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+Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Warren's Profession, by George Bernard Shaw
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Mrs. Warren's Profession
+
+Author: George Bernard Shaw
+
+Release Date: February 11, 2006 [EBook #1097]
+[Last updated: July 6, 2011]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer and David Widger
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION
+
+
+by George Bernard Shaw
+
+
+1894
+
+
+With The Author's Apology (1902)
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTHOR'S APOLOGY
+
+
+Mrs Warren's Profession has been performed at last, after a delay of
+only eight years; and I have once more shared with Ibsen the triumphant
+amusement of startling all but the strongest-headed of the London
+theatre critics clean out of the practice of their profession. No
+author who has ever known the exultation of sending the Press into an
+hysterical tumult of protest, of moral panic, of involuntary and frantic
+confession of sin, of a horror of conscience in which the power of
+distinguishing between the work of art on the stage and the real life
+of the spectator is confused and overwhelmed, will ever care for the
+stereotyped compliments which every successful farce or melodrama
+elicits from the newspapers. Give me that critic who rushed from my play
+to declare furiously that Sir George Crofts ought to be kicked. What a
+triumph for the actor, thus to reduce a jaded London journalist to
+the condition of the simple sailor in the Wapping gallery, who shouts
+execrations at Iago and warnings to Othello not to believe him! But
+dearer still than such simplicity is that sense of the sudden earthquake
+shock to the foundations of morality which sends a pallid crowd of
+critics into the street shrieking that the pillars of society are
+cracking and the ruin of the State is at hand. Even the Ibsen champions
+of ten years ago remonstrate with me just as the veterans of those brave
+days remonstrated with them. Mr Grein, the hardy iconoclast who first
+launched my plays on the stage alongside Ghosts and The Wild Duck,
+exclaimed that I have shattered his ideals. Actually his ideals! What
+would Dr Relling say? And Mr William Archer himself disowns me because I
+"cannot touch pitch without wallowing in it". Truly my play must be more
+needed than I knew; and yet I thought I knew how little the others know.
+
+Do not suppose, however, that the consternation of the Press reflects
+any consternation among the general public. Anybody can upset the
+theatre critics, in a turn of the wrist, by substituting for the
+romantic commonplaces of the stage the moral commonplaces of the pulpit,
+platform, or the library. Play Mrs Warren's Profession to an audience
+of clerical members of the Christian Social Union and of women well
+experienced in Rescue, Temperance, and Girls' Club work, and no moral
+panic will arise; every man and woman present will know that as long
+as poverty makes virtue hideous and the spare pocket-money of rich
+bachelordom makes vice dazzling, their daily hand-to-hand fight against
+prostitution with prayer and persuasion, shelters and scanty alms,
+will be a losing one. There was a time when they were able to urge that
+though "the white-lead factory where Anne Jane was poisoned" may be a
+far more terrible place than Mrs Warren's house, yet hell is still more
+dreadful. Nowadays they no longer believe in hell; and the girls among
+whom they are working know that they do not believe in it, and would
+laugh at them if they did. So well have the rescuers learnt that Mrs
+Warren's defence of herself and indictment of society is the thing that
+most needs saying, that those who know me personally reproach me, not
+for writing this play, but for wasting my energies on "pleasant
+plays" for the amusement of frivolous people, when I can build up such
+excellent stage sermons on their own work. Mrs Warren's Profession is
+the one play of mine which I could submit to a censorship without doubt
+of the result; only, it must not be the censorship of the minor theatre
+critic, nor of an innocent court official like the Lord Chamberlain's
+Examiner, much less of people who consciously profit by Mrs Warren's
+profession, or who personally make use of it, or who hold the widely
+whispered view that it is an indispensable safety-valve for the
+protection of domestic virtue, or, above all, who are smitten with a
+sentimental affection for our fallen sister, and would "take her up
+tenderly, lift her with care, fashioned so slenderly, young, and SO
+fair." Nor am I prepared to accept the verdict of the medical gentlemen
+who would compulsorily sanitate and register Mrs Warren, whilst leaving
+Mrs Warren's patrons, especially her military patrons, free to destroy
+her health and anybody else's without fear of reprisals. But I should be
+quite content to have my play judged by, say, a joint committee of
+the Central Vigilance Society and the Salvation Army. And the sterner
+moralists the members of the committee were, the better.
+
+Some of the journalists I have shocked reason so unripely that they will
+gather nothing from this but a confused notion that I am accusing the
+National Vigilance Association and the Salvation Army of complicity in
+my own scandalous immorality. It will seem to them that people who would
+stand this play would stand anything. They are quite mistaken. Such
+an audience as I have described would be revolted by many of our
+fashionable plays. They would leave the theatre convinced that the
+Plymouth Brother who still regards the playhouse as one of the gates of
+hell is perhaps the safest adviser on the subject of which he knows so
+little. If I do not draw the same conclusion, it is not because I am one
+of those who claim that art is exempt from moral obligations, and deny
+that the writing or performance of a play is a moral act, to be treated
+on exactly the same footing as theft or murder if it produces equally
+mischievous consequences. I am convinced that fine art is the subtlest,
+the most seductive, the most effective instrument of moral propaganda in
+the world, excepting only the example of personal conduct; and I waive
+even this exception in favor of the art of the stage, because it works
+by exhibiting examples of personal conduct made intelligible and moving
+to crowds of unobservant, unreflecting people to whom real life means
+nothing. I have pointed out again and again that the influence of the
+theatre in England is growing so great that whilst private conduct,
+religion, law, science, politics, and morals are becoming more and
+more theatrical, the theatre itself remains impervious to common
+sense, religion, science, politics, and morals. That is why I fight the
+theatre, not with pamphlets and sermons and treatises, but with plays;
+and so effective do I find the dramatic method that I have no doubt I
+shall at last persuade even London to take its conscience and its brains
+with it when it goes to the theatre, instead of leaving them at home
+with its prayer-book as it does at present. Consequently, I am the
+last man in the world to deny that if the net effect of performing Mrs
+Warren's Profession were an increase in the number of persons entering
+that profession, its performance should be dealt with accordingly.
+
+Now let us consider how such recruiting can be encouraged by the
+theatre. Nothing is easier. Let the King's Reader of Plays, backed by
+the Press, make an unwritten but perfectly well understood regulation
+that members of Mrs Warren's profession shall be tolerated on the stage
+only when they are beautiful, exquisitely dressed, and sumptuously
+lodged and fed; also that they shall, at the end of the play, die of
+consumption to the sympathetic tears of the whole audience, or step
+into the next room to commit suicide, or at least be turned out by their
+protectors and passed on to be "redeemed" by old and faithful lovers who
+have adored them in spite of their levities. Naturally, the poorer girls
+in the gallery will believe in the beauty, in the exquisite dresses, and
+the luxurious living, and will see that there is no real necessity for
+the consumption, the suicide, or the ejectment: mere pious forms, all
+of them, to save the Censor's face. Even if these purely official
+catastrophes carried any conviction, the majority of English girls
+remain so poor, so dependent, so well aware that the drudgeries of such
+honest work as is within their reach are likely enough to lead them
+eventually to lung disease, premature death, and domestic desertion or
+brutality, that they would still see reason to prefer the primrose path
+to the strait path of virtue, since both, vice at worst and virtue at
+best, lead to the same end in poverty and overwork. It is true that the
+Board School mistress will tell you that only girls of a certain kind
+will reason in this way. But alas! that certain kind turns out on
+inquiry to be simply the pretty, dainty kind: that is, the only kind
+that gets the chance of acting on such reasoning. Read the first report
+of the Commission on the Housing of the Working Classes [Bluebook C
+4402, 8d., 1889]; read the Report on Home Industries (sacred word,
+Home!) issued by the Women's Industrial Council [Home Industries of
+Women in London, 1897, 1s., 12 Buckingham Street, W. C.]; and ask
+yourself whether, if the lot in life therein described were your lot
+in life, you would not prefer the lot of Cleopatra, of Theodora, of the
+Lady of the Camellias, of Mrs Tanqueray, of Zaza, of Iris. If you can
+go deep enough into things to be able to say no, how many ignorant
+half-starved girls will believe you are speaking sincerely? To them the
+lot of Iris is heavenly in comparison with their own. Yet our King, like
+his predecessors, says to the dramatist, "Thus, and thus only, shall
+you present Mrs Warren's profession on the stage, or you shall starve.
+Witness Shaw, who told the untempting truth about it, and whom We, by
+the Grace of God, accordingly disallow and suppress, and do what in Us
+lies to silence." Fortunately, Shaw cannot be silenced. "The harlot's
+cry from street to street" is louder than the voices of all the kings.
+I am not dependent on the theatre, and cannot be starved into making
+my play a standing advertisement of the attractive side of Mrs Warren's
+business.
+
+Here I must guard myself against a misunderstanding. It is not the fault
+of their authors that the long string of wanton's tragedies, from Antony
+and Cleopatra to Iris, are snares to poor girls, and are objected to
+on that account by many earnest men and women who consider Mrs Warren's
+Profession an excellent sermon. Mr Pinero is in no way bound to suppress
+the fact that his Iris is a person to be envied by millions of better
+women. If he made his play false to life by inventing fictitious
+disadvantages for her, he would be acting as unscrupulously as any tract
+writer. If society chooses to provide for its Irises better than for
+its working women, it must not expect honest playwrights to manufacture
+spurious evidence to save its credit. The mischief lies in the
+deliberate suppression of the other side of the case: the refusal to
+allow Mrs Warren to expose the drudgery and repulsiveness of plying for
+hire among coarse, tedious drunkards; the determination not to let the
+Parisian girl in Brieux's Les Avaries come on the stage and drive into
+people's minds what her diseases mean for her and for themselves. All
+that, says the King's Reader in effect, is horrifying, loathsome.
+
+Precisely: what does he expect it to be? would he have us represent it
+as beautiful and gratifying? The answer to this question, I fear, must
+be a blunt Yes; for it seems impossible to root out of an Englishman's
+mind the notion that vice is delightful, and that abstention from it
+is privation. At all events, as long as the tempting side of it is kept
+towards the public, and softened by plenty of sentiment and sympathy, it
+is welcomed by our Censor, whereas the slightest attempt to place it in
+the light of the policeman's lantern or the Salvation Army shelter
+is checkmated at once as not merely disgusting, but, if you please,
+unnecessary.
+
+Everybody will, I hope, admit that this state of things is intolerable;
+that the subject of Mrs Warren's profession must be either tapu
+altogether, or else exhibited with the warning side as freely displayed
+as the tempting side. But many persons will vote for a complete tapu,
+and an impartial sweep from the boards of Mrs Warren and Gretchen and
+the rest; in short, for banishing the sexual instincts from the stage
+altogether. Those who think this impossible can hardly have considered
+the number and importance of the subjects which are actually banished
+from the stage. Many plays, among them Lear, Hamlet, Macbeth,
+Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, have no sex complications: the thread of
+their action can be followed by children who could not understand a
+single scene of Mrs Warren's Profession or Iris. None of our plays rouse
+the sympathy of the audience by an exhibition of the pains of maternity,
+as Chinese plays constantly do. Each nation has its own particular set
+of tapus in addition to the common human stock; and though each of
+these tapus limits the scope of the dramatist, it does not make drama
+impossible. If the Examiner were to refuse to license plays with female
+characters in them, he would only be doing to the stage what our tribal
+customs already do to the pulpit and the bar. I have myself written a
+rather entertaining play with only one woman in it, and she is quite
+heartwhole; and I could just as easily write a play without a woman in
+it at all. I will even go so far as to promise the Mr Redford my support
+if he will introduce this limitation for part of the year, say during
+Lent, so as to make a close season for that dullest of stock dramatic
+subjects, adultery, and force our managers and authors to find out what
+all great dramatists find out spontaneously: to wit, that people who
+sacrifice every other consideration to love are as hopelessly unheroic
+on the stage as lunatics or dipsomaniacs. Hector is the world's hero;
+not Paris nor Antony.
+
+But though I do not question the possibility of a drama in which love
+should be as effectively ignored as cholera is at present, there is not
+the slightest chance of that way out of the difficulty being taken by
+the Mr Redford. If he attempted it there would be a revolt in which he
+would be swept away in spite of my singlehanded efforts to defend him.
+A complete tapu is politically impossible. A complete toleration is
+equally impossible to Mr Redford, because his occupation would be gone
+if there were no tapu to enforce. He is therefore compelled to maintain
+the present compromise of a partial tapu, applied, to the best of his
+judgement, with a careful respect to persons and to public opinion. And
+a very sensible English solution of the difficulty, too, most readers
+will say. I should not dispute it if dramatic poets really were what
+English public opinion generally assumes them to be during their
+lifetime: that is, a licentiously irregular group to be kept in order
+in a rough and ready way by a magistrate who will stand no nonsense
+from them. But I cannot admit that the class represented by Eschylus,
+Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides, Shakespear, Goethe, Ibsen, and
+Tolstoy, not to mention our own contemporary playwrights, is as much in
+place in Mr Redford's office as a pickpocket is in Bow Street. Further,
+it is not true that the Censorship, though it certainly suppresses Ibsen
+and Tolstoy, and would suppress Shakespear but for the absurd rule that
+a play once licensed is always licensed (so that Wycherly is permitted
+and Shelley prohibited), also suppresses unscrupulous playwrights. I
+challenge Mr Redford to mention any extremity of sexual misconduct which
+any manager in his senses would risk presenting on the London stage that
+has not been presented under his license and that of his predecessor.
+The compromise, in fact, works out in practice in favor of loose plays
+as against earnest ones.
+
+To carry conviction on this point, I will take the extreme course of
+narrating the plots of two plays witnessed within the last ten years
+by myself at London West End theatres, one licensed by the late Queen
+Victoria's Reader of Plays, the other by the present Reader to the King.
+Both plots conform to the strictest rules of the period when La Dame aux
+Camellias was still a forbidden play, and when The Second Mrs Tanqueray
+would have been tolerated only on condition that she carefully explained
+to the audience that when she met Captain Ardale she sinned "but in
+intention."
+
+Play number one. A prince is compelled by his parents to marry the
+daughter of a neighboring king, but loves another maiden. The scene
+represents a hall in the king's palace at night. The wedding has taken
+place that day; and the closed door of the nuptial chamber is in view of
+the audience. Inside, the princess awaits her bridegroom. A duenna is in
+attendance. The bridegroom enters. His sole desire is to escape from a
+marriage which is hateful to him. An idea strikes him. He will assault
+the duenna, and get ignominiously expelled from the palace by his
+indignant father-in-law. To his horror, when he proceeds to carry out
+this stratagem, the duenna, far from raising an alarm, is flattered,
+delighted, and compliant. The assaulter becomes the assaulted. He flings
+her angrily to the ground, where she remains placidly. He flies. The
+father enters; dismisses the duenna; and listens at the keyhole of
+his daughter's nuptial chamber, uttering various pleasantries, and
+declaring, with a shiver, that a sound of kissing, which he supposes to
+proceed from within, makes him feel young again.
