGGINS. Eliza's bolted.

MRS. HIGGINS [calmly continuing her writing] You must have

frightened her.

HIGGINS. Frightened her! nonsense! She was left last night, as

usual, to turn out the lights and all that; and instead of going

to bed she changed her clothes and went right off: her bed wasn't

slept in. She came in a cab for her things before seven this

morning; and that fool Mrs. Pearce let her have them without

telling me a word about it. What am I to do?

MRS. HIGGINS. Do without, I'm afraid, Henry. The girl has a

perfect right to leave if she chooses.

HIGGINS [wandering distractedly across the room] But I can't find

anything. I don't know what appointments I've got. I'm—

[Pickering comes in. Mrs. Higgins puts down her pen and turns

away from the writing-table].

PICKERING [shaking hands] Good-morning, Mrs. Higgins. Has Henry

told you? [He sits down on the ottoman].

HIGGINS. What does that ass of an inspector say? Have you offered

a reward?

MRS. HIGGINS [rising in indignant amazement] You don't mean to

say you have set the police after Eliza?

HIGGINS. Of course. What are the police for? What else could we

do? [He sits in the Elizabethan chair].

PICKERING. The inspector made a lot of difficulties. I really

think he suspected us of some improper purpose.

MRS. HIGGINS. Well, of course he did. What right have you to go

to the police and give the girl's name as if she were a thief, or

a lost umbrella, or something? Really! [She sits down again,

deeply vexed].

HIGGINS. But we want to find her.

PICKERING. We can't let her go like this, you know, Mrs. Higgins.

What were we to do?

MRS. HIGGINS. You have no more sense, either of you, than two

children. Why—

The parlor-maid comes in and breaks off the conversation.

THE PARLOR-MAID. Mr, Henry: a gentleman wants to see you very

particular. He's been sent on from Wimpole Street.

HIGGINS. Ob, bother! I can't see anyone now. Who is it?

THE PARLOR-MAID. A Mr. Doolittle, Sir.

PICKERING. Doolittle! Do you mean the dustman?

THE PARLOR-MAID. Dustman! Oh no, sir: a gentleman.

HIGGINS [springing up excitedly] By George, Pick, it's some

relative of hers that she's gone to. Somebody we know nothing

about. [To the parlor-maid] Send him up, quick.

THE PARLOR-MAID. Yes, Sir. [She goes].

HIGGINS [eagerly, going to his mother] Genteel relatives! now we

shall hear something. [He sits down in the Chippendale chair].

MRS. HIGGINS. Do you know any of her people?

PICKERING. Only her father: the fellow we told you about.

THE PARLOR-MAID [announcing] Mr. Doolittle. [She withdraws].

Doolittle enters. He is brilliantly dressed in a new fashionable

frock-coat, with white waistcoat and grey trousers. A flower in

his buttonhole, a dazzling silk hat, and patent leather shoes

complete the effect. He is too concerned with the business he has

come on to notice Mrs. Higgins. He walks straight to Higgins, and

accosts him with vehement reproach.

DOOLITTLE [indicating his own person] See here! Do you see this?

You done this.

HIGGINS. Done what, man?

DOOLITTLE. This, I tell you. Look at it. Look at this hat. Look

at this coat.

PICKERING. Has Eliza been buying you clothes?

DOOLITTLE. Eliza! not she. Not half. Why would she buy me

clothes?

MRS. HIGGINS. Good-morning, Mr. Doolittle. Won't you sit down?

DOOLITTLE [taken aback as he becomes conscious that he has

forgotten his hostess] Asking your pardon, ma'am. [He approaches

her and shakes her proffered hand]. Thank you. [He sits down on

the ottoman, on Pickering's right]. I am that full of what has

happened to me that I can't think of anything else.

HIGGINS. What the dickens has happened to you?

DOOLITTLE. I shouldn't mind if it had only happened to me:

anything might happen to anybody and nobody to blame but

Providence, as you might say. But this is something that you done

to me: yes, you, Henry Higgins.

HIGGINS. Have you found Eliza? That's the point.

DOOLITTLE. Have you lost her?

HIGGINS. Yes.

DOOLITTLE. You have all the luck, you have. I ain't found her;

but she'll find me quick enough now after what you done to me.

MRS. HIGGINS. But what has my son done to you, Mr. Doolittle?

DOOLITTLE. Done to me! Ruined me. Destroyed my happiness. Tied me

up and delivered me into the hands of middle class morality.

HIGGINS [rising intolerantly and standing over Doolittle] You're

raving. You're drunk. You're mad. I gave you five pounds. After

that I had two conversations with you, at half-a-crown an hour.

I've never seen you since.

DOOLITTLE. Oh! Drunk! am I? Mad! am I? Tell me this. Did you or

did you not write a letter to an old blighter in America that was

giving five millions to found Moral Reform Societies all over the

world, and that wanted you to invent a universal language for

him?

HIGGINS. What! Ezra D. Wannafeller! He's dead. [He sits down

again carelessly].

DOOLITTLE. Yes: he's dead; and I'm done for. Now did you or did

you not write a letter to him to say that the most original

moralist at present in England, to the best of your knowledge,

was Alfred Doolittle, a common dustman.

HIGGINS. Oh, after your last visit I remember making some silly

joke of the kind.

DOOLITTLE. Ah! you may well call it a silly joke. It put the lid

on me right enough. Just give him the chance he wanted to show

that Americans is not like us: that they recognize and respect

merit in every class of life, however humble. Them words is in

his blooming will, in which, Henry Higgins, thanks to your silly

joking, he leaves me a share in his Pre-digested Cheese Trust

worth three thousand a year on condition that I lecture for his

Wannafeller Moral Reform World League as often as they ask me up

to six times a year.

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

lark!

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

twice.

