Pygmalion and Three Other Plays

by George Bernard Shaw

  THE JAPANESE LADY Garn! Dont you know your own daughter?

  LIZA Dont I look silly?

  HIGGINS Silly?

  MRS. PEARCE [at the door] Now, Mr. Higgins, please dont say anything to make the girl conceited about herself.

  HIGGINS [conscientiously] Oh! Quite right, Mrs. Pearce. [To ELIZA]Yes : damned silly.

  MRS. PEARCE Please, sir.

  HIGGINS [correcting himself] I mean extremely silly.

  LIZA I should look all right with my hat on. [She takes up her hat; puts it on; and walks across the room to the fireplace with a fashionable air].

  HIGGINS A new fashion, by George ! And it ought to look horrible !

  DOOLITTLE [with fatherly pride] Well, I never thought she’d clean up as good looking as that, Governor. Shes a credit to me, aint she?

  LIZA I tell you, it’s easy to clean up here. Hot and cold water on tap, just as much as you like, there is. Woolly towels, there is; and a towel horse so hot, it burns your fingers. Soft brushes to scrub yourself, and a wooden bowl of soap smelling like primroses. Now I know why ladies is so clean. Washing’s a treat for them. Wish they saw what it is for the like of me!

  HIGGINS I’m glad the bath-room met with your approval.

  LIZA It didnt: not all of it; and I dont care who hears me say it. Mrs. Pearce knows.

  HIGGINS What was wrong, Mrs. Pearce?

  MRS. PEARCE [blandly] Oh, nothing, sir. It doesnt matter.

  LIZA I had a good mind to break it. I didnt know which way to look. But I hung a towel over it, I did.

  HIGGINS Over what?

  MRS. PEARCE Over the looking-glass, sir.

  HIGGINS Doolittle: you have brought your daughter up too strictly.

  DOOLITTLE Me! I never brought her up at all, except to give her a lick of a strap now and again. Dont put it on me, Governor. She aint accustomed to it, you see: thats all. But she’ll soon pick up your free-and-easy ways.

  LIZA I’m a good girl, I am; and I wont pick up no free and easy ways.

  HIGGINS Eliza: if you say again that youre a good girl, your father shall take you home.

  LIZA Not him. You dont know my father. All he come here for was to touch you for some money to get drunk on.

  DOOLITTLE Well, what else would I want money for? To put into the plate in church, I suppose. [She puts out her tongue at him. He is so incensed by this that PICKERING presently finds it necessary to step between them]. Dont you give me none of your lip; and dont let me hear you giving this gentleman any of it neither, or youll hear from me about it. See?

  HIGGINS Have you any further advice to give her before you go, Doolittle? Your blessing, for instance.

  DOOLITTLE No, Governor: I aint such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself. Hard enough to hold them in without that. If you want Eliza’s mind improved, Governor, you do it yourself with a strap. So long, gentlemen. [He turns to go].

  HIGGINS [impressively] Stop. Youll come regularly to see your daughter. It’s your duty, you know. My brother is a clergyman; and he could help you in your talks with her.

  DOOLITTLE [evasively] Certainly. I’ll come, Governor. Not just this week, because I have a job at a distance. But later on you may depend on me. Afternoon, gentlemen. Afternoon, maam. [He takes off his hat to MRS. PEARCE, who disdains the salutation and goes out. He winks at HIGGINS, thinking him probably a fellow-sufferer from MRS. PEARCE’s difficult disposition, and follows her].

  LIZA Dont you believe the old liar. He’d as soon you set a bulldog on him as a clergyman. You wont see him again in a hurry.

  HIGGINS I dont want to, Eliza. Do you?

  LIZA Not me. I dont want never to see him again, I dont. Hes a disgrace to me, he is, collecting dust, instead of working at his trade.

  PICKERING What is his trade, Eliza?

  LIZA Talking money out of other people’s pockets into his own. His proper trade’s a navvy;[207] and he works at it sometimes too — for exercise — and earns good money at it. Aint you going to call me Miss Doolittle any more?

  PICKERING I beg your pardon, Miss Doolittle. It was a slip of the tongue.

  LIZA Oh, I dont mind; only it sounded so genteel. I should just like to take a taxi to the corner of Tottenham Court Road and get out there and tell it to wait for me, just to put the girls in their place a bit. I wouldnt speak to them, you know.

  PICKERING Better wait til we get you something really fashionable.