+
+In deprecation of the scandalized astonishment with which such a story
+as this will be read, I can only say that it was not presented on the
+stage until its propriety had been certified by the chief officer of the
+Queen of England's household.
+
+Story number two. A German officer finds himself in an inn with a French
+lady who has wounded his national vanity. He resolves to humble her by
+committing a rape upon her. He announces his purpose. She remonstrates,
+implores, flies to the doors and finds them locked, calls for help
+and finds none at hand, runs screaming from side to side, and, after
+a harrowing scene, is overpowered and faints. Nothing further being
+possible on the stage without actual felony, the officer then relents
+and leaves her. When she recovers, she believes that he has carried out
+his threat; and during the rest of the play she is represented as vainly
+vowing vengeance upon him, whilst she is really falling in love with
+him under the influence of his imaginary crime against her. Finally she
+consents to marry him; and the curtain falls on their happiness.
+
+This story was certified by the present King's Reader, acting for the
+Lord Chamberlain, as void in its general tendency of "anything immoral
+or otherwise improper for the stage." But let nobody conclude therefore
+that Mr Redford is a monster, whose policy it is to deprave the theatre.
+As a matter of fact, both the above stories are strictly in order from
+the official point of view. The incidents of sex which they contain,
+though carried in both to the extreme point at which another step would
+be dealt with, not by the King's Reader, but by the police, do not
+involve adultery, nor any allusion to Mrs Warren's profession, nor to
+the fact that the children of any polyandrous group will, when they grow
+up, inevitably be confronted, as those of Mrs Warren's group are in my
+play, with the insoluble problem of their own possible consanguinity.
+In short, by depending wholly on the coarse humors and the physical
+fascination of sex, they comply with all the formulable requirements of
+the Censorship, whereas plays in which these humors and fascinations are
+discarded, and the social problems created by sex seriously faced and
+dealt with, inevitably ignore the official formula and are suppressed.
+If the old rule against the exhibition of illicit sex relations on stage
+were revived, and the subject absolutely barred, the only result would
+be that Antony and Cleopatra, Othello (because of the Bianca episode),
+Troilus and Cressida, Henry IV, Measure for Measure, Timon of Athens,
+La Dame aux Camellias, The Profligate, The Second Mrs Tanqueray, The
+Notorious Mrs Ebbsmith, The Gay Lord Quex, Mrs Dane's Defence, and
+Iris would be swept from the stage, and placed under the same ban as
+Tolstoy's Dominion of Darkness and Mrs Warren's Profession, whilst such
+plays as the two described above would have a monopoly of the theatre as
+far as sexual interest is concerned.
+
+What is more, the repulsiveness of the worst of the certified plays
+would protect the Censorship against effective exposure and criticism.
+Not long ago an American Review of high standing asked me for an article
+on the Censorship of the English stage. I replied that such an article
+would involve passages too disagreeable for publication in a magazine
+for general family reading. The editor persisted nevertheless; but
+not until he had declared his readiness to face this, and had pledged
+himself to insert the article unaltered (the particularity of the pledge
+extending even to a specification of the exact number of words in the
+article) did I consent to the proposal. What was the result?
+
+The editor, confronted with the two stories given above, threw his
+pledge to the winds, and, instead of returning the article, printed
+it with the illustrative examples omitted, and nothing left but the
+argument from political principles against the Censorship. In doing this
+he fired my broadside after withdrawing the cannon balls; for neither
+the Censor nor any other Englishman, except perhaps Mr Leslie Stephen
+and a few other veterans of the dwindling old guard of Benthamism, cares
+a dump about political principle. The ordinary Briton thinks that if
+every other Briton is not kept under some form of tutelage, the more
+childish the better, he will abuse his freedom viciously. As far as its
+principle is concerned, the Censorship is the most popular institution
+in England; and the playwright who criticizes it is slighted as a
+blackguard agitating for impunity. Consequently nothing can really shake
+the confidence of the public in the Lord Chamberlain's department except
+a remorseless and unbowdlerized narration of the licentious fictions
+which slip through its net, and are hallmarked by it with the approval
+of the Throne. But since these narrations cannot be made public without
+great difficulty, owing to the obligation an editor is under not to
+deal unexpectedly with matters that are not _virginibus puerisque_, the
+chances are heavily in favor of the Censor escaping all remonstrance.
+With the exception of such comments as I was able to make in my own
+critical articles in The World and The Saturday Review when the pieces
+I have described were first produced, and a few ignorant protests by
+churchmen against much better plays which they confessed they had not
+seen nor read, nothing has been said in the press that could seriously
+disturb the easygoing notion that the stage would be much worse than it
+admittedly is but for the vigilance of the King's Reader. The truth is,
+that no manager would dare produce on his own responsibility the pieces
+he can now get royal certificates for at two guineas per piece.
+
+I hasten to add that I believe these evils to be inherent in the
+nature of all censorship, and not merely a consequence of the form the
+institution takes in London. No doubt there is a staggering absurdity
+in appointing an ordinary clerk to see that the leaders of European
+literature do not corrupt the morals of the nation, and to restrain Sir
+Henry Irving, as a rogue and a vagabond, from presuming to impersonate
+Samson or David on the stage, though any other sort of artist may daub
+these scriptural figures on a signboard or carve them on a tombstone
+without hindrance. If the General Medical Council, the Royal College of
+Physicians, the Royal Academy of Arts, the Incorporated Law Society, and
+Convocation were abolished, and their functions handed over to the Mr
+Redford, the Concert of Europe would presumably declare England mad, and
+treat her accordingly. Yet, though neither medicine nor painting nor
+law nor the Church moulds the character of the nation as potently as the
+theatre does, nothing can come on the stage unless its dimensions admit
+of its passing through Mr Redford's mind! Pray do not think that I
+question Mr Redford's honesty. I am quite sure that he sincerely thinks
+me a blackguard, and my play a grossly improper one, because, like
+Tolstoy's Dominion of Darkness, it produces, as they are both meant to
+produce, a very strong and very painful impression of evil. I do not
+doubt for a moment that the rapine play which I have described, and
+which he licensed, was quite incapable in manuscript of producing
+any particular effect on his mind at all, and that when he was once
+satisfied that the ill-conducted hero was a German and not an English
+officer, he passed the play without studying its moral tendencies. Even
+if he had undertaken that study, there is no more reason to suppose
+that he is a competent moralist than there is to suppose that I am a
+competent mathematician. But truly it does not matter whether he is a
+moralist or not. Let nobody dream for a moment that what is wrong with
+the Censorship is the shortcoming of the gentleman who happens at any
+moment to be acting as Censor. Replace him to-morrow by an Academy of
+Letters and an Academy of Dramatic Poetry, and the new and enlarged
+filter will still exclude original and epoch-making work, whilst passing
+conventional, old-fashioned, and vulgar work without question. The
+conclave which compiles the index of the Roman Catholic Church is the
+most august, ancient, learned, famous, and authoritative censorship in
+Europe. Is it more enlightened, more liberal, more tolerant that the
+comparatively infinitesimal office of the Lord Chamberlain? On the
+contrary, it has reduced itself to a degree of absurdity which makes a
+Catholic university a contradiction in terms. All censorships exist
+to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing
+institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current concepts,
+and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the
+first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the
+whole case against censorships in a nutshell.
+
+It will be asked whether theatrical managers are to be allowed to
+produce what they like, without regard to the public interest. But that
+is not the alternative. The managers of our London music-halls are not
+subject to any censorship. They produce their entertainments on their
+own responsibility, and have no two-guinea certificates to plead if
+their houses are conducted viciously. They know that if they lose their
+character, the County Council will simply refuse to renew their license
+at the end of the year; and nothing in the history of popular art
+is more amazing than the improvement in music-halls that this simple
+arrangement has produced within a few years. Place the theatres on the
+same footing, and we shall promptly have a similar revolution: a whole
+class of frankly blackguardly plays, in which unscrupulous low comedians
+attract crowds to gaze at bevies of girls who have nothing to exhibit
+but their prettiness, will vanish like the obscene songs which were
+supposed to enliven the squalid dulness, incredible to the younger
+generation, of the music-halls fifteen years ago. On the other hand,
+plays which treat sex questions as problems for thought instead of as
+aphrodisiacs will be freely performed. Gentlemen of Mr Redford's way of
+thinking will have plenty of opportunity of protesting against them
+in Council; but the result will be that the Mr Redford will find his
+natural level; Ibsen and Tolstoy theirs; so no harm will be done.
+
+This question of the Censorship reminds me that I have to apologize
+to those who went to the recent performance of Mrs Warren's Profession
+expecting to find it what I have just called an aphrodisiac. That was
+not my fault; it was Mr Redford's. After the specimens I have given of
+the tolerance of his department, it was natural enough for thoughtless
+people to infer that a play which overstepped his indulgence must be a
+very exciting play indeed. Accordingly, I find one critic so explicit as
+to the nature of his disappointment as to say candidly that "such airy
+talk as there is upon the matter is utterly unworthy of acceptance as
+being a representation of what people with blood in them think or do on
+such occasions." Thus am I crushed between the upper millstone of the Mr
+Redford, who thinks me a libertine, and the nether popular critic, who
+thinks me a prude. Critics of all grades and ages, middle-aged fathers
+of families no less than ardent young enthusiasts, are equally indignant
+with me. They revile me as lacking in passion, in feeling, in manhood.
+Some of them even sum the matter up by denying me any dramatic power: a
+melancholy betrayal of what dramatic power has come to mean on our stage
+under the Censorship! Can I be expected to refrain from laughing at
+the spectacle of a number of respectable gentlemen lamenting because a
+playwright lures them to the theatre by a promise to excite their senses
+in a very special and sensational manner, and then, having successfully
+trapped them in exceptional numbers, proceeds to ignore their senses and
+ruthlessly improve their minds? But I protest again that the lure was
+not mine. The play had been in print for four years; and I have spared
+no pains to make known that my plays are built to induce, not voluptuous
+reverie but intellectual interest, not romantic rhapsody but humane
+concern. Accordingly, I do not find those critics who are gifted with
+intellectual appetite and political conscience complaining of want of
+dramatic power. Rather do they protest, not altogether unjustly, against
+a few relapses into staginess and caricature which betray the young
+playwright and the old playgoer in this early work of mine.
+
+As to the voluptuaries, I can assure them that the playwright, whether
+he be myself or another, will always disappoint them. The drama can do
+little to delight the senses: all the apparent instances to the contrary
+are instances of the personal fascination of the performers. The drama
+of pure feeling is no longer in the hands of the playwright: it has been
+conquered by the musician, after whose enchantments all the verbal arts
+seem cold and tame. Romeo and Juliet with the loveliest Juliet is dry,
+tedious, and rhetorical in comparison with Wagner's Tristan, even though
+Isolde be both fourteen stone and forty, as she often is in Germany.
+Indeed, it needed no Wagner to convince the public of this. The
+voluptuous sentimentality of Gounod's Faust and Bizet's Carmen has
+captured the common playgoer; and there is, flatly, no future now for
+any drama without music except the drama of thought. The attempt to
+produce a genus of opera without music (and this absurdity is what
+our fashionable theatres have been driving at for a long time without
+knowing it) is far less hopeful than my own determination to accept
+problem as the normal materiel of the drama.
+
+That this determination will throw me into a long conflict with our
+theatre critics, and with the few playgoers who go to the theatre as
+often as the critics, I well know; but I am too well equipped for the
+strife to be deterred by it, or to bear malice towards the losing side.
+In trying to produce the sensuous effects of opera, the fashionable
+drama has become so flaccid in its sentimentality, and the intellect
+of its frequenters so atrophied by disuse, that the reintroduction
+of problem, with its remorseless logic and iron framework of fact,
+inevitably produces at first an overwhelming impression of coldness and
+inhuman rationalism. But this will soon pass away. When the intellectual
+muscle and moral nerve of the critics has been developed in the struggle
+with modern problem plays, the pettish luxuriousness of the clever ones,
+and the sulky sense of disadvantaged weakness in the sentimental ones,
+will clear away; and it will be seen that only in the problem play is
+there any real drama, because drama is no mere setting up of the camera
+to nature: it is the presentation in parable of the conflict between
+Man's will and his environment: in a word, of problem. The vapidness of
+such drama as the pseudo-operatic plays contain lies in the fact that
+in them animal passion, sentimentally diluted, is shewn in conflict, not
+with real circumstances, but with a set of conventions and assumptions
+half of which do not exist off the stage, whilst the other half can
+either be evaded by a pretence of compliance or defied with complete
+impunity by any reasonably strong-minded person. Nobody can feel that
+such conventions are really compulsory; and consequently nobody can
+believe in the stage pathos that accepts them as an inexorable fate, or
+in the genuineness of the people who indulge in such pathos. Sitting
+at such plays, we do not believe: we make-believe. And the habit of
+make-believe becomes at last so rooted that criticism of the theatre
+insensibly ceases to be criticism at all, and becomes more and more a
+chronicle of the fashionable enterprises of the only realities left on
+the stage: that is, the performers in their own persons. In this
+phase the playwright who attempts to revive genuine drama produces the
+disagreeable impression of the pedant who attempts to start a serious
+discussion at a fashionable at-home. Later on, when he has driven the
+tea services out and made the people who had come to use the theatre as
+a drawing-room understand that it is they and not the dramatist who are
+the intruders, he has to face the accusation that his plays ignore human
+feeling, an illusion produced by that very resistance of fact and law to
+human feeling which creates drama. It is the _deus ex machina_ who, by
+suspending that resistance, makes the fall of the curtain an immediate
+necessity, since drama ends exactly where resistance ends. Yet the
+introduction of this resistance produces so strong an impression of
+heartlessness nowadays that a distinguished critic has summed up the
+impression made on him by Mrs Warren's Profession, by declaring that
+"the difference between the spirit of Tolstoy and the spirit of Mr
+Shaw is the difference between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of
+Euclid." But the epigram would be as good if Tolstoy's name were put in
+place of mine and D'Annunzio's in place of Tolstoy. At the same time
+I accept the enormous compliment to my reasoning powers with sincere
+complacency; and I promise my flatterer that when he is sufficiently
+accustomed to and therefore undazzled by problem on the stage to be able
+to attend to the familiar factor of humanity in it as well as to the
+unfamiliar one of a real environment, he will both see and feel that
+Mrs Warren's Profession is no mere theorem, but a play of instincts
+and temperaments in conflict with each other and with a flinty social
+problem that never yields an inch to mere sentiment.