DOOLITTLE. It ain't the lecturing I mind. I'll lecture them blue

in the face, I will, and not turn a hair. It's making a gentleman

of me that I object to. Who asked him to make a gentleman of me?

I was happy. I was free. I touched pretty nigh everybody for

money when I wanted it, same as I touched you, Henry Higgins. Now

I am worrited; tied neck and heels; and everybody touches me for

money. It's a fine thing for you, says my solicitor. Is it? says

I. You mean it's a good thing for you, I says. When I was a poor

man and had a solicitor once when they found a pram in the dust

cart, he got me off, and got shut of me and got me shut of him as

quick as he could. Same with the doctors: used to shove me out of

the hospital before I could hardly stand on my legs, and nothing

to pay. Now they finds out that I'm not a healthy man and can't

live unless they looks after me twice a day. In the house I'm not

let do a hand's turn for myself: somebody else must do it and

touch me for it. A year ago I hadn't a relative in the world

except two or three that wouldn't speak to me. Now I've fifty, and

not a decent week's wages among the lot of them. I have to live

for others and not for myself: that's middle class morality. You

talk of losing Eliza. Don't you be anxious: I bet she's on my

doorstep by this: she that could support herself easy by selling

flowers if I wasn't respectable. And the next one to touch me

will be you, Henry Higgins. I'll have to learn to speak middle

class language from you, instead of speaking proper English.

That's where you'll come in; and I daresay that's what you done

it for.

MRS. HIGGINS. But, my dear Mr. Doolittle, you need not suffer all

this if you are really in earnest. Nobody can force you to accept

this bequest. You can repudiate it. Isn't that so, Colonel

Pickering?

PICKERING. I believe so.

DOOLITTLE [softening his manner in deference to her sex] That's

the tragedy of it, ma'am. It's easy to say chuck it; but I

haven't the nerve. Which one of us has? We're all intimidated.

Intimidated, ma'am: that's what we are. What is there for me if I

chuck it but the workhouse in my old age? I have to dye my hair

already to keep my job as a dustman. If I was one of the

deserving poor, and had put by a bit, I could chuck it; but then

why should I, acause the deserving poor might as well be

millionaires for all the happiness they ever has. They don't know

what happiness is. But I, as one of the undeserving poor, have

nothing between me and the pauper's uniform but this here blasted

three thousand a year that shoves me into the middle class.

(Excuse the expression, ma'am: you'd use it yourself if you had

my provocation). They've got you every way you turn: it's a

choice between the Skilly of the workhouse and the Char Bydis of

the middle class; and I haven't the nerve for the workhouse.

Intimidated: that's what I am. Broke. Bought up. Happier men than

me will call for my dust, and touch me for their tip; and I'll

look on helpless, and envy them. And that's what your son has

brought me to. [He is overcome by emotion].

MRS. HIGGINS. Well, I'm very glad you're not going to do anything

foolish, Mr. Doolittle. For this solves the problem of Eliza's

future. You can provide for her now.

DOOLITTLE [with melancholy resignation] Yes, ma'am; I'm expected

to provide for everyone now, out of three thousand a year.

HIGGINS [jumping up] Nonsense! he can't provide for her. He

shan't provide for her. She doesn't belong to him. I paid him

five pounds for her. Doolittle: either you're an honest man or a

rogue.

DOOLITTLE [tolerantly] A little of both, Henry, like the rest of

us: a little of both.

HIGGINS. Well, you took that money for the girl; and you have no

right to take her as well.

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry: don't be absurd. If you really want to know

where Eliza is, she is upstairs.

HIGGINS [amazed] Upstairs!!! Then I shall jolly soon fetch her

downstairs. [He makes resolutely for the door].

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

down.

HIGGINS. I—

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

HIGGINS. Oh very well, very well, very well. [He throws himself

ungraciously on the ottoman, with his face towards the windows].

But I think you might have told me this half an hour ago.

MRS. HIGGINS. Eliza came to me this morning. She passed the night

partly walking about in a rage, partly trying to throw herself

into the river and being afraid to, and partly in the Carlton

Hotel. She told me of the brutal way you two treated her.

HIGGINS [bounding up again] What!

PICKERING [rising also] My dear Mrs. Higgins, she's been telling

you stories. We didn't treat her brutally. We hardly said a word

to her; and we parted on particularly good terms. [Turning on

Higgins]. Higgins did you bully her after I went to bed?

HIGGINS. Just the other way about. She threw my slippers in my

face. She behaved in the most outrageous way. I never gave her

the slightest provocation. The slippers came bang into my face

the moment I entered the room—before I had uttered a word. And

used perfectly awful language.

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

MRS. HIGGINS. I think I know pretty well what you did. The girl

is naturally rather affectionate, I think. Isn't she, Mr.

Doolittle?

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

MRS. HIGGINS. Just so. She had become attached to you both. She

worked very hard for you, Henry! I don't think you quite realize

what anything in the nature of brain work means to a girl like

that. Well, it seems that when the great day of trial came, and

she did this wonderful thing for you without making a single

mistake, you two sat there and never said a word to her, but

talked together of how glad you were that it was all over and how

you had been bored with the whole thing. And then you were

surprised because she threw your slippers at you! _I_ should have

thrown the fire-irons at you.

HIGGINS. We said nothing except that we were tired and wanted to

go to bed. Did we, Pick?

PICKERING [shrugging his shoulders] That was all.

MRS. HIGGINS [ironically] Quite sure?

PICKERING. Absolutely. Really, that was all.

MRS. HIGGINS. You didn't thank her, or pet her, or admire her, or

tell her how splendid she'd been.

HIGGINS [impatiently] But she knew all about that. We didn't make

speeches to her, if that's what you mean.

PICKERING [conscience stricken] Perhaps we were a little

inconsiderate. Is she very angry?