  HIGGINS Besides, you shouldnt cut your old friends now that you have risen in the world. Thats what we call snobbery.

  LIZA You dont call the like of them my friends now, I should hope. Theyve took it out of me often enough with their ridicule when they had the chance; and now I mean to get a bit of my own back. But if I’m to have fashionable clothes, I’ll wait. I should like to have some. Mrs. Pearce says youre going to give me some to wear in bed at night different to what I wear in the daytime; but it do seem a waste of money when you could get something to shew. Besides, I never could fancy changing into cold things on a winter night.

  MRS. PEARCE [coming back] Now, Eliza. The new things have come for you to try on.

  LIZA Ah-ow-oo-ooh! [She rushes out].

  MRS. PEARCE [following her] Oh, dont rush about like that, girl. [She shuts the door behind her].

  HIGGINS Pickering: we have taken on a stiff job.

  PICKERING [with conviction] Higgins: we have.

  ACT III

  It is Mrs. Higgins’s at-home day. Nobody has yet arrived. Her drawing-room, in a flat on Chelsea [208] embankment, has three windows looking on the river; and the ceiling is not so lofty as it would be in an older house of the same pretension. The windows are open, giving access to a balcony with flowers in pots. If you stand with your face to the windows, you have the fireplace on your left and the door in the right-hand wall close to the corner nearest the windows.

  Mrs. Higgins was brought up on Morris and Burne Jones; and her room, which is very unlike her son’s room in Wimpole Street, is not crowded with furniture and little tables and nicknacks. In the middle of the room there is a big ottoman; and this, with the carpet, the Morris wall-papers, and the Morris chintz window curtains and brocade covers of the ottoman and its cushions, supply all the ornament, and are much too handsome to be hidden by odds and ends of useless things. A few good oil-paintings from the exhibitions in the Grosvenor Gallery thirty years ago (the Burne Jones, not the Whistler {52}side of them) are on the walls. The only landscape is a Cecil Lawson [209] on the scale of a Rubens. There is a portrait of Mrs. Higgins as she was when she defied fashion in her youth in one of the beautiful Rossettian[210] costumes which, when caricatured by people who did not understand, led to the absurdities of popular estheticism in the eighteen -seventies.

  In the corner diagonally opposite the door Mrs. Higgins, now over sixty and long past taking the trouble to dress out of the fashion, sits writing at an elegantty simple writing-table with a bell button within reach of her hand. There is a Chippendale chair further baclz in the room between her and the window nearest her side. At the other side of the room, further forward, is an Elizabethan chair roughly carved in the taste of Inigo Jones. On the same side a piano in a decorated case. The corner between the fireplace and the window is occupied by a divan cushioned in Morris chintz.

  It is between four and five in the afternoon.

  The door is opened violently; and Higgins enters with his hat on.

  MRS. HIGGINS [dismayed] Henry [scolding him]! What are you doing here to-day? It is my at-home day:[211] you promised not to come. [As he bends to kiss her, she takes his hat off, and presents it to him].

  HIGGINS Oh bother! [He throws the hat down on the table].

  MRS. HIGGINS Go home at once.

  HIGGINS [kissing her] I know, mother. I came on purpose.

  MRS. HIGGINS But you mustnt. I’m serious, Henry. You of fend all my friends: they stop coming whenever they meet you.

  HIGGINS Nonsense! I know I have no small talk; but people dont mind. [He
sits on the settee].

  MRS. HIGGINS Oh! dont they? Small talk indeed! What about your large talk? Really, dear, you mustnt stay.

  HIGGINS I must. Ive a job for you. A phonetic job.

  MRS. HIGGINS No use, dear. I’m sorry; but I cant get round your vowels; and though I like to get pretty postcards in your patent shorthand, I always have to read the copies in ordinary writing you so thoughtfully send me.

  HIGGINS Well, this isnt a phonetic job.

  MRS. HIGGINS You said it was.

  HIGGINS Not your part of it. Ive picked up a girl.

  MRS. HIGGINS Does that mean that some girl has picked you up?

  HIGGINS Not at all. I dont mean a love affair.

  MRS. HIGGINS What a pity!

  HIGGINS Why?

  MRS. HIGGINS Well, you never fall in love with anyone under forty-five. When will you discover that there are some rather nice-looking young women about?

  HIGGINS Oh, I cant be bothered with young women. My idea of a loveable woman is something as like you as possible.{53} I shall never get into the way of seriously liking young women: some habits lie too deep to be changed. [Rising abruptly and walking about, jingling his money and his keys in his trouser pockets] Besides, theyre all idiots.