+
+I go further than this. I declare that the real secret of the
+cynicism and inhumanity of which shallower critics accuse me is the
+unexpectedness with which my characters behave like human beings,
+instead of conforming to the romantic logic of the stage. The axioms and
+postulates of that dreary mimanthropometry are so well known that it is
+almost impossible for its slaves to write tolerable last acts to
+their plays, so conventionally do their conclusions follow from their
+premises. Because I have thrown this logic ruthlessly overboard, I am
+accused of ignoring, not stage logic, but, of all things, human feeling.
+People with completely theatrified imaginations tell me that no girl
+would treat her mother as Vivie Warren does, meaning that no stage
+heroine would in a popular sentimental play. They say this just as they
+might say that no two straight lines would enclose a space. They do not
+see how completely inverted their vision has become even when I throw
+its preposterousness in their faces, as I repeatedly do in this very
+play. Praed, the sentimental artist (fool that I was not to make him a
+theatre critic instead of an architect!) burlesques them by expecting
+all through the piece that the feelings of others will be logically
+deducible from their family relationships and from his "conventionally
+unconventional" social code. The sarcasm is lost on the critics: they,
+saturated with the same logic, only think him the sole sensible person
+on the stage. Thus it comes about that the more completely the dramatist
+is emancipated from the illusion that men and women are primarily
+reasonable beings, and the more powerfully he insists on the ruthless
+indifference of their great dramatic antagonist, the external world, to
+their whims and emotions, the surer he is to be denounced as blind to
+the very distinction on which his whole work is built. Far from ignoring
+idiosyncrasy, will, passion, impulse, whim, as factors in human action,
+I have placed them so nakedly on the stage that the elderly citizen,
+accustomed to see them clothed with the veil of manufactured logic about
+duty, and to disguise even his own impulses from himself in this way,
+finds the picture as unnatural as Carlyle's suggested painting of
+parliament sitting without its clothes.
+
+I now come to those critics who, intellectually baffled by the problem
+in Mrs Warren's Profession, have made a virtue of running away from it.
+I will illustrate their method by quotation from Dickens, taken from the
+fifth chapter of Our Mutual Friend:
+
+"Hem!" began Wegg. "This, Mr Boffin and Lady, is the first chapter of
+the first wollume of the Decline and Fall off----" here he looked hard
+at the book, and stopped.
+
+"What's the matter, Wegg?"
+
+"Why, it comes into my mind, do you know, sir," said Wegg with an air of
+insinuating frankness (having first again looked hard at the book), "that
+you made a little mistake this morning, which I had meant to set you
+right in; only something put it out of my head. I think you said Rooshan
+Empire, sir?"
+
+"It is Rooshan; ain't it, Wegg?"
+
+"No, sir. Roman. Roman."
+
+"What's the difference, Wegg?"
+
+"The difference, sir?" Mr Wegg was faltering and in danger of breaking
+down, when a bright thought flashed upon him. "The difference, sir?
+There you place me in a difficulty, Mr Boffin. Suffice it to observe,
+that the difference is best postponed to some other occasion when Mrs
+Boffin does not honor us with her company. In Mrs Boffin's presence,
+sir, we had better drop it."
+
+Mr Wegg thus came out of his disadvantage with quite a chivalrous air,
+and not only that, but by dint of repeating with a manly delicacy,
+"In Mrs Boffin's presence, sir, we had better drop it!" turned the
+disadvantage on Boffin, who felt that he had committed himself in a very
+painful manner.
+
+I am willing to let Mr Wegg drop it on these terms, provided I am
+allowed to mention here that Mrs Warren's Profession is a play for
+women; that it was written for women; that it has been performed and
+produced mainly through the determination of women that it should be
+performed and produced; that the enthusiasm of women made its first
+performance excitingly successful; and that not one of these women had
+any inducement to support it except their belief in the timeliness and
+the power of the lesson the play teaches. Those who were "surprised to
+see ladies present" were men; and when they proceeded to explain that
+the journals they represented could not possibly demoralize the public
+by describing such a play, their editors cruelly devoted the space saved
+by their delicacy to an elaborate and respectful account of the progress
+of a young lord's attempt to break the bank at Monte Carlo. A few days
+sooner Mrs Warren would have been crowded out of their papers by an
+exceptionally abominable police case. I do not suggest that the police
+case should have been suppressed; but neither do I believe that regard
+for public morality had anything to do with their failure to grapple
+with the performance by the Stage Society. And, after all, there was no
+need to fall back on Silas Wegg's subterfuge. Several critics saved the
+faces of their papers easily enough by the simple expedient of saying
+all they had to say in the tone of a shocked governess lecturing a
+naughty child. To them I might plead, in Mrs Warren's words, "Well,
+it's only good manners to be ashamed, dearie;" but it surprises me,
+recollecting as I do the effect produced by Miss Fanny Brough's delivery
+of that line, that gentlemen who shivered like violets in a zephyr as
+it swept through them, should so completely miss the full width of its
+application as to go home and straightway make a public exhibition of
+mock modesty.
+
+My old Independent Theatre manager, Mr Grein, besides that reproach to
+me for shattering his ideals, complains that Mrs Warren is not wicked
+enough, and names several romancers who would have clothed her black
+soul with all the terrors of tragedy. I have no doubt they would; but
+if you please, my dear Grein, that is just what I did not want to do.
+Nothing would please our sanctimonious British public more than to throw
+the whole guilt of Mrs Warren's profession on Mrs Warren herself. Now
+the whole aim of my play is to throw that guilt on the British public
+itself. You may remember that when you produced my first play, Widowers'
+Houses, exactly the same misunderstanding arose. When the virtuous young
+gentleman rose up in wrath against the slum landlord, the slum
+landlord very effectively shewed him that slums are the product, not
+of individual Harpagons, but of the indifference of virtuous young
+gentlemen to the condition of the city they live in, provided they
+live at the west end of it on money earned by someone else's labor. The
+notion that prostitution is created by the wickedness of Mrs Warren
+is as silly as the notion--prevalent, nevertheless, to some extent in
+Temperance circles--that drunkenness is created by the wickedness of
+the publican. Mrs Warren is not a whit a worse woman than the reputable
+daughter who cannot endure her. Her indifference to the ultimate social
+consequences of her means of making money, and her discovery of that
+means by the ordinary method of taking the line of least resistance to
+getting it, are too common in English society to call for any special
+remark. Her vitality, her thrift, her energy, her outspokenness, her
+wise care of her daughter, and the managing capacity which has enabled
+her and her sister to climb from the fried fish shop down by the Mint
+to the establishments of which she boasts, are all high English social
+virtues. Her defence of herself is so overwhelming that it provokes the
+St James Gazette to declare that "the tendency of the play is wholly
+evil" because "it contains one of the boldest and most specious defences
+of an immoral life for poor women that has ever been penned." Happily
+the St James Gazette here speaks in its haste. Mrs Warren's defence of
+herself is not only bold and specious, but valid and unanswerable.
+But it is no defence at all of the vice which she organizes. It is
+no defence of an immoral life to say that the alternative offered
+by society collectively to poor women is a miserable life, starved,
+overworked, fetid, ailing, ugly. Though it is quite natural and RIGHT
+for Mrs Warren to choose what is, according to her lights, the least
+immoral alternative, it is none the less infamous of society to offer
+such alternatives. For the alternatives offered are not morality and
+immorality, but two sorts of immorality. The man who cannot see
+that starvation, overwork, dirt, and disease are as anti-social as
+prostitution--that they are the vices and crimes of a nation, and
+not merely its misfortunes--is (to put it as politely as possible) a
+hopelessly Private Person.
+
+The notion that Mrs Warren must be a fiend is only an example of the
+violence and passion which the slightest reference to sex arouses in
+undisciplined minds, and which makes it seem natural for our lawgivers
+to punish silly and negligible indecencies with a ferocity unknown in
+dealing with, for example, ruinous financial swindling. Had my play been
+titled Mr Warren's Profession, and Mr Warren been a bookmaker, nobody
+would have expected me to make him a villain as well. Yet gambling is
+a vice, and bookmaking an institution, for which there is absolutely
+nothing to be said. The moral and economic evil done by trying to get
+other people's money without working for it (and this is the essence of
+gambling) is not only enormous but uncompensated. There are no two sides
+to the question of gambling, no circumstances which force us to tolerate
+it lest its suppression lead to worse things, no consensus of opinion
+among responsible classes, such as magistrates and military commanders,
+that it is a necessity, no Athenian records of gambling made splendid by
+the talents of its professors, no contention that instead of violating
+morals it only violates a legal institution which is in many respects
+oppressive and unnatural, no possible plea that the instinct on which it
+is founded is a vital one. Prostitution can confuse the issue with all
+these excuses: gambling has none of them. Consequently, if Mrs Warren
+must needs be a demon, a bookmaker must be a cacodemon. Well, does
+anybody who knows the sporting world really believe that bookmakers are
+worse than their neighbors? On the contrary, they have to be a good deal
+better; for in that world nearly everybody whose social rank does not
+exclude such an occupation would be a bookmaker if he could; but the
+strength of character for handling large sums of money and for strict
+settlements and unflinching payment of losses is so rare that successful
+bookmakers are rare too. It may seem that at least public spirit
+cannot be one of a bookmaker's virtues; but I can testify from personal
+experience that excellent public work is done with money subscribed
+by bookmakers. It is true that there are abysses in bookmaking: for
+example, welshing. Mr Grein hints that there are abysses in Mrs Warren's
+profession also. So there are in every profession: the error lies in
+supposing that every member of them sounds these depths. I sit on a
+public body which prosecutes Mrs Warren zealously; and I can assure Mr
+Grein that she is often leniently dealt with because she has conducted
+her business "respectably" and held herself above its vilest branches.
+The degrees in infamy are as numerous and as scrupulously observed as
+the degrees in the peerage: the moralist's notion that there are depths
+at which the moral atmosphere ceases is as delusive as the rich man's
+notion that there are no social jealousies or snobberies among the very
+poor. No: had I drawn Mrs Warren as a fiend in human form, the very
+people who now rebuke me for flattering her would probably be the
+first to deride me for deducing her character logically from occupation
+instead of observing it accurately in society.
+
+One critic is so enslaved by this sort of logic that he calls my
+portraiture of the Reverend Samuel Gardner an attack on religion.
+
+According to this view Subaltern Iago is an attack on the army, Sir
+John Falstaff an attack on knighthood, and King Claudius an attack on
+royalty. Here again the clamor for naturalness and human feeling, raised
+by so many critics when they are confronted by the real thing on the
+stage, is really a clamor for the most mechanical and superficial sort
+of logic. The dramatic reason for making the clergyman what Mrs Warren
+calls "an old stick-in-the-mud," whose son, in spite of much capacity
+and charm, is a cynically worthless member of society, is to set up a
+mordant contrast between him and the woman of infamous profession, with
+her well brought-up, straightforward, hardworking daughter. The critics
+who have missed the contrast have doubtless observed often enough that
+many clergymen are in the Church through no genuine calling, but simply
+because, in circles which can command preferment, it is the refuge
+of "the fool of the family"; and that clergymen's sons are often
+conspicuous reactionists against the restraints imposed on them in
+childhood by their father's profession. These critics must know, too,
+from history if not from experience, that women as unscrupulous as Mrs
+Warren have distinguished themselves as administrators and rulers, both
+commercially and politically. But both observation and knowledge are
+left behind when journalists go to the theatre. Once in their stalls,
+they assume that it is "natural" for clergymen to be saintly, for
+soldiers to be heroic, for lawyers to be hard-hearted, for sailors to
+be simple and generous, for doctors to perform miracles with little
+bottles, and for Mrs Warren to be a beast and a demon. All this is not
+only not natural, but not dramatic. A man's profession only enters into
+the drama of his life when it comes into conflict with his nature. The
+result of this conflict is tragic in Mrs Warren's case, and comic in the
+clergyman's case (at least we are savage enough to laugh at it); but
+in both cases it is illogical, and in both cases natural. I repeat,
+the critics who accuse me of sacrificing nature to logic are so
+sophisticated by their profession that to them logic is nature, and
+nature absurdity.
+
+Many friendly critics are too little skilled in social questions and
+moral discussions to be able to conceive that respectable gentlemen like
+themselves, who would instantly call the police to remove Mrs Warren if
+she ventured to canvass them personally, could possibly be in any way
+responsible for her proceedings. They remonstrate sincerely, asking me
+what good such painful exposures can possibly do. They might as well ask
+what good Lord Shaftesbury did by devoting his life to the exposure
+of evils (by no means yet remedied) compared to which the worst things
+brought into view or even into surmise by this play are trifles.
+The good of mentioning them is that you make people so extremely
+uncomfortable about them that they finally stop blaming "human nature"
+for them, and begin to support measures for their reform.
+
+Can anything be more absurd than the copy of The Echo which contains a
+notice of the performance of my play? It is edited by a gentleman who,
+having devoted his life to work of the Shaftesbury type, exposes social
+evils and clamors for their reform in every column except one; and that
+one is occupied by the declaration of the paper's kindly theatre critic,
+that the performance left him "wondering what useful purpose the play
+was intended to serve." The balance has to be redressed by the more
+fashionable papers, which usually combine capable art criticism with
+West-End solecism on politics and sociology. It is very noteworthy,
+however, on comparing the press explosion produced by Mrs Warren's
+Profession in 1902 with that produced by Widowers' Houses about ten
+years earlier, that whereas in 1892 the facts were frantically denied
+and the persons of the drama flouted as monsters of wickedness, in
+1902 the facts are admitted and the characters recognized, though it is
+suggested that this is exactly why no gentleman should mention them in
+public. Only one writer has ventured to imply this time that the poverty
+mentioned by Mrs Warren has since been quietly relieved, and need
+not have been dragged back to the footlights. I compliment him on his
+splendid mendacity, in which he is unsupported, save by a little plea in
+a theatrical paper which is innocent enough to think that ten guineas a
+year with board and lodging is an impossibly low wage for a barmaid. It
+goes on to cite Mr Charles Booth as having testified that there are
+many laborers' wives who are happy and contented on eighteen shillings
+a week. But I can go further than that myself. I have seen an Oxford
+agricultural laborer's wife looking cheerful on eight shillings a week;
+but that does not console me for the fact that agriculture in England
+is a ruined industry. If poverty does not matter as long as it is
+contented, then crime does not matter as long as it is unscrupulous. The
+truth is that it is only then that it does matter most desperately.
+Many persons are more comfortable when they are dirty than when they are
+clean; but that does not recommend dirt as a national policy.