MRS. HIGGINS [returning to her place at the writing-table] Well,

I'm afraid she won't go back to Wimpole Street, especially now

that Mr. Doolittle is able to keep up the position you have

thrust on her; but she says she is quite willing to meet you on

friendly terms and to let bygones be bygones.

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

MRS. HIGGINS. If you promise to behave yourself, Henry, I'll ask

her to come down. If not, go home; for you have taken up quite

enough of my time.

HIGGINS. Oh, all right. Very well. Pick: you behave yourself. Let

us put on our best Sunday manners for this creature that we

picked out of the mud. [He flings himself sulkily into the

Elizabethan chair].

DOOLITTLE [remonstrating] Now, now, Henry Higgins! have some

consideration for my feelings as a middle class man.

MRS. HIGGINS. Remember your promise, Henry. [She presses the

bell-button on the writing-table]. Mr. Doolittle: will you be so

good as to step out on the balcony for a moment. I don't want

Eliza to have the shock of your news until she has made it up

with these two gentlemen. Would you mind?

DOOLITTLE. As you wish, lady. Anything to help Henry to keep her

off my hands. [He disappears through the window].

The parlor-maid answers the bell. Pickering sits down in

Doolittle's place.

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

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

MRS. HIGGINS. Now, Henry: be good.

HIGGINS. I am behaving myself perfectly.

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

A pause. Higgins throws back his head; stretches out his legs;

and begins to whistle.

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

attitude.

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

mother.

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

speak.

HIGGINS. Why?

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

time.

Higgins groans. Another very trying pause.

HIGGINS [springing up, out of patience] Where the devil is that

girl? Are we to wait here all day?

Eliza enters, sunny, self-possessed, and giving a staggeringly

convincing exhibition of ease of manner. She carries a little

work-basket, and is very much at home. Pickering is too much

taken aback to rise.

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

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

LIZA. But of course you are: you are never ill. So glad to see

you again, Colonel Pickering. [He rises hastily; and they shake

hands]. Quite chilly this morning, isn't it? [She sits down on

his left. He sits beside her].

HIGGINS. Don't you dare try this game on me. I taught it to you;

and it doesn't take me in. Get up and come home; and don't be a

fool.

Eliza takes a piece of needlework from her basket, and begins to

stitch at it, without taking the least notice of this outburst.

MRS. HIGGINS. Very nicely put, indeed, Henry. No woman could

resist such an invitation.

HIGGINS. You let her alone, mother. Let her speak for herself.

You will jolly soon see whether she has an idea that I haven't

put into her head or a word that I haven't put into her mouth. I

tell you I have created this thing out of the squashed cabbage

leaves of Covent Garden; and now she pretends to play the fine

lady with me.

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

you?

Higgins sits down again, savagely.

LIZA [to Pickering, taking no apparent notice of Higgins, and

working away deftly] Will you drop me altogether now that the

experiment is over, Colonel Pickering?

PICKERING. Oh don't. You mustn't think of it as an experiment. It

shocks me, somehow.

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

PICKERING [impulsively] No.

LIZA [continuing quietly]—but I owe so much to you that I should

be very unhappy if you forgot me.

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

LIZA. It's not because you paid for my dresses. I know you are

generous to everybody with money. But it was from you that I

learnt really nice manners; and that is what makes one a lady,

isn't it? You see it was so very difficult for me with the

example of Professor Higgins always before me. I was brought up

to be just like him, unable to control myself, and using bad

language on the slightest provocation. And I should never have

known that ladies and gentlemen didn't behave like that if you

hadn't been there.

HIGGINS. Well!!

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

LIZA. Oh, I didn't mean it either, when I was a flower girl. It

was only my way. But you see I did it; and that's what makes the

difference after all.

PICKERING. No doubt. Still, he taught you to speak; and I

couldn't have done that, you know.

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

HIGGINS. Damnation!

LIZA [continuing] It was just like learning to dance in the

fashionable way: there was nothing more than that in it. But do

you know what began my real education?

PICKERING. What?

LIZA [stopping her work for a moment] Your calling me Miss

Doolittle that day when I first came to Wimpole Street. That was

the beginning of self-respect for me. [She resumes her

stitching]. And there were a hundred little things you never

noticed, because they came naturally to you. Things about

standing up and taking off your hat and opening doors—

PICKERING. Oh, that was nothing.

LIZA. Yes: things that showed you thought and felt about me as if

I were something better than a scullerymaid; though of course I

know you would have been just the same to a scullery-maid if she

had been let in the drawing-room. You never took off your boots

in the dining room when I was there.

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

over the place.

LIZA. I know. I am not blaming him. It is his way, isn't it? But

it made such a difference to me that you didn't do it. You see,

really and truly, apart from the things anyone can pick up (the

dressing and the proper way of speaking, and so on), the

difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she

behaves, but how she's treated. I shall always be a flower girl

to Professor Higgins, because he always treats me as a flower

girl, and always will; but I know I can be a lady to you, because

you always treat me as a lady, and always will.

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

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

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

PICKERING. Thank you. Eliza, of course.

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

Doolittle.

HIGGINS. I'll see you damned first.

MRS. HIGGINS. Henry! Henry!

PICKERING [laughing] Why don't you slang back at him? Don't stand

it. It would do him a lot of good.

LIZA. I can't. I could have done it once; but now I can't go back

to it. Last night, when I was wandering about, a girl spoke to

me; and I tried to get back into the old way with her; but it was

no use. You told me, you know, that when a child is brought to a

foreign country, it picks up the language in a few weeks, and

forgets its own. Well, I am a child in your country. I have

forgotten my own language, and can speak nothing but yours.

That's the real break-off with the corner of Tottenham Court

Road. Leaving Wimpole Street finishes it.