  MRS. HIGGINS Do you know what you would do if you really loved me, Henry?

  HIGGINS Oh bother! What? Marry, I suppose?

  MRS. HIGGINS No. Stop fidgeting and take your hands out of your pockets. [With a gesture of despair, he obeys and sits down again]. Thats a good boy. Now tell me about the girl.

  HIGGINS Shes coming to see you.

  MRS. HIGGINS I dont remember asking her.

  HIGGINS You didnt. I asked her. If youd known her you wouldnt have asked her.

  MRS. HIGGINS Indeed! Why?

  HIGGINS Well, it’s like this. Shes a common flower girl. I picked her off the kerbstone.

  MRS . HIGGINS And invited her to my at-home !

  HIGGINS [rising and coming to her to coax her] Oh, thatll be all right. Ive taught her to speak properly; and she has strict orders as to her behavior. Shes to keep to two subjects: the weather and everybody’s health — Fine day and How do you do, you know — and not to let herself go on things in general. That will be safe.

  MRS. HIGGINS Safe! To talk about our health! about our insides ! perhaps about our outsides! How could you be so silly, Henry?

  HIGGINS [impatiently] Well, she must talk about something. [He controls himself and sits down again]. Oh, she’ll be all right: dont you fuss. Pickering is in it with me. Ive a sort of bet on that I’ll pass her off as a duchess in six months. I started on her some months ago; and shes getting on like a house on fire. I shall win my bet. She has a quick ear; and shes been easier to teach than my middle-class pupils because shes had to learn a complete new language. She talks English almost as you talk French.

  MRS. HIGGINS Thats satisfactory, at all events.

  HIGGINS Well, it is and it isnt.

  MRS. HIGGINS What does that mean?

  HIGGINS You see, Ive got her pronunciation all right; but you have to consider not only how a girl pronounces, but what she pronounces; and thats where — They are interrupted by the parlor-maid, announcing guests.

  THE PARLOR-MAID Mrs. and Miss Eynsford Hill. [She withdraws ].

  HIGGINS Oh Lord! [He rises; snatches his hat from the table; and makes for the door; but before he reaches it his mother introduces him].

  MRS. and MISS EYNSFORD HILL are the mother and daughter who sheltered from the rain in Covent Garden. The mother is well bred, quiet, and has the habitual anxiety of straitened means. The daughter has acquired a gay air of being very much at home in society: the bravado of genteel poverty.

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [to MRS. HIGGINS] How do you do? [They shake hands].

  MISS EYNSFORD HILL How d‘you do? [She shakes].

  MRS. HIGGINS [introducing] My son Henry.

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL Your celebrated son! I have so longed to meet you, Professor Higgins.

  HIGGINS [glumly, making no movement in her direction] Delighted. [He backs against the piano and bows brusquely].

  MISS EYNSFORD HILL [going to him with confident familiarity] How do you do?

  HIGGINS [staring at her] Ive seen you before somewhere. I havnt the ghost of a notion where; but Ive heard your voice. [Drearily] It doesnt matter. Youd better sit down.

  MRS. HIGGINS I’m sorry to say that my celebrated son has no manners. You mustnt mind him.

  MISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] I dont. [She sits in the Elizabethan chair].

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [a little bewildered] Not at all. [She sits on the ottoman between her daughter and MRS. HIGGINS, who has turned her chair away from the writing-table].

  HIGGINS Oh, have I been rude? I didnt mean to be.

  He goes to the central window, through which, with his back to the company, he contemplates the river and the flowers in Battersea Park on the opposite bank as if they were a frozen desert.

  The parlor-maid returns, ushering in Pickering.

  THE PARLOR-MAID Colonel Pickering [she withdraws].

  PICKERING How do you do, Mrs. Higgins?

  MRS. HIGGINS So glad youve come. Do you know Mrs. Eynsford Hill — Miss Eynsford Hill? [Exchange of bows. The Colonel brings the Chippendale chair a little forward between MRS. HILL and MRS. HIGGINS, and sits down].

  PICKERING Has Henry told you what weve come for?

  HIGGINS [over his shoulder] We were interrupted: damn it!

  MRS. HIGGINS Oh Henry, Henry, really!

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [half rising] Are we in the way?

  MRS. HIGGINS [rising and mahing her sit down again] No, no. You couldnt have come more fortunately: we want you to meet a friend of ours.