+
+Here I must for the present break off my arduous work of educating the
+Press. We shall resume our studies later on; but just now I am tired of
+playing the preceptor; and the eager thirst of my pupils for improvement
+does not console me for the slowness of their progress. Besides, I must
+reserve space to gratify my own vanity and do justice to the six artists
+who acted my play, by placing on record the hitherto unchronicled
+success of the first representation. It is not often that an author,
+after a couple of hours of those rare alternations of excitement and
+intensely attentive silence which only occur in the theatre when actors
+and audience are reacting on one another to the utmost, is able to step
+on the stage and apply the strong word genius to the representation with
+the certainty of eliciting an instant and overwhelming assent from the
+audience. That was my good fortune on the afternoon of Sunday, the fifth
+of January last. I was certainly extremely fortunate in my interpreters
+in the enterprise, and that not alone in respect of their artistic
+talent; for had it not been for their superhuman patience, their
+imperturbable good humor and good fellowship, there could have been no
+performance. The terror of the Censor's power gave us trouble enough to
+break up any ordinary commercial enterprise. Managers promised and even
+engaged their theatres to us after the most explicit warnings that the
+play was unlicensed, and at the last moment suddenly realized that Mr
+Redford had their livelihoods in the hollow of his hand, and backed
+out. Over and over again the date and place were fixed and the tickets
+printed, only to be canceled, until at last the desperate and overworked
+manager of the Stage Society could only laugh, as criminals broken on
+the wheel used to laugh at the second stroke. We rehearsed under great
+difficulties. Christmas pieces and plays for the new year were being
+produced in all directions; and my six actor colleagues were busy
+people, with engagements in these pieces in addition to their current
+professional work every night. On several raw winter days stages for
+rehearsal were unattainable even by the most distinguished applicants;
+and we shared corridors and saloons with them whilst the stage was
+given over to children in training for Boxing night. At last we had to
+rehearse at an hour at which no actor or actress has been out of bed
+within the memory of man; and we sardonically congratulated one another
+every morning on our rosy matutinal looks and the improvement wrought
+by our early rising in our health and characters. And all this, please
+observe, for a society without treasury or commercial prestige, for
+a play which was being denounced in advance as unmentionable, for an
+author without influence at the fashionable theatres! I victoriously
+challenge the West End managers to get as much done for interested
+motives, if they can.
+
+Three causes made the production the most notable that has fallen to my
+lot. First, the veto of the Censor, which put the supporters of the play
+on their mettle. Second, the chivalry of the Stage Society, which, in
+spite of my urgent advice to the contrary, and my demonstration of the
+difficulties, dangers, and expenses the enterprise would cost, put my
+discouragements to shame and resolved to give battle at all costs to
+the attempt of the Censorship to suppress the play. Third, the artistic
+spirit of the actors, who made the play their own and carried it through
+triumphantly in spite of a series of disappointments and annoyances much
+more trying to the dramatic temperament than mere difficulties.
+
+The acting, too, required courage and character as well as skill and
+intelligence. The veto of the Censor introduced quite a novel element of
+moral responsibility into the undertaking. And the characters were very
+unusual on the English stage. The younger heroine is, like her mother,
+an Englishwoman to the backbone, and not, like the heroines of our
+fashionable drama, a prima donna of Italian origin. Consequently she
+was sure to be denounced as unnatural and undramatic by the critics.
+The most vicious man in the play is not in the least a stage villain;
+indeed, he regards his own moral character with the sincere complacency
+of a hero of melodrama. The amiable devotee of romance and beauty is
+shewn at an age which brings out the futilization which these worships
+are apt to produce if they are made the staple of life instead of
+the sauce. The attitude of the clever young people to their elders is
+faithfully represented as one of pitiless ridicule and unsympathetic
+criticism, and forms a spectacle incredible to those who, when young,
+were not cleverer than their nearest elders, and painful to those
+sentimental parents who shrink from the cruelty of youth, which pardons
+nothing because it knows nothing. In short, the characters and their
+relations are of a kind that the routineer critic has not yet learned
+to place; so that their misunderstanding was a foregone conclusion.
+Nevertheless, there was no hesitation behind the curtain. When it went
+up at last, a stage much too small for the company was revealed to an
+auditorium much too small for the audience. But the players, though it
+was impossible for them to forget their own discomfort, at once made the
+spectators forget theirs. It certainly was a model audience, responsive
+from the first line to the last; and it got no less than it deserved in
+return.
+
+I grieve to add that the second performance, given for the edification
+of the London Press and of those members of the Stage Society who cannot
+attend the Sunday performances, was a less inspiriting one than the
+first. A solid phalanx of theatre-weary journalists in an afternoon
+humor, most of them committed to irreconcilable disparagement of problem
+plays, and all of them bound by etiquette to be as undemonstrative
+as possible, is not exactly the sort of audience that rises at the
+performers and cures them of the inevitable reaction after an excitingly
+successful first night. The artist nature is a sensitive and therefore
+a vindictive one; and masterful players have a way with recalcitrant
+audiences of rubbing a play into them instead of delighting them with
+it. I should describe the second performance of Mrs Warren's Profession,
+especially as to its earlier stages, as decidedly a rubbed-in one. The
+rubbing was no doubt salutary; but it must have hurt some of the thinner
+skins. The charm of the lighter passages fled; and the strong scenes,
+though they again carried everything before them, yet discharged that
+duty in a grim fashion, doing execution on the enemy rather than moving
+them to repentance and confession. Still, to those who had not seen the
+first performance, the effect was sufficiently impressive; and they
+had the advantage of witnessing a fresh development in Mrs Warren, who,
+artistically jealous, as I took it, of the overwhelming effect of the
+end of the second act on the previous day, threw herself into the fourth
+act in quite a new way, and achieved the apparently impossible feat of
+surpassing herself. The compliments paid to Miss Fanny Brough by
+the critics, eulogistic as they are, are the compliments of men
+three-fourths duped as Partridge was duped by Garrick. By much of her
+acting they were so completely taken in that they did not recognize it
+as acting at all. Indeed, none of the six players quite escaped this
+consequence of their own thoroughness. There was a distinct tendency
+among the less experienced critics to complain of their sentiments and
+behavior. Naturally, the author does not share that grievance.
+
+PICCARD'S COTTAGE, JANUARY 1902.
+
+
+
+
+
+MRS WARREN'S PROFESSION
+
+
+[Mrs Warren's Profession was performed for the first time in the theatre
+of the New Lyric Club, London, on the 5th and 6th January 1902, with
+Madge McIntosh as Vivie, Julius Knight as Praed, Fanny Brough as Mrs
+Warren, Charles Goodhart as Crofts, Harley Granville-Barker as Frank,
+and Cosmo Stuart as the Reverend Samuel Gardner.]
+
+
+
+
+ACT I
+
+
+[Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on the eastern slope of a hill a
+little south of Haslemere in Surrey. Looking up the hill, the cottage is
+seen in the left hand corner of the garden, with its thatched roof and
+porch, and a large latticed window to the left of the porch. A paling
+completely shuts in the garden, except for a gate on the right. The
+common rises uphill beyond the paling to the sky line. Some folded
+canvas garden chairs are leaning against the side bench in the porch. A
+lady's bicycle is propped against the wall, under the window. A little
+to the right of the porch a hammock is slung from two posts. A big
+canvas umbrella, stuck in the ground, keeps the sun off the hammock,
+in which a young lady is reading and making notes, her head towards
+the cottage and her feet towards the gate. In front of the hammock,
+and within reach of her hand, is a common kitchen chair, with a pile of
+serious-looking books and a supply of writing paper on it.]
+
+[A gentleman walking on the common comes into sight from behind the
+cottage. He is hardly past middle age, with something of the artist
+about him, unconventionally but carefully dressed, and clean-shaven
+except for a moustache, with an eager susceptible face and very amiable
+and considerate manners. He has silky black hair, with waves of grey and
+white in it. His eyebrows are white, his moustache black. He seems not
+certain of his way. He looks over the palings; takes stock of the place;
+and sees the young lady.]
+
+THE GENTLEMAN [taking off his hat] I beg your pardon. Can you direct me
+to Hindhead View--Mrs Alison's?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY [glancing up from her book] This is Mrs Alison's. [She
+resumes her work].
+
+THE GENTLEMAN. Indeed! Perhaps--may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?
+
+THE YOUNG LADY [sharply, as she turns on her elbow to get a good look at
+him] Yes.
+
+THE GENTLEMAN [daunted and conciliatory] I'm afraid I appear intrusive.
+My name is Praed. [Vivie at once throws her books upon the chair, and
+gets out of the hammock]. Oh, pray don't let me disturb you.
+
+VIVIE [striding to the gate and opening it for him] Come in, Mr Praed.
+[He comes in]. Glad to see you. [She proffers her hand and takes his
+with a resolute and hearty grip. She is an attractive specimen of the
+sensible, able, highly-educated young middle-class Englishwoman. Age 22.
+Prompt, strong, confident, self-possessed. Plain business-like dress,
+but not dowdy. She wears a chatelaine at her belt, with a fountain pen
+and a paper knife among its pendants].
+
+PRAED. Very kind of you indeed, Miss Warren. [She shuts the gate with a
+vigorous slam. He passes in to the middle of the garden, exercising his
+fingers, which are slightly numbed by her greeting]. Has your mother
+arrived?
+
+VIVIE [quickly, evidently scenting aggression] Is she coming?
+
+PRAED [surprised] Didn't you expect us?
+
+VIVIE. No.
+
+PRAED. Now, goodness me, I hope I've not mistaken the day. That would be
+just like me, you know. Your mother arranged that she was to come down
+from London and that I was to come over from Horsham to be introduced to
+you.
+
+VIVIE [not at all pleased] Did she? Hm! My mother has rather a trick of
+taking me by surprise--to see how I behave myself while she's away, I
+suppose. I fancy I shall take my mother very much by surprise one of
+these days, if she makes arrangements that concern me without consulting
+me beforehand. She hasnt come.
+
+PRAED [embarrassed] I'm really very sorry.
+
+VIVIE [throwing off her displeasure] It's not your fault, Mr Praed, is
+it? And I'm very glad you've come. You are the only one of my mother's
+friends I have ever asked her to bring to see me.
+
+PRAED [relieved and delighted] Oh, now this is really very good of you,
+Miss Warren!
+
+VIVIE. Will you come indoors; or would you rather sit out here and talk?
+
+PRAED. It will be nicer out here, don't you think?
+
+VIVIE. Then I'll go and get you a chair. [She goes to the porch for a
+garden chair].
+
+PRAED [following her] Oh, pray, pray! Allow me. [He lays hands on the
+chair].
+
+VIVIE [letting him take it] Take care of your fingers; theyre rather
+dodgy things, those chairs. [She goes across to the chair with the books
+on it; pitches them into the hammock; and brings the chair forward with
+one swing].
+
+PRAED [who has just unfolded his chair] Oh, now do let me take that
+hard chair. I like hard chairs.
+
+VIVIE. So do I. Sit down, Mr Praed. [This invitation she gives with a
+genial peremptoriness, his anxiety to please her clearly striking her as
+a sign of weakness of character on his part. But he does not immediately
+obey].
+
+PRAED. By the way, though, hadnt we better go to the station to meet
+your mother?
+
+VIVIE [coolly] Why? She knows the way.
+
+PRAED [disconcerted] Er--I suppose she does [he sits down].
+
+VIVIE. Do you know, you are just like what I expected. I hope you are
+disposed to be friends with me.
+
+PRAED [again beaming] Thank you, my _dear_ Miss Warren; thank you. Dear
+me! I'm so glad your mother hasnt spoilt you!
+
+VIVIE. How?
+
+PRAED. Well, in making you too conventional. You know, my dear Miss
+Warren, I am a born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoils the relations
+between parent and child; even between mother and daughter. Now I was
+always afraid that your mother would strain her authority to make you
+very conventional. It's such a relief to find that she hasnt.
+
+VIVIE. Oh! have I been behaving unconventionally?
+
+PRAED. Oh no: oh dear no. At least, not conventionally unconventionally,
+you understand. [She nods and sits down. He goes on, with a cordial
+outburst] But it was so charming of you to say that you were disposed
+to be friends with me! You modern young ladies are splendid: perfectly
+splendid!
+
+VIVIE [dubiously] Eh? [watching him with dawning disappointment as to
+the quality of his brains and character].
+
+PRAED. When I was your age, young men and women were afraid of each
+other: there was no good fellowship. Nothing real. Only gallantry copied
+out of novels, and as vulgar and affected as it could be. Maidenly
+reserve! gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no when you meant yes!
+simple purgatory for shy and sincere souls.
+
+VIVIE. Yes, I imagine there must have been a frightful waste of time.
+Especially women's time.
+
+PRAED. Oh, waste of life, waste of everything. But things are improving.
+Do you know, I have been in a positive state of excitement about meeting
+you ever since your magnificent achievements at Cambridge: a thing
+unheard of in my day. It was perfectly splendid, your tieing with the
+third wrangler. Just the right place, you know. The first wrangler
+is always a dreamy, morbid fellow, in whom the thing is pushed to the
+length of a disease.
+
+VIVIE. It doesn't pay. I wouldn't do it again for the same money.
+
+PRAED [aghast] The same money!
+
+VIVIE. Yes. Fifty pounds. Perhaps you don't know how it was. Mrs Latham,
+my tutor at Newnham, told my mother that I could distinguish myself in
+the mathematical tripos if I went in for it in earnest. The papers were
+full just then of Phillipa Summers beating the senior wrangler. You
+remember about it, of course.
+
+PRAED [shakes his head energetically] !!!
+
+VIVIE. Well, anyhow, she did; and nothing would please my mother but
+that I should do the same thing. I said flatly that it was not worth
+my while to face the grind since I was not going in for teaching; but I
+offered to try for fourth wrangler or thereabouts for fifty pounds. She
+closed with me at that, after a little grumbling; and I was better than
+my bargain. But I wouldn't do it again for that. Two hundred pounds would
+have been nearer the mark.
+
+PRAED [much damped] Lord bless me! Thats a very practical way of looking
+at it.
+
+VIVIE. Did you expect to find me an unpractical person?
+
+PRAED. But surely it's practical to consider not only the work these
+honors cost, but also the culture they bring.
+
+VIVIE. Culture! My dear Mr Praed: do you know what the mathematical
+tripos means? It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight hours a day
+at mathematics, and nothing but mathematics.
+
+I'm supposed to know something about science; but I know nothing except
+the mathematics it involves. I can make calculations for engineers,
+electricians, insurance companies, and so on; but I know next to
+nothing about engineering or electricity or insurance. I don't even know
+arithmetic well. Outside mathematics, lawn-tennis, eating, sleeping,
+cycling, and walking, I'm a more ignorant barbarian than any woman could
+possibly be who hadn't gone in for the tripos.