PICKERING [much alarmed] Oh! but you're coming back to Wimpole

Street, aren't you? You'll forgive Higgins?

HIGGINS [rising] Forgive! Will she, by George! Let her go. Let

her find out how she can get on without us. She will relapse into

the gutter in three weeks without me at her elbow.

Doolittle appears at the centre window. With a look of dignified

reproach at Higgins, he comes slowly and silently to his

daughter, who, with her back to the window, is unconscious of his

approach.

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

LIZA. No: Not now. Never again. I have learnt my lesson. I don't

believe I could utter one of the old sounds if I tried.

[Doolittle touches her on her left shoulder. She drops her work,

losing her self-possession utterly at the spectacle of her

father's splendor] A—a—a—a—a—ah—ow—ooh!

HIGGINS [with a crow of triumph] Aha! Just so. A—a—a—a—

ahowooh! A—a—a—a—ahowooh ! A—a—a—a—ahowooh! Victory!

Victory! [He throws himself on the divan, folding his arms, and

spraddling arrogantly].

DOOLITTLE. Can you blame the girl? Don't look at me like that,

Eliza. It ain't my fault. I've come into money.

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

DOOLITTLE. I have. But I'm dressed something special today. I'm

going to St. George's, Hanover Square. Your stepmother is going

to marry me.

LIZA [angrily] You're going to let yourself down to marry that

low common woman!

PICKERING [quietly] He ought to, Eliza. [To Doolittle] Why has

she changed her mind?

DOOLITTLE [sadly] Intimidated, Governor. Intimidated. Middle

class morality claims its victim. Won't you put on your hat,

Liza, and come and see me turned off?

LIZA. If the Colonel says I must, I—I'll [almost sobbing] I'll

demean myself. And get insulted for my pains, like enough.

DOOLITTLE. Don't be afraid: she never comes to words with anyone

now, poor woman! respectability has broke all the spirit out of

her.

PICKERING [squeezing Eliza's elbow gently] Be kind to them,

Eliza. Make the best of it.

LIZA [forcing a little smile for him through her vexation] Oh

well, just to show there's no ill feeling. I'll be back in a

moment. [She goes out].

DOOLITTLE [sitting down beside Pickering] I feel uncommon nervous

about the ceremony, Colonel. I wish you'd come and see me through

it.

PICKERING. But you've been through it before, man. You were

married to Eliza's mother.

DOOLITTLE. Who told you that, Colonel?

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

DOOLITTLE. No: that ain't the natural way, Colonel: it's only the

middle class way. My way was always the undeserving way. But

don't say nothing to Eliza. She don't know: I always had a

delicacy about telling her.

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

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

through straight?

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

MRS. HIGGINS. May I come, Mr. Doolittle? I should be very sorry

to miss your wedding.

DOOLITTLE. I should indeed be honored by your condescension,

ma'am; and my poor old woman would take it as a tremenjous

compliment. She's been very low, thinking of the happy days that

are no more.

MRS. HIGGINS [rising] I'll order the carriage and get ready. [The

men rise, except Higgins]. I shan't be more than fifteen minutes.

[As she goes to the door Eliza comes in, hatted and buttoning her

gloves]. I'm going to the church to see your father married,

Eliza. You had better come in the brougham with me. Colonel

Pickering can go on with the bridegroom.

Mrs. Higgins goes out. Eliza comes to the middle of the room

between the centre window and the ottoman. Pickering joins her.

DOOLITTLE. Bridegroom! What a word! It makes a man realize his

position, somehow. [He takes up his hat and goes towards the

door].

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

us.

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

DOOLITTLE [sad but magnanimous] They played you off very cunning,

Eliza, them two sportsmen. If it had been only one of them, you

could have nailed him. But you see, there was two; and one of

them chaperoned the other, as you might say. [To Pickering] It

was artful of you, Colonel; but I bear no malice: I should have

done the same myself. I been the victim of one woman after

another all my life; and I don't grudge you two getting the

better of Eliza. I shan't interfere. It's time for us to go,

Colonel. So long, Henry. See you in St. George's, Eliza. [He goes

out].

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

Doolittle].

Eliza goes out on the balcony to avoid being alone with Higgins.

He rises and joins her there. She immediately comes back into the

room and makes for the door; but he goes along the balcony

quickly and gets his back to the door before she reaches it.

HIGGINS. Well, Eliza, you've had a bit of your own back, as you

call it. Have you had enough? and are you going to be reasonable?

Or do you want any more?

LIZA. You want me back only to pick up your slippers and put up

with your tempers and fetch and carry for you.

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

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

HIGGINS. About you, not about me. If you come back I shall treat

you just as I have always treated you. I can't change my nature;

and I don't intend to change my manners. My manners are exactly

the same as Colonel Pickering's.

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

duchess.

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

LIZA. I see. [She turns away composedly, and sits on the ottoman,

facing the window]. The same to everybody.

HIGGINS. Just so.

LIZA. Like father.

HIGGINS [grinning, a little taken down] Without accepting the

comparison at all points, Eliza, it's quite true that your father

is not a snob, and that he will be quite at home in any station

of life to which his eccentric destiny may call him. [Seriously]

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good

manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the

same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you

were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one

soul is as good as another.

LIZA. Amen. You are a born preacher.

HIGGINS [irritated] The question is not whether I treat you

rudely, but whether you ever heard me treat anyone else better.

LIZA [with sudden sincerity] I don't care how you treat me. I

don't mind your swearing at me. I don't mind a black eye: I've

had one before this. But [standing up and facing him] I won't be

passed over.

HIGGINS. Then get out of my way; for I won't stop for you. You

talk about me as if I were a motor bus.

LIZA. So you are a motor bus: all bounce and go, and no

consideration for anyone. But I can do without you: don't think I

can't.