  HIGGINS [turning hopefully] Yes, by George! We want two or three people. Youll do as well as anybody else.

  The parlor-maid returns, ushering FREDDY.

  THE PARLOR-MAID Mr. Eynsford Hill.

  HIGGINS [almost audibly, past endurance] God of Heaven! another of them.

  FREDDY [shaking hands with MRS. HIGGINS] Ahdedo?[212]

  MRS. HIGGINS Very good of you to come. [Introducing] Colonel Pickering.

  FREDDY [bowing] Ahdedo?

  MRS. HIGGINS I dont think you know my son, Professor Higgins.

  FREDDY [going to Higgins] Ahdedo?

  HIGGINS [looking at him much as if he were a pickpocket] I’ll take my oath Ive met you before somewhere. Where was it?

  FREDDY I dont think so.

  HIGGINS [resignedly] It dont matter, anyhow. Sit down.

  He shakes FREDDY’s hand, and almost slings him on the ottoman with his face to the windows; then comes round to the other side of it.

  HIGGINS Well, here we are, anyhow! [He sits down on the ottoman next MRS. EYNSFORD HILL, on her left]. And now, what the devil are we going to talk about until Eliza comes?

  MRS. HIGGINS Henry: you are the life and soul of the Royal Society’s soirees; but really youre rather trying on more commonplace occasions.

  HIGGINS Am I? Very sorry. [Beaming suddenly] I suppose I am, you know. [Uproariously] Ha, ha!

  MISS EYNSFORD HILL [who considers HIGGINS quite eligible matrimonially] I sympathize. I havnt any small talk. If people would only be frank and say what they really think!

  HIGGINS [relapsing into gloom] Lord forbid!

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [taking up her daughter’s cue] But why?

  HIGGINS What they think they ought to think is bad enough, Lord knows; but what they really think would break up the whole show. Do you suppose it would be really agreeable if I were to come out now with what I really think?

  MISS EYNSFORD HILL [gaily] Is it so very cynical?

  HIGGINS Cynical! Who the dickens said it was cynical? I mean it wouldnt be decent.

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [seriously] Oh! I’m sure you dont mean that, Mr. Higgins.

  HIGGINS You see, we’re all savages, more or less. We’re supposed to be civilized and cultured — to know all about poetry and philosophy
and art and science, and so on; but how many of us know even the meanings of these names? [To MISS HILL] What do you know of poetry? [To MRS. HILL] What do you know of science? [Indicating FREDDY] What does he know of art or science or anything else? What the devil do you imagine I know of philosophy?

  MRS. HIGGINS [warningly] Or of manners, Henry?

  THE PARLOR-MAID [opening the door] Miss Doolittle. [She withdraws].

  HIGGINS [rising hastily and running to MRS. HIGGINS] Here she is, mother. [He stands on tiptoe and makes signs over his mother’s head to ELIZA to indicate to her which lady is her hostess].

  ELIZA, who is exquisitely dressed, produces an impression of such remarkable distinction and beauty as she enters that they all rise, quite fluttered. Guided by HIGGINS’s signals, she comes to MRS. HIGGINS with studied grace.

  LIZA [speaking with pedantic correctness of pronunciation and great beauty of tone] How do you do, Mrs. Higgins? [She gasps slightly in making sure of the H in Higgins, but is quite successful]. Mr. Higgins told me I might come.

  MRS. HIGGINS [cordially] Quite right: I’m very glad indeed to see you.

  PICKERING How do you do, Miss Doolittle?

  LIZA [shaking hands with him] Colonel Pickering, is it not?

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL I feel sure we have met before, Miss Doolittle. I remember your eyes.

  LIZA How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman gracefully in the place just left vacant by Higgins].

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing My daughter Clara.

  LIZA How do you do?

  CLARA [impulsively] How do you do? [She sits down on the ottoman beside Eliza, devouring her with her eyes].

  FREDDY [coming to their side of the ottoman] Ive certainly had the pleasure.

  MRS. EYNSFORD HILL [introducing] My son Freddy.

  LIZA How do you do?

  FREDDY bows and sits down in the Elizabethan chair, infatuated.

  HIGGINS [suddenly] By George, yes: it all comes back to me! [They stare at him]. Covent Garden! [Lamentably] What a damned thing!

  MRS. HIGGINS Henry, please! [He is about to sit on the edge of the table]. Dont sit on my writing-table: youll break it.