+
+PRAED [revolted] What a monstrous, wicked, rascally system! I knew it!
+I felt at once that it meant destroying all that makes womanhood
+beautiful!
+
+VIVIE. I don't object to it on that score in the least. I shall turn it
+to very good account, I assure you.
+
+PRAED. Pooh! In what way?
+
+VIVIE. I shall set up chambers in the City, and work at actuarial
+calculations and conveyancing. Under cover of that I shall do some law,
+with one eye on the Stock Exchange all the time. I've come down here by
+myself to read law: not for a holiday, as my mother imagines. I hate
+holidays.
+
+PRAED. You make my blood run cold. Are you to have no romance, no beauty
+in your life?
+
+VIVIE. I don't care for either, I assure you.
+
+PRAED. You can't mean that.
+
+VIVIE. Oh yes I do. I like working and getting paid for it. When I'm
+tired of working, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a little whisky,
+and a novel with a good detective story in it.
+
+PRAED [rising in a frenzy of repudiation] I don't believe it. I am an
+artist; and I can't believe it: I refuse to believe it. It's only that
+you havn't discovered yet what a wonderful world art can open up to you.
+
+VIVIE. Yes I have. Last May I spent six weeks in London with Honoria
+Fraser. Mamma thought we were doing a round of sightseeing together; but
+I was really at Honoria's chambers in Chancery Lane every day, working
+away at actuarial calculations for her, and helping her as well as a
+greenhorn could. In the evenings we smoked and talked, and never dreamt
+of going out except for exercise. And I never enjoyed myself more in my
+life.
+
+I cleared all my expenses and got initiated into the business without a
+fee in the bargain.
+
+PRAED. But bless my heart and soul, Miss Warren, do you call that
+discovering art?
+
+VIVIE. Wait a bit. That wasn't the beginning. I went up to town on an
+invitation from some artistic people in Fitzjohn's Avenue: one of the
+girls was a Newnham chum. They took me to the National Gallery--
+
+PRAED [approving] Ah!! [He sits down, much relieved].
+
+VIVIE [continuing]--to the Opera--
+
+PRAED [still more pleased] Good!
+
+VIVIE.--and to a concert where the band played all the evening:
+Beethoven and Wagner and so on. I wouldn't go through that experience
+again for anything you could offer me. I held out for civility's sake
+until the third day; and then I said, plump out, that I couldn't stand
+any more of it, and went off to Chancery Lane. N o w you know the sort
+of perfectly splendid modern young lady I am. How do you think I shall
+get on with my mother?
+
+PRAED [startled] Well, I hope--er--
+
+VIVIE. It's not so much what you hope as what you believe, that I want
+to know.
+
+PRAED. Well, frankly, I am afraid your mother will be a little
+disappointed. Not from any shortcoming on your part, you know: I don't
+mean that. But you are so different from her ideal.
+
+VIVIE. Her what?!
+
+PRAED. Her ideal.
+
+VIVIE. Do you mean her ideal of ME?
+
+PRAED. Yes.
+
+VIVIE. What on earth is it like?
+
+PRAED. Well, you must have observed, Miss Warren, that people who are
+dissatisfied with their own bringing-up generally think that the world
+would be all right if everybody were to be brought up quite differently.
+Now your mother's life has been--er--I suppose you know--
+
+VIVIE. Don't suppose anything, Mr Praed. I hardly know my mother. Since
+I was a child I have lived in England, at school or at college, or with
+people paid to take charge of me. I have been boarded out all my life.
+My mother has lived in Brussels or Vienna and never let me go to her.
+I only see her when she visits England for a few days. I don't complain:
+it's been very pleasant; for people have been very good to me; and there
+has always been plenty of money to make things smooth. But don't imagine
+I know anything about my mother. I know far less than you do.
+
+PRAED [very ill at ease] In that case--[He stops, quite at a loss. Then,
+with a forced attempt at gaiety] But what nonsense we are talking! Of
+course you and your mother will get on capitally. [He rises, and looks
+abroad at the view]. What a charming little place you have here!
+
+VIVIE [unmoved] Rather a violent change of subject, Mr Praed. Why won't
+my mother's life bear being talked about?
+
+PRAED. Oh, you mustn't say that. Isn't it natural that I should have a
+certain delicacy in talking to my old friend's daughter about her behind
+her back? You and she will have plenty of opportunity of talking about
+it when she comes.
+
+VIVIE. No: she won't talk about it either. [Rising] However, I daresay
+you have good reasons for telling me nothing. Only, mind this, Mr
+Praed, I expect there will be a battle royal when my mother hears of my
+Chancery Lane project.
+
+PRAED [ruefully] I'm afraid there will.
+
+VIVIE. Well, I shall win because I want nothing but my fare to London
+to start there to-morrow earning my own living by devilling for Honoria.
+Besides, I have no mysteries to keep up; and it seems she has. I shall
+use that advantage over her if necessary.
+
+PRAED [greatly shocked] Oh no! No, pray. Youd not do such a thing.
+
+VIVIE. Then tell me why not.
+
+PRAED. I really cannot. I appeal to your good feeling. [She smiles at
+his sentimentality]. Besides, you may be too bold. Your mother is not to
+be trifled with when she's angry.
+
+VIVIE. You can't frighten me, Mr Praed. In that month at Chancery Lane I
+had opportunities of taking the measure of one or two women v e r y like
+my mother. You may back me to win. But if I hit harder in my ignorance
+than I need, remember it is you who refuse to enlighten me. Now, let us
+drop the subject. [She takes her chair and replaces it near the hammock
+with the same vigorous swing as before].
+
+PRAED [taking a desperate resolution] One word, Miss Warren. I had
+better tell you. It's very difficult; but--
+
+[Mrs Warren and Sir George Crofts arrive at the gate. Mrs Warren is
+between 40 and 50, formerly pretty, showily dressed in a brilliant
+hat and a gay blouse fitting tightly over her bust and flanked by
+fashionable sleeves. Rather spoilt and domineering, and decidedly
+vulgar, but, on the whole, a genial and fairly presentable old
+blackguard of a woman.]
+
+[Crofts is a tall powerfully-built man of about 50, fashionably dressed
+in the style of a young man. Nasal voice, reedier than might be expected
+from his strong frame. Clean-shaven bulldog jaws, large flat ears, and
+thick neck: gentlemanly combination of the most brutal types of city
+man, sporting man, and man about town.]
+
+VIVIE. Here they are. [Coming to them as they enter the garden] How do,
+mater? Mr Praed's been here this half hour, waiting for you.
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, if you've been waiting, Praddy, it's your own fault:
+I thought youd have had the gumption to know I was coming by the 3.10
+train. Vivie: put your hat on, dear: youll get sunburnt. Oh, I forgot to
+introduce you. Sir George Crofts: my little Vivie.
+
+[Crofts advances to Vivie with his most courtly manner. She nods, but
+makes no motion to shake hands.]
+
+CROFTS. May I shake hands with a young lady whom I have known by
+reputation very long as the daughter of one of my oldest friends?
+
+VIVIE [who has been looking him up and down sharply] If you like.
+
+[She takes his tenderly proferred hand and gives it a squeeze that makes
+him open his eyes; then turns away, and says to her mother] Will you
+come in, or shall I get a couple more chairs? [She goes into the porch
+for the chairs].
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, George, what do you think of her?
+
+CROFTS [ruefully] She has a powerful fist. Did you shake hands with her,
+Praed?
+
+PRAED. Yes: it will pass off presently.
+
+CROFTS. I hope so. [Vivie reappears with two more chairs. He hurries to
+her assistance]. Allow me.
+
+MRS WARREN [patronizingly] Let Sir George help you with the chairs,
+dear.
+
+VIVIE [pitching them into his arms] Here you are. [She dusts her hands
+and turns to Mrs Warren]. Youd like some tea, wouldn't you?
+
+MRS WARREN [sitting in Praed's chair and fanning herself] I'm dying for
+a drop to drink.
+
+VIVIE. I'll see about it. [She goes into the cottage].
+
+[Sir George has by this time managed to unfold a chair and plant it by
+Mrs Warren, on her left. He throws the other on the grass and sits down,
+looking dejected and rather foolish, with the handle of his stick in
+his mouth. Praed, still very uneasy, fidgets around the garden on their
+right.]
+
+MRS WARREN [to Praed, looking at Crofts] Just look at him, Praddy: he
+looks cheerful, don't he? He's been worrying my life out these three
+years to have that little girl of mine shewn to him; and now that Ive
+done it, he's quite out of countenance. [Briskly] Come! sit up, George;
+and take your stick out of your mouth. [Crofts sulkily obeys].
+
+PRAED. I think, you know--if you don't mind my saying so--that we had
+better get out of the habit of thinking of her as a little girl. You see
+she has really distinguished herself; and I'm not sure, from what I have
+seen of her, that she is not older than any of us.
+
+MRS WARREN [greatly amused] Only listen to him, George! Older than any
+of us! Well she _has_ been stuffing you nicely with her importance.
+
+PRAED. But young people are particularly sensitive about being treated
+in that way.
+
+MRS WARREN. Yes; and young people have to get all that nonsense taken
+out of them, and good deal more besides. Don't you interfere, Praddy: I
+know how to treat my own child as well as you do. [Praed, with a grave
+shake of his head, walks up the garden with his hands behind his back.
+Mrs Warren pretends to laugh, but looks after him with perceptible
+concern. Then, she whispers to Crofts] Whats the matter with him? What
+does he take it like that for?
+
+CROFTS [morosely] Youre afraid of Praed.
+
+MRS WARREN. What! Me! Afraid of dear old Praddy! Why, a fly wouldn't be
+afraid of him.
+
+CROFTS. _You're_ afraid of him.
+
+MRS WARREN [angry] I'll trouble you to mind your own business, and not
+try any of your sulks on me. I'm not afraid of y o u, anyhow. If you
+can't make yourself agreeable, youd better go home. [She gets up, and,
+turning her back on him, finds herself face to face with Praed]. Come,
+Praddy, I know it was only your tender-heartedness. Youre afraid I'll
+bully her.
+
+PRAED. My dear Kitty: you think I'm offended. Don't imagine that: pray
+don't. But you know I often notice things that escape you; and though you
+never take my advice, you sometimes admit afterwards that you ought to
+have taken it.
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, what do you notice now?
+
+PRAED. Only that Vivie is a grown woman. Pray, Kitty, treat her with
+every respect.
+
+MRS WARREN [with genuine amazement] Respect! Treat my own daughter with
+respect! What next, pray!
+
+VIVIE [appearing at the cottage door and calling to Mrs Warren] Mother:
+will you come to my room before tea?
+
+MRS WARREN. Yes, dearie. [She laughs indulgently at Praed's gravity, and
+pats him on the cheek as she passes him on her way to the porch]. Don't
+be cross, Praddy. [She follows Vivie into the cottage].
+
+CROFTS [furtively] I say, Praed.
+
+PRAED. Yes.
+
+CROFTS. I want to ask you a rather particular question.
+
+PRAED. Certainly. [He takes Mrs Warren's chair and sits close to
+Crofts].
+
+CROFTS. Thats right: they might hear us from the window. Look here: did
+Kitty every tell you who that girl's father is?
+
+PRAED. Never.
+
+CROFTS. Have you any suspicion of who it might be?
+
+PRAED. None.
+
+CROFTS [not believing him] I know, of course, that you perhaps might
+feel bound not to tell if she had said anything to you. But it's very
+awkward to be uncertain about it now that we shall be meeting the girl
+every day. We don't exactly know how we ought to feel towards her.
+
+PRAED. What difference can that make? We take her on her own merits.
+What does it matter who her father was?
+
+CROFTS [suspiciously] Then you know who he was?
+
+PRAED [with a touch of temper] I said no just now. Did you not hear me?
+
+CROFTS. Look here, Praed. I ask you as a particular favor. If you _do_
+know [movement of protest from Praed]--I only say, if you know,
+you might at least set my mind at rest about her. The fact is, I fell
+attracted.
+
+PRAED [sternly] What do you mean?
+
+CROFTS. Oh, don't be alarmed: it's quite an innocent feeling. Thats what
+puzzles me about it. Why, for all I know, _I_ might be her father.
+
+PRAED. You! Impossible!
+
+CROFTS [catching him up cunningly] You know for certain that I'm not?
+
+PRAED. I know nothing about it, I tell you, any more than you. But
+really, Crofts--oh no, it's out of the question. Theres not the least
+resemblance.
+
+CROFTS. As to that, theres no resemblance between her and her mother
+that I can see. I suppose she's not y o u r daughter, is she?
+
+PRAED [rising indignantly] Really, Crofts--!
+
+CROFTS. No offence, Praed. Quite allowable as between two men of the
+world.
+
+PRAED [recovering himself with an effort and speaking gently and
+gravely] Now listen to me, my dear Crofts. [He sits down again].
+
+I have nothing to do with that side of Mrs Warren's life, and never had.
+She has never spoken to me about it; and of course I have never spoken
+to her about it. Your delicacy will tell you that a handsome woman needs
+some friends who are not--well, not on that footing with her. The effect
+of her own beauty would become a torment to her if she could not escape
+from it occasionally. You are probably on much more confidential terms
+with Kitty than I am. Surely you can ask her the question yourself.
+
+CROFTS. I h a v e asked her, often enough. But she's so determined to
+keep the child all to herself that she would deny that it ever had a
+father if she could. [Rising] I'm thoroughly uncomfortable about it,
+Praed.
+
+PRAED [rising also] Well, as you are, at all events, old enough to be
+her father, I don't mind agreeing that we both regard Miss Vivie in a
+parental way, as a young girl who we are bound to protect and help. What
+do you say?
+
+CROFTS [aggressively] I'm no older than you, if you come to that.
+
+PRAED. Yes you are, my dear fellow: you were born old. I was born a boy:
+Ive never been able to feel the assurance of a grown-up man in my life.
+[He folds his chair and carries it to the porch].
+
+MRS WARREN [calling from within the cottage] Prad-dee! George!
+Tea-ea-ea-ea!
+
+CROFTS [hastily] She's calling us. [He hurries in].
+
+[Praed shakes his head bodingly, and is following Crofts when he is
+hailed by a young gentleman who has just appeared on the common, and is
+making for the gate. He is pleasant, pretty, smartly dressed, cleverly
+good-for-nothing, not long turned 20, with a charming voice and
+agreeably disrespectful manners. He carries a light sporting magazine
+rifle.]
+
+THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN. Hallo! Praed!
+
+PRAED. Why, Frank Gardner! [Frank comes in and shakes hands cordially].
+What on earth are you doing here?
+
+FRANK. Staying with my father.
+
+PRAED. The Roman father?