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

LIZA [wounded, getting away from him to the other side of the

ottoman with her face to the hearth] I know you did, you brute.

You wanted to get rid of me.

HIGGINS. Liar.

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

HIGGINS. You never asked yourself, I suppose, whether I could do

without YOU.

LIZA [earnestly] Don't you try to get round me. You'll HAVE to do

without me.

HIGGINS [arrogant] I can do without anybody. I have my own soul:

my own spark of divine fire. But [with sudden humility] I shall

miss you, Eliza. [He sits down near her on the ottoman]. I have

learnt something from your idiotic notions: I confess that humbly

and gratefully. And I have grown accustomed to your voice and

appearance. I like them, rather.

LIZA. Well, you have both of them on your gramophone and in your

book of photographs. When you feel lonely without me, you can

turn the machine on. It's got no feelings to hurt.

HIGGINS. I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and

you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.

LIZA. Oh, you ARE a devil. You can twist the heart in a girl as

easy as some could twist her arms to hurt her. Mrs. Pearce warned

me. Time and again she has wanted to leave you; and you always

got round her at the last minute. And you don't care a bit for

her. And you don't care a bit for me.

HIGGINS. I care for life, for humanity; and you are a part of it

that has come my way and been built into my house. What more can

you or anyone ask?

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

HIGGINS. Commercial principles, Eliza. Like [reproducing her

Covent Garden pronunciation with professional exactness] s'yollin

voylets [selling violets], isn't it?

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

HIGGINS. I have never sneered in my life. Sneering doesn't become

either the human face or the human soul. I am expressing my

righteous contempt for Commercialism. I don't and won't trade in

affection. You call me a brute because you couldn't buy a claim

on me by fetching my slippers and finding my spectacles. You were

a fool: I think a woman fetching a man's slippers is a disgusting

sight: did I ever fetch YOUR slippers? I think a good deal more

of you for throwing them in my face. No use slaving for me and

then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If

you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for

you'll get nothing else. You've had a thousand times as much out

of me as I have out of you; and if you dare to set up your little

dog's tricks of fetching and carrying slippers against my

creation of a Duchess Eliza, I'll slam the door in your silly

face.

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

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

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

HIGGINS. Would the world ever have been made if its maker had

been afraid of making trouble? Making life means making trouble.

There's only one way of escaping trouble; and that's killing

things. Cowards, you notice, are always shrieking to have

troublesome people killed.

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

that you don't notice me.

HIGGINS [jumping up and walking about intolerantly] Eliza: you're

an idiot. I waste the treasures of my Miltonic mind by spreading

them before you. Once for all, understand that I go my way and do

my work without caring twopence what happens to either of us. I am

not intimidated, like your father and your stepmother. So you can

come back or go to the devil: which you please.

LIZA. What am I to come back for?

HIGGINS [bouncing up on his knees on the ottoman and leaning over

it to her] For the fun of it. That's why I took you on.

LIZA [with averted face] And you may throw me out tomorrow if I

don't do everything you want me to?

HIGGINS. Yes; and you may walk out tomorrow if I don't do

everything YOU want me to.

LIZA. And live with my stepmother?

HIGGINS. Yes, or sell flowers.

LIZA. Oh! if I only COULD go back to my flower basket! I should

be independent of both you and father and all the world! Why did

you take my independence from me? Why did I give it up? I'm a

slave now, for all my fine clothes.

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 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 of 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, whilst many old maids and bachelors are above the

average in quality and culture, we cannot help suspecting that

the disentanglement of sex from the associations with which it is

so commonly confused, a disentanglement which persons of genius

achieve by sheer intellectual analysis, is sometimes produced or

aided by parental fascination.

Now, though Eliza was incapable of thus explaining to herself

Higgins's formidable powers of resistance to the charm that

prostrated Freddy at the first glance, she was instinctively

aware that she could never obtain a complete grip of him, or come

between him and his mother (the first necessity of the married

woman). To put it shortly, she knew that for some mysterious

reason he had not the makings of a married man in him, according

to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would be his

nearest and fondest and warmest interest. Even had there been no

mother-rival, she would still have refused to accept an interest

in herself that was secondary to philosophic interests. Had Mrs.

Higgins died, there would still have been Milton and the

Universal Alphabet. Landor's remark that to those who have the

greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair, would not

have recommended Landor to Eliza. Put that along with her

resentment of Higgins's domineering superiority, and her mistrust

of his coaxing cleverness in getting round her and evading her

wrath when he had gone too far with his impetuous bullying, and

you will see that Eliza's instinct had good grounds for warning

her not to marry her Pygmalion.

And now, whom did Eliza marry? For if Higgins was a predestinate

old bachelor, she was most certainly not a predestinate old maid.

Well, that can be told very shortly to those who have not guessed

it from the indications she has herself given them.

Almost immediately after Eliza is stung into proclaiming her

considered determination not to marry Higgins, she mentions the

fact that young Mr. Frederick Eynsford Hill is pouring out his

love for her daily through the post. Now Freddy is young,

practically twenty years younger than Higgins: he is a gentleman

(or, as Eliza would qualify him, a toff), and speaks like one; he

is nicely dressed, is treated by the Colonel as an equal, loves

her unaffectedly, and is not her master, nor ever likely to

dominate her in spite of his advantage of social standing. Eliza

has no use for the foolish romantic tradition that all women love

to be mastered, if not actually bullied and beaten. "When you go

to women," says Nietzsche, "take your whip with you." Sensible

despots have never confined that precaution to women: they have

taken their whips with them when they have dealt with men, and

been slavishly idealized by the men over whom they have

flourished the whip much more than by women. No doubt there are

slavish women as well as slavish men; and women, like men, admire

those that are stronger than themselves. But to admire a strong

person and to live under that strong person's thumb are two

different things. The weak may not be admired and

hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned;

and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying

people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies;

but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of

situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with

which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger

partner to help them out. Accordingly, it is a truth everywhere

in evidence that strong people, masculine or feminine, not only

do not marry stronger people, but do not show any preference for

them in selecting their friends. When a lion meets another with a

louder roar "the first lion thinks the last a bore." The man or

woman who feels strong enough for two, seeks for every other

quality in a partner than strength.

