Pygmalion

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.