+
+FRANK. He's rector here. I'm living with my people this autumn for the
+sake of economy. Things came to a crisis in July: the Roman father had
+to pay my debts. He's stony broke in consequence; and so am I. What are
+you up to in these parts? do you know the people here?
+
+PRAED. Yes: I'm spending the day with a Miss Warren.
+
+FRANK [enthusiastically] What! Do you know Vivie? Isn't she a jolly girl?
+I'm teaching her to shoot with this [putting down the rifle]. I'm so
+glad she knows you: youre just the sort of fellow she ought to know.
+[He smiles, and raises the charming voice almost to a singing tone as he
+exclaims] It's e v e r so jolly to find you here, Praed.
+
+PRAED. I'm an old friend of her mother. Mrs Warren brought me over to
+make her daughter's acquaintance.
+
+FRANK. The mother! Is _she_ here?
+
+PRAED. Yes: inside, at tea.
+
+MRS WARREN [calling from within] Prad-dee-ee-ee-eee! The tea-cake'll be
+cold.
+
+PRAED [calling] Yes, Mrs Warren. In a moment. I've just met a friend
+here.
+
+MRS WARREN. A what?
+
+PRAED [louder] A friend.
+
+MRS WARREN. Bring him in.
+
+PRAED. All right. [To Frank] Will you accept the invitation?
+
+FRANK [incredulous, but immensely amused] Is that Vivie's mother?
+
+PRAED. Yes.
+
+FRANK. By Jove! What a lark! Do you think she'll like me?
+
+PRAED. I've no doubt youll make yourself popular, as usual. Come in and
+try [moving towards the house].
+
+FRANK. Stop a bit. [Seriously] I want to take you into my confidence.
+
+PRAED. Pray don't. It's only some fresh folly, like the barmaid at
+Redhill.
+
+FRANK. It's ever so much more serious than that. You say you've only just
+met Vivie for the first time?
+
+PRAED. Yes.
+
+FRANK [rhapsodically] Then you can have no idea what a girl she is. Such
+character! Such sense! And her cleverness! Oh, my eye, Praed, but I can
+tell you she is clever! And--need I add?--she loves me.
+
+CROFTS [putting his head out of the window] I say, Praed: what are you
+about? Do come along. [He disappears].
+
+FRANK. Hallo! Sort of chap that would take a prize at a dog show, ain't
+he? Who's he?
+
+PRAED. Sir George Crofts, an old friend of Mrs Warren's. I think we had
+better come in.
+
+[On their way to the porch they are interrupted by a call from the gate.
+Turning, they see an elderly clergyman looking over it.]
+
+THE CLERGYMAN [calling] Frank!
+
+FRANK. Hallo! [To Praed] The Roman father. [To the clergyman] Yes,
+gov'nor: all right: presently. [To Praed] Look here, Praed: youd better
+go in to tea. I'll join you directly.
+
+PRAED. Very good. [He goes into the cottage].
+
+[The clergyman remains outside the gate, with his hands on the top of
+it. The Rev. Samuel Gardner, a beneficed clergyman of the Established
+Church, is over 50. Externally he is pretentious, booming, noisy,
+important. Really he is that obsolescent phenomenon the fool of the
+family dumped on the Church by his father the patron, clamorously
+asserting himself as father and clergyman without being able to command
+respect in either capacity.]
+
+REV. S. Well, sir. Who are your friends here, if I may ask?
+
+FRANK. Oh, it's all right, gov'nor! Come in.
+
+REV. S. No, sir; not until I know whose garden I am entering.
+
+FRANK. It's all right. It's Miss Warren's.
+
+REV. S. I have not seen her at church since she came.
+
+FRANK. Of course not: she's a third wrangler. Ever so intellectual. Took
+a higher degree than you did; so why should she go to hear you preach?
+
+REV. S. Don't be disrespectful, sir.
+
+FRANK. Oh, it don't matter: nobody hears us. Come in. [He opens the gate,
+unceremoniously pulling his father with it into the garden]. I want to
+introduce you to her. Do you remember the advice you gave me last July,
+gov'nor?
+
+REV. S. [severely] Yes. I advised you to conquer your idleness and
+flippancy, and to work your way into an honorable profession and live on
+it and not upon me.
+
+FRANK. No: thats what you thought of afterwards. What you actually said
+was that since I had neither brains nor money, I'd better turn my good
+looks to account by marrying someone with both. Well, look here. Miss
+Warren has brains: you can't deny that.
+
+REV. S. Brains are not everything.
+
+FRANK. No, of course not: theres the money--
+
+REV. S. [interrupting him austerely] I was not thinking of money, sir. I
+was speaking of higher things. Social position, for instance.
+
+FRANK. I don't care a rap about that.
+
+REV. S. But I do, sir.
+
+FRANK. Well, nobody wants y o u to marry her. Anyhow, she has what
+amounts to a high Cambridge degree; and she seems to have as much money
+as she wants.
+
+REV. S. [sinking into a feeble vein of humor] I greatly doubt whether
+she has as much money as y o u will want.
+
+FRANK. Oh, come: I havn't been so very extravagant. I live ever so
+quietly; I don't drink; I don't bet much; and I never go regularly to the
+razzle-dazzle as you did when you were my age.
+
+REV. S. [booming hollowly] Silence, sir.
+
+FRANK. Well, you told me yourself, when I was making every such an ass
+of myself about the barmaid at Redhill, that you once offered a woman
+fifty pounds for the letters you wrote to her when--
+
+REV. S. [terrified] Sh-sh-sh, Frank, for Heaven's sake! [He looks round
+apprehensively Seeing no one within earshot he plucks up courage to boom
+again, but more subduedly]. You are taking an ungentlemanly advantage of
+what I confided to you for your own good, to save you from an error you
+would have repented all your life long. Take warning by your father's
+follies, sir; and don't make them an excuse for your own.
+
+FRANK. Did you ever hear the story of the Duke of Wellington and his
+letters?
+
+REV. S. No, sir; and I don't want to hear it.
+
+FRANK. The old Iron Duke didn't throw away fifty pounds: not he. He
+just wrote: "Dear Jenny: publish and be damned! Yours affectionately,
+Wellington." Thats what you should have done.
+
+REV. S. [piteously] Frank, my boy: when I wrote those letters I put
+myself into that woman's power. When I told you about them I put myself,
+to some extent, I am sorry to say, in your power. She refused my money
+with these words, which I shall never forget. "Knowledge is power" she
+said; "and I never sell power."
+
+Thats more than twenty years ago; and she has never made use of her
+power or caused me a moment's uneasiness. You are behaving worse to me
+than she did, Frank.
+
+FRANK. Oh yes I dare say! Did you ever preach at her the way you preach
+at me every day?
+
+REV. S. [wounded almost to tears] I leave you, sir. You are
+incorrigible. [He turns towards the gate].
+
+FRANK [utterly unmoved] Tell them I shan't be home to tea, will you,
+gov'nor, like a good fellow? [He moves towards the cottage door and is
+met by Praed and Vivie coming out].
+
+VIVIE [to Frank] Is that your father, Frank? I do so want to meet him.
+
+FRANK. Certainly. [Calling after his father] Gov'nor. Youre wanted. [The
+parson turns at the gate, fumbling nervously at his hat. Praed crosses
+the garden to the opposite side, beaming in anticipation of civilities].
+My father: Miss Warren.
+
+VIVIE [going to the clergyman and shaking his hand] Very glad to see
+you here, Mr Gardner. [Calling to the cottage] Mother: come along: youre
+wanted.
+
+[Mrs Warren appears on the threshold, and is immediately transfixed,
+recognizing the clergyman.]
+
+VIVIE [continuing] Let me introduce--
+
+MRS WARREN [swooping on the Reverend Samuel] Why it's Sam Gardner, gone
+into the Church! Well, I never! Don't you know us, Sam? This is George
+Crofts, as large as life and twice as natural. Don't you remember me?
+
+REV. S. [very red] I really--er--
+
+MRS WARREN. Of course you do. Why, I have a whole album of your letters
+still: I came across them only the other day.
+
+REV. S. [miserably confused] Miss Vavasour, I believe.
+
+MRS WARREN [correcting him quickly in a loud whisper] Tch! Nonsense! Mrs
+Warren: don't you see my daughter there?
+
+
+
+
+ACT II
+
+
+[Inside the cottage after nightfall. Looking eastward from within
+instead of westward from without, the latticed window, with its curtains
+drawn, is now seen in the middle of the front wall of the cottage, with
+the porch door to the left of it. In the left-hand side wall is the door
+leading to the kitchen. Farther back against the same wall is a dresser
+with a candle and matches on it, and Frank's rifle standing beside them,
+with the barrel resting in the plate-rack. In the centre a table stands
+with a lighted lamp on it. Vivie's books and writing materials are on a
+table to the right of the window, against the wall. The fireplace is on
+the right, with a settle: there is no fire. Two of the chairs are set
+right and left of the table.]
+
+[The cottage door opens, shewing a fine starlit night without; and Mrs
+Warren, her shoulders wrapped in a shawl borrowed from Vivie, enters,
+followed by Frank, who throws his cap on the window seat. She has had
+enough of walking, and gives a gasp of relief as she unpins her hat;
+takes it off; sticks the pin through the crown; and puts it on the
+table.]
+
+MRS WARREN. O Lord! I don't know which is the worst of the country, the
+walking or the sitting at home with nothing to do. I could do with a
+whisky and soda now very well, if only they had such a things in this
+place.
+
+FRANK. Perhaps Vivie's got some.
+
+MRS WARREN. Nonsense! What would a young girl like her be doing with
+such things! Never mind: it don't matter. I wonder how she passes her
+time here! I'd a good deal rather be in Vienna.
+
+FRANK. Let me take you there. [He helps her to take off her shawl,
+gallantly giving her shoulders a very perceptible squeeze as he does
+so].
+
+MRS WARREN. Ah! would you? I'm beginning to think youre a chip of the
+old block.
+
+FRANK. Like the gov'nor, eh? [He hangs the shawl on the nearest chair,
+and sits down].
+
+MRS WARREN. Never you mind. What do you know about such things?
+
+Youre only a boy. [She goes to the hearth to be farther from
+temptation].
+
+FRANK. Do come to Vienna with me? It'd be ever such larks.
+
+MRS WARREN. No, thank you. Vienna is no place for you--at least not
+until youre a little older. [She nods at him to emphasize this piece of
+advice. He makes a mock-piteous face, belied by his laughing eyes.
+She looks at him; then comes back to him]. Now, look here, little boy
+[taking his face in her hands and turning it up to her]: I know you
+through and through by your likeness to your father, better than you
+know yourself. Don't you go taking any silly ideas into your head about
+me. Do you hear?
+
+FRANK [gallantly wooing her with his voice] Can't help it, my dear Mrs
+Warren: it runs in the family.
+
+[She pretends to box his ears; then looks at the pretty laughing
+upturned face of a moment, tempted. At last she kisses him, and
+immediately turns away, out of patience with herself.]
+
+MRS WARREN. There! I shouldn't have done that. I _am_ wicked. Never you
+mind, my dear: it's only a motherly kiss. Go and make love to Vivie.
+
+FRANK. So I have.
+
+MRS WARREN [turning on him with a sharp note of alarm in her voice]
+What!
+
+FRANK. Vivie and I are ever such chums.
+
+MRS WARREN. What do you mean? Now see here: I won't have any young scamp
+tampering with my little girl. Do you hear? I won't have it.
+
+FRANK [quite unabashed] My dear Mrs Warren: don't you be alarmed. My
+intentions are honorable: ever so honorable; and your little girl is
+jolly well able to take care of herself. She don't need looking after
+half so much as her mother. She ain't so handsome, you know.
+
+MRS WARREN [taken aback by his assurance] Well, you have got a nice
+healthy two inches of cheek all over you. I don't know where you got it.
+Not from your father, anyhow.
+
+CROFTS [in the garden] The gipsies, I suppose?
+
+REV. S. [replying] The broomsquires are far worse.
+
+MRS WARREN [to Frank] S-sh! Remember! you've had your warning.
+
+[Crofts and the Reverend Samuel Gardner come in from the garden, the
+clergyman continuing his conversation as he enters.]
+
+REV. S. The perjury at the Winchester assizes is deplorable.
+
+MRS WARREN. Well? what became of you two? And wheres Praddy and Vivie?
+
+CROFTS [putting his hat on the settle and his stick in the chimney
+corner] They went up the hill. We went to the village. I wanted a drink.
+[He sits down on the settle, putting his legs up along the seat].
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, she oughtn't to go off like that without telling me.
+[To Frank] Get your father a chair, Frank: where are your manners?
+[Frank springs up and gracefully offers his father his chair; then takes
+another from the wall and sits down at the table, in the middle, with
+his father on his right and Mrs Warren on his left]. George: where are
+you going to stay to-night? You can't stay here. And whats Praddy going
+to do?
+
+CROFTS. Gardner'll put me up.
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, no doubt you've taken care of yourself! But what about
+Praddy?
+
+CROFTS. Don't know. I suppose he can sleep at the inn.
+
+MRS WARREN. Havn't you room for him, Sam?
+
+REV. S. Well--er--you see, as rector here, I am not free to do as I
+like. Er--what is Mr Praed's social position?
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, he's all right: he's an architect. What an old
+stick-in-the-mud you are, Sam!
+
+FRANK. Yes, it's all right, gov'nor. He built that place down in Wales
+for the Duke. Caernarvon Castle they call it. You must have heard of it.
+[He winks with lightning smartness at Mrs Warren, and regards his father
+blandly].
+
+REV. S. Oh, in that case, of course we shall only be too happy. I
+suppose he knows the Duke personally.
+
+FRANK. Oh, ever so intimately! We can stick him in Georgina's old room.
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, thats settled. Now if those two would only come in and
+let us have supper. Theyve no right to stay out after dark like this.
+
+CROFTS [aggressively] What harm are they doing you?
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, harm or not, I don't like it.
+
+FRANK. Better not wait for them, Mrs Warren. Praed will stay out as
+long as possible. He has never known before what it is to stray over the
+heath on a summer night with my Vivie.
+
+CROFTS [sitting up in some consternation] I say, you know! Come!
+
+REV. S. [rising, startled out of his professional manner into real force
+and sincerity] Frank, once and for all, it's out of the question. Mrs
+Warren will tell you that it's not to be thought of.
+
+CROFTS. Of course not.
+
+FRANK [with enchanting placidity] Is that so, Mrs Warren?
+
+MRS WARREN [reflectively] Well, Sam, I don't know. If the girl wants to
+get married, no good can come of keeping her unmarried.
+
+REV. S. [astounded] But married to _him!_--your daughter to my son! Only
+think: it's impossible.
+
+CROFTS. Of course it's impossible. Don't be a fool, Kitty.