The converse is also true. Weak people want to marry strong

people who do not frighten them too much; and this often leads

them to make the mistake we describe metaphorically as "biting

off more than they can chew." They want too much for too little;

and when the bargain is unreasonable beyond all bearing, the

union becomes impossible: it ends in the weaker party being

either discarded or borne as a cross, which is worse. People who

are not only weak, but silly or obtuse as well, are often in

these difficulties.

This being the state of human affairs, what is Eliza fairly sure

to do when she is placed between Freddy and Higgins? Will she

look forward to a lifetime of fetching Higgins's slippers or to a

lifetime of Freddy fetching hers? There can be no doubt about the

answer. Unless Freddy is biologically repulsive to her, and

Higgins biologically attractive to a degree that overwhelms all

her other instincts, she will, if she marries either of them,

marry Freddy.

And that is just what Eliza did.

Complications ensued; but they were economic, not romantic.

Freddy had no money and no occupation. His mother's jointure, a

last relic of the opulence of Largelady Park, had enabled her to

struggle along in Earlscourt with an air of gentility, but not to

procure any serious secondary education for her children, much

less give the boy a profession. A clerkship at thirty shillings a

week was beneath Freddy's dignity, and extremely distasteful to

him besides. His prospects consisted of a hope that if he kept up

appearances somebody would do something for him. The something

appeared vaguely to his imagination as a private secretaryship or

a sinecure of some sort. To his mother it perhaps appeared as a

marriage to some lady of means who could not resist her boy's

niceness. Fancy her feelings when he married a flower girl who

had become declassee under extraordinary circumstances which were

now notorious!

It is true that Eliza's situation did not seem wholly ineligible.

Her father, though formerly a dustman, and now fantastically

disclassed, had become extremely popular in the smartest society

by a social talent which triumphed over every prejudice and every

disadvantage. Rejected by the middle class, which he loathed, he

had shot up at once into the highest circles by his wit, his

dustmanship (which he carried like a banner), and his Nietzschean

transcendence of good and evil. At intimate ducal dinners he sat

on the right hand of the Duchess; and in country houses he smoked

in the pantry and was made much of by the butler when he was not

feeding in the dining-room and being consulted by cabinet

ministers. But he found it almost as hard to do all this on four

thousand a year as Mrs. Eynsford Hill to live in Earlseourt on an

income so pitiably smaller that I have not the heart to disclose

its exact figure. He absolutely refused to add the last straw to

his burden by contributing to Eliza's support.

Thus Freddy and Eliza, now Mr. and Mrs. Eynsford Hill, would have

spent a penniless honeymoon but for a wedding present of 500

pounds from the Colonel to Eliza. It lasted a long time because

Freddy did not know how to spend money, never having had any to

spend, and Eliza, socially trained by a pair of old bachelors,

wore her clothes as long as they held together and looked pretty,

without the least regard to their being many months out of

fashion. Still, 500 pounds will not last two young people for

ever; and they both knew, and Eliza felt as well, that they must

shift for themselves in the end. She could quarter herself on

Wimpole Street because it had come to be her home; but she was

quite aware that she ought not to quarter Freddy there, and that

it would not be good for his character if she did.

Not that the Wimpole Street bachelors objected. When she

consulted them, Higgins declined to be bothered about her housing

problem when that solution was so simple. Eliza's desire to have

Freddy in the house with her seemed of no more importance than if

she had wanted an extra piece of bedroom furniture. Pleas as to

Freddy's character, and the moral obligation on him to earn his

own living, were lost on Higgins. He denied that Freddy had any

character, and declared that if he tried to do any useful work

some competent person would have the trouble of undoing it: a

procedure involving a net loss to the community, and great

unhappiness to Freddy himself, who was obviously intended by

Nature for such light work as amusing Eliza, which, Higgins

declared, was a much more useful and honorable occupation than

working in the city. When Eliza referred again to her project of

teaching phonetics, Higgins abated not a jot of his violent

opposition to it. He said she was not within ten years of being

qualified to meddle with his pet subject; and as it was evident

that the Colonel agreed with him, she felt she could not go

against them in this grave matter, and that she had no right,

without Higgins's consent, to exploit the knowledge he had given

her; for his knowledge seemed to her as much his private property

as his watch: Eliza was no communist. Besides, she was

superstitiously devoted to them both, more entirely and frankly

after her marriage than before it.

It was the Colonel who finally solved the problem, which had cost

him much perplexed cogitation. He one day asked Eliza, rather

shyly, whether she had quite given up her notion of keeping a

flower shop. She replied that she had thought of it, but had put

it out of her head, because the Colonel had said, that day at

Mrs. Higgins's, that it would never do. The Colonel confessed

that when he said that, he had not quite recovered from the

dazzling impression of the day before. They broke the matter to

Higgins that evening. The sole comment vouchsafed by him very

nearly led to a serious quarrel with Eliza. It was to the effect

that she would have in Freddy an ideal errand boy.

Freddy himself was next sounded on the subject. He said he had

been thinking of a shop himself; though it had presented itself

to his pennilessness as a small place in which Eliza should sell

tobacco at one counter whilst he sold newspapers at the opposite

one. But he agreed that it would be extraordinarily jolly to go

early every morning with Eliza to Covent Garden and buy flowers

on the scene of their first meeting: a sentiment which earned him

many kisses from his wife. He added that he had always been

afraid to propose anything of the sort, because Clara would make

an awful row about a step that must damage her matrimonial

chances, and his mother could not be expected to like it after

clinging for so many years to that step of the social ladder on

which retail trade is impossible.