+
+MRS WARREN [nettled] Why not? Isn't my daughter good enough for your son?
+
+REV. S. But surely, my dear Mrs Warren, you know the reasons--
+
+MRS WARREN [defiantly] I know no reasons. If you know any, you can tell
+them to the lad, or to the girl, or to your congregation, if you like.
+
+REV. S. [collapsing helplessly into his chair] You know very well that I
+couldn't tell anyone the reasons. But my boy will believe me when I tell
+him there a r e reasons.
+
+FRANK. Quite right, Dad: he will. But has your boy's conduct ever been
+influenced by your reasons?
+
+CROFTS. You can't marry her; and thats all about it. [He gets up
+and stands on the hearth, with his back to the fireplace, frowning
+determinedly].
+
+MRS WARREN [turning on him sharply] What have you got to do with it,
+pray?
+
+FRANK [with his prettiest lyrical cadence] Precisely what I was going to
+ask, myself, in my own graceful fashion.
+
+CROFTS [to Mrs Warren] I suppose you don't want to marry the girl to a
+man younger than herself and without either a profession or twopence to
+keep her on. Ask Sam, if you don't believe me. [To the parson] How much
+more money are you going to give him?
+
+REV. S. Not another penny. He has had his patrimony; and he spent the
+last of it in July. [Mrs Warren's face falls].
+
+CROFTS [watching her] There! I told you. [He resumes his place on
+the settle and puts his legs on the seat again, as if the matter were
+finally disposed of].
+
+FRANK [plaintively] This is ever so mercenary. Do you suppose Miss
+Warren's going to marry for money? If we love one another--
+
+MRS WARREN. Thank you. Your love's a pretty cheap commodity, my lad.
+If you have no means of keeping a wife, that settles it; you can't have
+Vivie.
+
+FRANK [much amused] What do y o u say, gov'nor, eh?
+
+REV. S. I agree with Mrs Warren.
+
+FRANK. And good old Crofts has already expressed his opinion.
+
+CROFTS [turning angrily on his elbow] Look here: I want none of your
+cheek.
+
+FRANK [pointedly] I'm e v e r so sorry to surprise you, Crofts; but you
+allowed yourself the liberty of speaking to me like a father a moment
+ago. One father is enough, thank you.
+
+CROFTS [contemptuously] Yah! [He turns away again].
+
+FRANK [rising] Mrs Warren: I cannot give my Vivie up, even for your
+sake.
+
+MRS WARREN [muttering] Young scamp!
+
+FRANK [continuing] And as you no doubt intend to hold out other
+prospects to her, I shall lose no time in placing my case before her.
+[They stare at him; and he begins to declaim gracefully] He either fears
+his fate too much, Or his deserts are small, That dares not put it to
+the touch, To gain or lose it all.
+
+[The cottage doors open whilst he is reciting; and Vivie and Praed
+come in. He breaks off. Praed puts his hat on the dresser. There is an
+immediate improvement in the company's behavior. Crofts takes down his
+legs from the settle and pulls himself together as Praed joins him at
+the fireplace. Mrs Warren loses her ease of manner and takes refuge in
+querulousness.]
+
+MRS WARREN. Wherever have you been, Vivie?
+
+VIVIE [taking off her hat and throwing it carelessly on the table] On
+the hill.
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, you shouldn't go off like that without letting me know.
+How could I tell what had become of you? And night coming on too!
+
+VIVIE [going to the door of the kitchen and opening it, ignoring her
+mother] Now, about supper? [All rise except Mrs Warren] We shall be
+rather crowded in here, I'm afraid.
+
+MRS WARREN. Did you hear what I said, Vivie?
+
+VIVIE [quietly] Yes, mother. [Reverting to the supper difficulty] How
+many are we? [Counting] One, two, three, four, five, six. Well, two will
+have to wait until the rest are done: Mrs Alison has only plates and
+knives for four.
+
+PRAED. Oh, it doesn't matter about me. I--
+
+VIVIE. You have had a long walk and are hungry, Mr Praed: you shall have
+your supper at once. I can wait myself. I want one person to wait with
+me. Frank: are you hungry?
+
+FRANK. Not the least in the world. Completely off my peck, in fact.
+
+MRS WARREN [to Crofts] Neither are you, George. You can wait.
+
+CROFTS. Oh, hang it, I've eaten nothing since tea-time. Can't Sam do it?
+
+FRANK. Would you starve my poor father?
+
+REV. S. [testily] Allow me to speak for myself, sir. I am perfectly
+willing to wait.
+
+VIVIE [decisively] There's no need. Only two are wanted. [She opens
+the door of the kitchen]. Will you take my mother in, Mr Gardner. [The
+parson takes Mrs Warren; and they pass into the kitchen. Praed and
+Crofts follow. All except Praed clearly disapprove of the arrangement,
+but do not know how to resist it. Vivie stands at the door looking in
+at them]. Can you squeeze past to that corner, Mr Praed: it's rather a
+tight fit. Take care of your coat against the white-wash: that right.
+Now, are you all comfortable?
+
+PRAED [within] Quite, thank you.
+
+MRS WARREN [within] Leave the door open, dearie. [Vivie frowns; but
+Frank checks her with a gesture, and steals to the cottage door, which
+he softly sets wide open]. Oh Lor, what a draught! Youd better shut it,
+dear.
+
+[Vivie shuts it with a slam, and then, noting with disgust that her
+mother's hat and shawl are lying about, takes them tidily to the window
+seat, whilst Frank noiselessly shuts the cottage door.]
+
+FRANK [exulting] Aha! Got rid of em. Well, Vivvums: what do you think of
+my governor?
+
+VIVIE [preoccupied and serious] I've hardly spoken to him. He doesn't
+strike me as a particularly able person.
+
+FRANK. Well, you know, the old man is not altogether such a fool as he
+looks. You see, he was shoved into the Church, rather; and in trying to
+live up to it he makes a much bigger ass of himself than he really is. I
+don't dislike him as much as you might expect. He means well. How do you
+think youll get on with him?
+
+VIVIE [rather grimly] I don't think my future life will be much concerned
+with him, or with any of that old circle of my mother's, except perhaps
+Praed. [She sits down on the settle] What do you think of my mother?
+
+FRANK. Really and truly?
+
+VIVIE. Yes, really and truly.
+
+FRANK. Well, she's ever so jolly. But she's rather a caution, isn't she?
+And Crofts! Oh, my eye, Crofts! [He sits beside her].
+
+VIVIE. What a lot, Frank!
+
+FRANK. What a crew!
+
+VIVIE [with intense contempt for them] If I thought that _I_ was like
+that--that I was going to be a waster, shifting along from one meal to
+another with no purpose, and no character, and no grit in me, I'd open
+an artery and bleed to death without one moment's hesitation.
+
+FRANK. Oh no, you wouldn't. Why should they take any grind when they can
+afford not to? I wish I had their luck. No: what I object to is their
+form. It isn't the thing: it's slovenly, ever so slovenly.
+
+VIVIE. Do you think your form will be any better when youre as old as
+Crofts, if you don't work?
+
+FRANK. Of course I do. Ever so much better. Vivvums mustn't lecture: her
+little boy's incorrigible. [He attempts to take her face caressingly in
+his hands].
+
+VIVIE [striking his hands down sharply] Off with you: Vivvums is not in
+a humor for petting her little boy this evening. [She rises and comes
+forward to the other side of the room].
+
+FRANK [following her] How unkind!
+
+VIVIE [stamping at him] Be serious. I'm serious.
+
+FRANK. Good. Let us talk learnedly, Miss Warren: do you know that all
+the most advanced thinkers are agreed that half the diseases of modern
+civilization are due to starvation of the affections of the young. Now,
+_I_--
+
+VIVIE [cutting him short] You are very tiresome. [She opens the inner
+door] Have you room for Frank there? He's complaining of starvation.
+
+MRS WARREN [within] Of course there is [clatter of knives and glasses
+as she moves the things on the table]. Here! theres room now beside me.
+Come along, Mr Frank.
+
+FRANK. Her little boy will be ever so even with his Vivvums for this.
+[He passes into the kitchen].
+
+MRS WARREN [within] Here, Vivie: come on you too, child. You must be
+famished. [She enters, followed by Crofts, who holds the door open with
+marked deference. She goes out without looking at him; and he shuts the
+door after her]. Why George, you can't be done: you've eaten nothing. Is
+there anything wrong with you?
+
+CROFTS. Oh, all I wanted was a drink. [He thrusts his hands in his
+pockets, and begins prowling about the room, restless and sulky].
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, I like enough to eat. But a little of that cold
+beef and cheese and lettuce goes a long way. [With a sigh of only half
+repletion she sits down lazily on the settle].
+
+CROFTS. What do you go encouraging that young pup for?
+
+MRS WARREN [on the alert at once] Now see here, George: what are you
+up to about that girl? I've been watching your way of looking at her.
+Remember: I know you and what your looks mean.
+
+CROFTS. Theres no harm in looking at her, is there?
+
+MRS WARREN. I'd put you out and pack you back to London pretty soon if
+I saw any of your nonsense. My girl's little finger is more to me than
+your whole body and soul. [Crofts receives this with a sneering grin.
+Mrs Warren, flushing a little at her failure to impose on him in the
+character of a theatrically devoted mother, adds in a lower key] Make
+your mind easy: the young pup has no more chance than you have.
+
+CROFTS. Mayn't a man take an interest in a girl?
+
+MRS WARREN. Not a man like you.
+
+CROFTS. How old is she?
+
+MRS WARREN. Never you mind how old she is.
+
+CROFTS. Why do you make such a secret of it?
+
+MRS WARREN. Because I choose.
+
+CROFTS. Well, I'm not fifty yet; and my property is as good as it ever
+was--
+
+MRS [interrupting him] Yes; because youre as stingy as youre vicious.
+
+CROFTS [continuing] And a baronet isn't to be picked up every day.
+
+No other man in my position would put up with you for a mother-in-law.
+Why shouldn't she marry me?
+
+MRS WARREN. You!
+
+CROFTS. We three could live together quite comfortably. I'd die before
+her and leave her a bouncing widow with plenty of money. Why not? It's
+been growing in my mind all the time I've been walking with that fool
+inside there.
+
+MRS WARREN [revolted] Yes; it's the sort of thing that _would_ grow in
+your mind.
+
+[He halts in his prowling; and the two look at one another, she
+steadfastly, with a sort of awe behind her contemptuous disgust: he
+stealthily, with a carnal gleam in his eye and a loose grin.]
+
+CROFTS [suddenly becoming anxious and urgent as he sees no sign of
+sympathy in her] Look here, Kitty: youre a sensible woman: you needn't
+put on any moral airs. I'll ask no more questions; and you need answer
+none. I'll settle the whole property on her; and if you want a checque
+for yourself on the wedding day, you can name any figure you like--in
+reason.
+
+MRS WARREN. So it's come to that with you, George, like all the other
+worn-out old creatures!
+
+CROFTS [savagely] Damn you!
+
+[Before she can retort the door of the kitchen is opened; and the
+voices of the others are heard returning. Crofts, unable to recover his
+presence of mind, hurries out of the cottage. The clergyman appears at
+the kitchen door.]
+
+REV. S. [looking round] Where is Sir George?
+
+MRS WARREN. Gone out to have a pipe. [The clergyman takes his hat from
+the table, and joins Mrs Warren at the fireside. Meanwhile, Vivie comes
+in, followed by Frank, who collapses into the nearest chair with an air
+of extreme exhaustion. Mrs Warren looks round at Vivie and says, with
+her affectation of maternal patronage even more forced than usual] Well,
+dearie: have you had a good supper?
+
+VIVIE. You know what Mrs Alison's suppers are. [She turns to Frank and
+pets him] Poor Frank! was all the beef gone? did it get nothing but
+bread and cheese and ginger beer? [Seriously, as if she had done quite
+enough trifling for one evening] Her butter is really awful. I must get
+some down from the stores.
+
+FRANK. Do, in Heaven's name!
+
+[Vivie goes to the writing-table and makes a memorandum to order the
+butter. Praed comes in from the kitchen, putting up his handkerchief,
+which he has been using as a napkin.]
+
+REV. S. Frank, my boy: it is time for us to be thinking of home.
+
+Your mother does not know yet that we have visitors.
+
+PRAED. I'm afraid we're giving trouble.
+
+FRANK [rising] Not the least in the world: my mother will be delighted
+to see you. She's a genuinely intellectual artistic woman; and she sees
+nobody here from one year's end to another except the gov'nor; so you
+can imagine how jolly dull it pans out for her. [To his father] Y o u
+r e not intellectual or artistic: are you pater? So take Praed home at
+once; and I'll stay here and entertain Mrs Warren. Youll pick up Crofts
+in the garden. He'll be excellent company for the bull-pup.
+
+PRAED [taking his hat from the dresser, and coming close to Frank] Come
+with us, Frank. Mrs Warren has not seen Miss Vivie for a long time; and
+we have prevented them from having a moment together yet.
+
+FRANK [quite softened, and looking at Praed with romantic admiration]
+Of course. I forgot. Ever so thanks for reminding me. Perfect gentleman,
+Praddy. Always were. My ideal through life. [He rises to go, but
+pauses a moment between the two older men, and puts his hand on Praed's
+shoulder]. Ah, if you had only been my father instead of this unworthy
+old man! [He puts his other hand on his father's shoulder].
+
+REV. S. [blustering] Silence, sir, silence: you are profane.
+
+MRS WARREN [laughing heartily] You should keep him in better order, Sam.
+Good-night. Here: take George his hat and stick with my compliments.
+
+REV. S. [taking them] Good-night. [They shake hands. As he passes Vivie
+he shakes hands with her also and bids her good-night. Then, in booming
+command, to Frank] Come along, sir, at once. [He goes out].
+
+MRS WARREN. Byebye, Praddy.
+
+PRAED. Byebye, Kitty.
+
+[They shake hands affectionately and go out together, she accompanying
+him to the garden gate.]
+
+FRANK [to Vivie] Kissums?
+
+VIVIE [fiercely] No. I hate you. [She takes a couple of books and some
+paper from the writing-table, and sits down with them at the middle
+table, at the end next the fireplace].
+
+FRANK [grimacing] Sorry. [He goes for his cap and rifle. Mrs Warren
+returns. He takes her hand] Good-night, dear Mrs Warren. [He kisses her
+hand. She snatches it away, her lips tightening, and looks more than
+half disposed to box his ears. He laughs mischievously and runs off,
+clapping-to the door behind him].
+
+MRS WARREN [resigning herself to an evening of boredom now that the men
+are gone] Did you ever in your life hear anyone rattle on so? Isn't he a
+tease? [She sits at the table]. Now that I think of it, dearie, don't you
+go encouraging him. I'm sure he's a regular good-for-nothing.