This difficulty was removed by an event highly unexpected by

Freddy's mother. Clara, in the course of her incursions into

those artistic circles which were the highest within her reach,

discovered that her conversational qualifications were expected

to include a grounding in the novels of Mr. H.G. Wells. She

borrowed them in various directions so energetically that she

swallowed them all within two months. The result was a conversion

of a kind quite common today. A modern Acts of the Apostles would

fill fifty whole Bibles if anyone were capable of writing it.

Poor Clara, who appeared to Higgins and his mother as a

disagreeable and ridiculous person, and to her own mother as in

some inexplicable way a social failure, had never seen herself in

either light; for, though to some extent ridiculed and mimicked

in West Kensington like everybody else there, she was accepted as

a rational and normal—or shall we say inevitable?—sort of human

being. At worst they called her The Pusher; but to them no more

than to herself had it ever occurred that she was pushing the

air, and pushing it in a wrong direction. Still, she was not

happy. She was growing desperate. Her one asset, the fact that

her mother was what the Epsom greengrocer called a carriage lady

had no exchange value, apparently. It had prevented her from

getting educated, because the only education she could have

afforded was education with the Earlscourt green grocer's

daughter. It had led her to seek the society of her mother's

class; and that class simply would not have her, because she was

much poorer than the greengrocer, and, far from being able to

afford a maid, could not afford even a housemaid, and had to

scrape along at home with an illiberally treated general servant.

Under such circumstances nothing could give her an air of being a

genuine product of Largelady Park. And yet its tradition made her

regard a marriage with anyone within her reach as an unbearable

humiliation. Commercial people and professional people in a small

way were odious to her. She ran after painters and novelists; but

she did not charm them; and her bold attempts to pick up and

practise artistic and literary talk irritated them. She was, in

short, an utter failure, an ignorant, incompetent, pretentious,

unwelcome, penniless, useless little snob; and though she did not

admit these disqualifications (for nobody ever faces unpleasant

truths of this kind until the possibility of a way out dawns on

them) she felt their effects too keenly to be satisfied with her

position.

Clara had a startling eyeopener when, on being suddenly wakened

to enthusiasm by a girl of her own age who dazzled her and

produced in her a gushing desire to take her for a model, and

gain her friendship, she discovered that this exquisite

apparition had graduated from the gutter in a few months' time.

It shook her so violently, that when Mr. H. G. Wells lifted her

on the point of his puissant pen, and placed her at the angle of

view from which the life she was leading and the society to which

she clung appeared in its true relation to real human needs and

worthy social structure, he effected a conversion and a

conviction of sin comparable to the most sensational feats of

General Booth or Gypsy Smith. Clara's snobbery went bang. Life

suddenly began to move with her. Without knowing how or why, she

began to make friends and enemies. Some of the acquaintances to

whom she had been a tedious or indifferent or ridiculous

affliction, dropped her: others became cordial. To her amazement

she found that some "quite nice" people were saturated with

Wells, and that this accessibility to ideas was the secret of

their niceness. People she had thought deeply religious, and had

tried to conciliate on that tack with disastrous results,

suddenly took an interest in her, and revealed a hostility to

conventional religion which she had never conceived possible

except among the most desperate characters. They made her read

Galsworthy; and Galsworthy exposed the vanity of Largelady Park

and finished her. It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in

which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been

unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully

struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with

society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come

into any sort of sincere human contact. In the radiance of these

discoveries, and the tumult of their reaction, she made a fool of

herself as freely and conspicuously as when she so rashly adopted

Eliza's expletive in Mrs. Higgins's drawing-room; for the

new-born Wellsian had to find her bearings almost as ridiculously

as a baby; but nobody hates a baby for its ineptitudes, or thinks

the worse of it for trying to eat the matches; and Clara lost no

friends by her follies. They laughed at her to her face this

time; and she had to defend herself and fight it out as best she

could.

When Freddy paid a visit to Earlscourt (which he never did when

he could possibly help it) to make the desolating announcement

that he and his Eliza were thinking of blackening the Largelady

scutcheon by opening a shop, he found the little household

already convulsed by a prior announcement from Clara that she

also was going to work in an old furniture shop in Dover Street,

which had been started by a fellow Wellsian. This appointment

Clara owed, after all, to her old social accomplishment of Push.

She had made up her mind that, cost what it might, she would see

Mr. Wells in the flesh; and she had achieved her end at a garden

party. She had better luck than so rash an enterprise deserved.

Mr. Wells came up to her expectations. Age had not withered him,

nor could custom stale his infinite variety in half an hour. His

pleasant neatness and compactness, his small hands and feet, his

teeming ready brain, his unaffected accessibility, and a certain

fine apprehensiveness which stamped him as susceptible from his

topmost hair to his tipmost toe, proved irresistible. Clara

talked of nothing else for weeks and weeks afterwards. And as she

happened to talk to the lady of the furniture shop, and that lady

also desired above all things to know Mr. Wells and sell pretty

things to him, she offered Clara a job on the chance of achieving

that end through her.

And so it came about that Eliza's luck held, and the expected

opposition to the flower shop melted away. The shop is in the

arcade of a railway station not very far from the Victoria and

Albert Museum; and if you live in that neighborhood you may go

there any day and buy a buttonhole from Eliza.

Now here is a last opportunity for romance. Would you not like to

be assured that the shop was an immense success, thanks to

Eliza's charms and her early business experience in Covent

Garden? Alas! the truth is the truth: the shop did not pay for a

long time, simply because Eliza and her Freddy did not know how

to keep it. True, Eliza had not to begin at the very beginning:

she knew the names and prices of the cheaper flowers; and her

elation was unbounded when she found that Freddy, like all youths

educated at cheap, pretentious, and thoroughly inefficient

schools, knew a little Latin. It was very little, but enough to

make him appear to her a Porson or Bentley, and to put him at his

ease with botanical nomenclature. Unfortunately he knew nothing

else; and Eliza, though she could count money up to eighteen

shillings or so, and had acquired a certain familiarity with the

language of Milton from her struggles to qualify herself for

winning Higgins's bet, could not write out a bill without utterly

disgracing the establishment. Freddy's power of stating in Latin

that Balbus built a wall and that Gaul was divided into three

parts did not carry with it the slightest knowledge of accounts

or business: Colonel Pickering had to explain to him what a

cheque book and a bank account meant. And the pair were by no

means easily teachable. Freddy backed up Eliza in her obstinate

refusal to believe that they could save money by engaging a

bookkeeper with some knowledge of the business. How, they argued,

could you possibly save money by going to extra expense when you

already could not make both ends meet? But the Colonel, after

making the ends meet over and over again, at last gently

insisted; and Eliza, humbled to the dust by having to beg from

him so often, and stung by the uproarious derision of Higgins, to

whom the notion of Freddy succeeding at anything was a joke that

never palled, grasped the fact that business, like phonetics, has

to be learned.

On the piteous spectacle of the pair spending their evenings in

shorthand schools and polytechnic classes, learning bookkeeping

and typewriting with incipient junior clerks, male and female,

from the elementary schools, let me not dwell. There were even

classes at the London School of Economics, and a humble personal

appeal to the director of that institution to recommend a course

bearing on the flower business. He, being a humorist, explained

to them the method of the celebrated Dickensian essay on Chinese

Metaphysics by the gentleman who read an article on China and an

article on Metaphysics and combined the information. He suggested

that they should combine the London School with Kew Gardens.

Eliza, to whom the procedure of the Dickensian gentleman seemed

perfectly correct (as in fact it was) and not in the least funny

(which was only her ignorance) took his advice with entire

gravity. But the effort that cost her the deepest humiliation was

a request to Higgins, whose pet artistic fancy, next to Milton's

verse, was calligraphy, and who himself wrote a most beautiful

Italian hand, that he would teach her to write. He declared that

she was congenitally incapable of forming a single letter worthy

of the least of Milton's words; but she persisted; and again he

suddenly threw himself into the task of teaching her with a

combination of stormy intensity, concentrated patience, and

occasional bursts of interesting disquisition on the beauty and

nobility, the august mission and destiny, of human handwriting.

Eliza ended by acquiring an extremely uncommercial script which

was a positive extension of her personal beauty, and spending

three times as much on stationery as anyone else because certain

qualities and shapes of paper became indispensable to her. She

could not even address an envelope in the usual way because it

made the margins all wrong.

Their commercial school days were a period of disgrace and

despair for the young couple. They seemed to be learning nothing

about flower shops. At last they gave it up as hopeless, and

shook the dust of the shorthand schools, and the polytechnics,

and the London School of Economics from their feet for ever.

Besides, the business was in some mysterious way beginning to

take care of itself. They had somehow forgotten their objections

to employing other people. They came to the conclusion that their

own way was the best, and that they had really a remarkable

talent for business. The Colonel, who had been compelled for some

years to keep a sufficient sum on current account at his bankers

to make up their deficits, found that the provision was

unnecessary: the young people were prospering. It is true that

there was not quite fair play between them and their competitors

in trade. Their week-ends in the country cost them nothing, and

saved them the price of their Sunday dinners; for the motor car

was the Colonel's; and he and Higgins paid the hotel bills. Mr.

F. Hill, florist and greengrocer (they soon discovered that there

was money in asparagus; and asparagus led to other vegetables),

had an air which stamped the business as classy; and in private

life he was still Frederick Eynsford Hill, Esquire. Not that

there was any swank about him: nobody but Eliza knew that he had

been christened Frederick Challoner. Eliza herself swanked like

anything.

That is all. That is how it has turned out. It is astonishing how

much Eliza still manages to meddle in the housekeeping at Wimpole

Street in spite of the shop and her own family. And it is notable

that though she never nags her husband, and frankly loves the

Colonel as if she were his favorite daughter, she has never got

out of the habit of nagging Higgins that was established on the

fatal night when she won his bet for him. She snaps his head off

on the faintest provocation, or on none. He no longer dares to

tease her by assuming an abysmal inferiority of Freddy's mind to

his own. He storms and bullies and derides; but she stands up to

him so ruthlessly that the Colonel has to ask her from time to

time to be kinder to Higgins; and it is the only request of his

that brings a mulish expression into her face. Nothing but some

emergency or calamity great enough to break down all likes and

dislikes, and throw them both back on their common humanity—and

may they be spared any such trial!—will ever alter this. She

knows that Higgins does not need her, just as her father did not

need her. The very scrupulousness with which he told her that day

that he had become used to having her there, and dependent on her

for all sorts of little services, and that he should miss her if

she went away (it would never have occurred to Freddy or the

Colonel to say anything of the sort) deepens her inner certainty

that she is "no more to him than them slippers", yet she has a

sense, too, that his indifference is deeper than the infatuation

of commoner souls. She is immensely interested in him. She has

even secret mischievous moments in which she wishes she could get

him alone, on a desert island, away from all ties and with nobody

else in the world to consider, and just drag him off his pedestal

and see him making love like any common man. We all have private

imaginations of that sort. But when it comes to business, to the

life that she really leads as distinguished from the life of

dreams and fancies, she likes Freddy and she likes the Colonel;

and she does not like Higgins and Mr. Doolittle. Galatea never

does quite like Pygmalion: his relation to her is too godlike to

be altogether agreeable.