+
+VIVIE [rising to fetch more books] I'm afraid so. Poor Frank! I shall
+have to get rid of him; but I shall feel sorry for him, though he's
+not worth it. That man Crofts does not seem to me to be good for much
+either: is he? [She throws the books on the table rather roughly].
+
+MRS WARREN [galled by Vivie's indifference] What do you know of men,
+child, to talk that way of them? Youll have to make up your mind to see
+a good deal of Sir George Crofts, as he's a friend of mine.
+
+VIVIE [quite unmoved] Why? [She sits down and opens a book]. Do you
+expect that we shall be much together? You and I, I mean?
+
+MRS WARREN [staring at her] Of course: until youre married. Youre not
+going back to college again.
+
+VIVIE. Do you think my way of life would suit you? I doubt it.
+
+MRS WARREN. Y o u r way of life! What do you mean?
+
+VIVIE [cutting a page of her book with the paper knife on her
+chatelaine] Has it really never occurred to you, mother, that I have a
+way of life like other people?
+
+MRS WARREN. What nonsense is this youre trying to talk? Do you want to
+shew your independence, now that youre a great little person at school?
+Don't be a fool, child.
+
+VIVIE [indulgently] Thats all you have to say on the subject, is it,
+mother?
+
+MRS WARREN [puzzled, then angry] Don't you keep on asking me questions
+like that. [Violently] Hold your tongue. [Vivie works on, losing no
+time, and saying nothing]. You and your way of life, indeed! What next?
+[She looks at Vivie again. No reply].
+
+Your way of life will be what I please, so it will. [Another pause].
+Ive been noticing these airs in you ever since you got that tripos or
+whatever you call it. If you think I'm going to put up with them, youre
+mistaken; and the sooner you find it out, the better. [Muttering] All I
+have to say on the subject, indeed! [Again raising her voice angrily] Do
+you know who youre speaking to, Miss?
+
+VIVIE [looking across at her without raising her head from her book] No.
+Who are you? What are you?
+
+MRS WARREN [rising breathless] You young imp!
+
+VIVIE. Everybody knows my reputation, my social standing, and the
+profession I intend to pursue. I know nothing about you. What is that
+way of life which you invite me to share with you and Sir George Crofts,
+pray?
+
+MRS WARREN. Take care. I shall do something I'll be sorry for after, and
+you too.
+
+VIVIE [putting aside her books with cool decision] Well, let us drop the
+subject until you are better able to face it. [Looking critically at her
+mother] You want some good walks and a little lawn tennis to set you up.
+You are shockingly out of condition: you were not able to manage twenty
+yards uphill today without stopping to pant; and your wrists are mere
+rolls of fat. Look at mine. [She holds out her wrists].
+
+MRS WARREN [after looking at her helplessly, begins to whimper] Vivie--
+
+VIVIE [springing up sharply] Now pray don't begin to cry. Anything but
+that. I really cannot stand whimpering. I will go out of the room if you
+do.
+
+MRS WARREN [piteously] Oh, my darling, how can you be so hard on me?
+Have I no rights over you as your mother?
+
+VIVIE. A r e you my mother?
+
+MRS WARREN. _Am_ I your mother? Oh, Vivie!
+
+VIVIE. Then where are our relatives? my father? our family friends? You
+claim the rights of a mother: the right to call me fool and child; to
+speak to me as no woman in authority over me at college dare speak to
+me; to dictate my way of life; and to force on me the acquaintance of
+a brute whom anyone can see to be the most vicious sort of London man
+about town. Before I give myself the trouble to resist such claims, I
+may as well find out whether they have any real existence.
+
+MRS WARREN [distracted, throwing herself on her knees] Oh no, no.
+
+Stop, stop. I _am_ your mother: I swear it. Oh, you can't mean to turn on
+me--my own child! it's not natural. You believe me, don't you? Say you
+believe me.
+
+VIVIE. Who was my father?
+
+MRS WARREN. You don't know what youre asking. I can't tell you.
+
+VIVIE [determinedly] Oh yes you can, if you like. I have a right to
+know; and you know very well that I have that right. You can refuse
+to tell me if you please; but if you do, you will see the last of me
+tomorrow morning.
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, it's too horrible to hear you talk like that. You
+wouldn't--you _couldn't_ leave me.
+
+VIVIE [ruthlessly] Yes, without a moment's hesitation, if you trifle
+with me about this. [Shivering with disgust] How can I feel sure that I
+may not have the contaminated blood of that brutal waster in my veins?
+
+MRS WARREN. No, no. On my oath it's not he, nor any of the rest that you
+have ever met. I'm certain of that, at least.
+
+[Vivie's eyes fasten sternly on her mother as the significance of this
+flashes on her.]
+
+VIVIE [slowly] You are certain of that, at _least_. Ah! You mean that
+that is all you are certain of. [Thoughtfully] I see. [Mrs Warren buries
+her face in her hands]. Don't do that, mother: you know you don't feel
+it a bit. [Mrs Warren takes down her hands and looks up deplorably
+at Vivie, who takes out her watch and says] Well, that is enough for
+tonight. At what hour would you like breakfast? Is half-past eight too
+early for you?
+
+MRS WARREN [wildly] My God, what sort of woman are you?
+
+VIVIE [coolly] The sort the world is mostly made of, I should hope.
+Otherwise I don't understand how it gets its business done.
+
+Come [taking her mother by the wrist and pulling her up pretty
+resolutely]: pull yourself together. Thats right.
+
+MRS WARREN [querulously] Youre very rough with me, Vivie.
+
+VIVIE. Nonsense. What about bed? It's past ten.
+
+MRS WARREN [passionately] Whats the use of my going to bed? Do you think
+I could sleep?
+
+VIVIE. Why not? I shall.
+
+MRS WARREN. You! you've no heart. [She suddenly breaks out vehemently in
+her natural tongue--the dialect of a woman of the people--with all her
+affectations of maternal authority and conventional manners gone, and an
+overwhelming inspiration of true conviction and scorn in her] Oh, I wont
+bear it: I won't put up with the injustice of it. What right have you to
+set yourself up above me like this? You boast of what you are to me--to
+_me_, who gave you a chance of being what you are. What chance had I?
+Shame on you for a bad daughter and a stuck-up prude!
+
+VIVIE [sitting down with a shrug, no longer confident; for her replies,
+which have sounded sensible and strong to her so far, now begin to ring
+rather woodenly and even priggishly against the new tone of her mother]
+Don't think for a moment I set myself above you in any way. You attacked
+me with the conventional authority of a mother: I defended myself with
+the conventional superiority of a respectable woman. Frankly, I am not
+going to stand any of your nonsense; and when you drop it I shall not
+expect you to stand any of mine. I shall always respect your right to
+your own opinions and your own way of life.
+
+MRS WARREN. My own opinions and my own way of life! Listen to her
+talking! Do you think I was brought up like you? able to pick and choose
+my own way of life? Do you think I did what I did because I liked it, or
+thought it right, or wouldn't rather have gone to college and been a lady
+if I'd had the chance?
+
+VIVIE. Everybody has some choice, mother. The poorest girl alive may
+not be able to choose between being Queen of England or Principal
+of Newnham; but she can choose between ragpicking and flowerselling,
+according to her taste. People are always blaming circumstances for what
+they are. I don't believe in circumstances. The people who get on in
+this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they
+want, and, if they can't find them, make them.
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, it's easy to talk, isn't it? Here! would you like to know
+what _my_ circumstances were?
+
+VIVIE. Yes: you had better tell me. Won't you sit down?
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, I'll sit down: don't you be afraid. [She plants her chair
+farther forward with brazen energy, and sits down. Vivie is impressed in
+spite of herself]. D'you know what your gran'mother was?
+
+VIVIE. No.
+
+MRS WARREN. No, you don't. I do. She called herself a widow and had a
+fried-fish shop down by the Mint, and kept herself and four daughters
+out of it. Two of us were sisters: that was me and Liz; and we were both
+good-looking and well made. I suppose our father was a well-fed man:
+mother pretended he was a gentleman; but I don't know. The other two
+were only half sisters: undersized, ugly, starved looking, hard working,
+honest poor creatures: Liz and I would have half-murdered them if
+mother hadn't half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. They were the
+respectable ones. Well, what did they get by their respectability? I'll
+tell you. One of them worked in a whitelead factory twelve hours a day
+for nine shillings a week until she died of lead poisoning. She only
+expected to get her hands a little paralyzed; but she died. The other
+was always held up to us as a model because she married a Government
+laborer in the Deptford victualling yard, and kept his room and the
+three children neat and tidy on eighteen shillings a week--until he took
+to drink. That was worth being respectable for, wasn't it?
+
+VIVIE [now thoughtfully attentive] Did you and your sister think so?
+
+MRS WARREN. Liz didn't, I can tell you: she had more spirit. We both went
+to a church school--that was part of the ladylike airs we gave ourselves
+to be superior to the children that knew nothing and went nowhere--and
+we stayed there until Liz went out one night and never came back. I
+know the schoolmistress thought I'd soon follow her example; for
+the clergyman was always warning me that Lizzie'd end by jumping off
+Waterloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knew about it! But I was
+more afraid of the whitelead factory than I was of the river; and so
+would you have been in my place. That clergyman got me a situation as
+a scullery maid in a temperance restaurant where they sent out for
+anything you liked. Then I was a waitress; and then I went to the bar
+at Waterloo station: fourteen hours a day serving drinks and washing
+glasses for four shillings a week and my board. That was considered a
+great promotion for me. Well, one cold, wretched night, when I was so
+tired I could hardly keep myself awake, who should come up for a half of
+Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, elegant and comfortable, with a
+lot of sovereigns in her purse.
+
+VIVIE [grimly] My aunt Lizzie!
+
+MRS WARREN. Yes; and a very good aunt to have, too. She's living down
+at Winchester now, close to the cathedral, one of the most respectable
+ladies there. Chaperones girls at the country ball, if you please.
+No river for Liz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a little: she was a
+first-rate business woman--saved money from the beginning--never let
+herself look too like what she was--never lost her head or threw away a
+chance. When she saw I'd grown up good-looking she said to me across the
+bar "What are you doing there, you little fool? wearing out your health
+and your appearance for other people's profit!" Liz was saving money
+then to take a house for herself in Brussels; and she thought we two
+could save faster than one. So she lent me some money and gave me a
+start; and I saved steadily and first paid her back, and then went into
+business with her as a partner. Why shouldn't I have done it? The house
+in Brussels was real high class: a much better place for a woman to be
+in than the factory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None of the girls were
+ever treated as I was treated in the scullery of that temperance place,
+or at the Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you have had me stay in them
+and become a worn out old drudge before I was forty?
+
+VIVIE [intensely interested by this time] No; but why did you choose
+that business? Saving money and good management will succeed in any
+business.
+
+MRS WARREN. Yes, saving money. But where can a woman get the money to
+save in any other business? Could y o u save out of four shillings a
+week and keep yourself dressed as well? Not you. Of course, if youre
+a plain woman and can't earn anything more; or if you have a turn for
+music, or the stage, or newspaper-writing: thats different. But neither
+Liz nor I had any turn for such things at all: all we had was our
+appearance and our turn for pleasing men. Do you think we were such
+fools as to let other people trade in our good looks by employing us
+as shopgirls, or barmaids, or waitresses, when we could trade in them
+ourselves and get all the profits instead of starvation wages? Not
+likely.
+
+VIVIE. You were certainly quite justified--from the business point of
+view.
+
+MRS WARREN. Yes; or any other point of view. What is any respectable
+girl brought up to do but to catch some rich man's fancy and get the
+benefit of his money by marrying him?--as if a marriage ceremony
+could make any difference in the right or wrong of the thing! Oh, the
+hypocrisy of the world makes me sick! Liz and I had to work and save and
+calculate just like other people; elseways we should be as poor as any
+good-for-nothing drunken waster of a woman that thinks her luck will
+last for ever. [With great energy] I despise such people: theyve
+no character; and if theres a thing I hate in a woman, it's want of
+character.
+
+VIVIE. Come now, mother: frankly! Isn't it part of what you call
+character in a woman that she should greatly dislike such a way of
+making money?
+
+MRS WARREN. Why, of course. Everybody dislikes having to work and make
+money; but they have to do it all the same. I'm sure I've often pitied
+a poor girl, tired out and in low spirits, having to try to please some
+man that she doesn't care two straws for--some half-drunken fool that
+thinks he's making himself agreeable when he's teasing and worrying and
+disgusting a woman so that hardly any money could pay her for putting up
+with it. But she has to bear with disagreeables and take the rough with
+the smooth, just like a nurse in a hospital or anyone else. It's not
+work that any woman would do for pleasure, goodness knows; though to
+hear the pious people talk you would suppose it was a bed of roses.
+
+VIVIE. Still, you consider it worth while. It pays.
+
+MRS WARREN. Of course it's worth while to a poor girl, if she can resist
+temptation and is good-looking and well conducted and sensible. It's far
+better than any other employment open to her.
+
+I always thought that it oughtn't to be. It _can't_ be right, Vivie, that
+there shouldn't be better opportunities for women. I stick to that: it's
+wrong. But it's so, right or wrong; and a girl must make the best of it.
+But of course it's not worth while for a lady. If you took to it youd be
+a fool; but I should have been a fool if I'd taken to anything else.
+
+VIVIE [more and more deeply moved] Mother: suppose we were both as poor
+as you were in those wretched old days, are you quite sure that you
+wouldn't advise me to try the Waterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even
+go into the factory?
+
+MRS WARREN [indignantly] Of course not. What sort of mother do you take
+me for! How could you keep your self-respect in such starvation
+and slavery? And whats a woman worth? whats life worth? without
+self-respect! Why am I independent and able to give my daughter
+a first-rate education, when other women that had just as good
+opportunities are in the gutter? Because I always knew how to respect
+myself and control myself. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedral town?
+The same reason. Where would we be now if we'd minded the clergyman's
+foolishness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpence a day and nothing to
+look forward to but the workhouse infirmary. Don't you be led astray by
+people who don't know the world, my girl. The only way for a woman to
+provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can
+afford to be good to her. If she's in his own station of life, let her
+make him marry her; but if she's far beneath him she can't expect it: why
+should she? it wouldn't be for her own happiness. Ask any lady in London
+society that has daughters; and she'll tell you the same, except that I
+tell you straight and she'll tell you crooked. Thats all the difference.
+
+VIVIE [fascinated, gazing at her] My dear mother: you are a wonderful
+woman: you are stronger than all England. And are you really and truly
+not one wee bit doubtful--or--or--ashamed?
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, of course, dearie, it's only good manners to be
+ashamed of it: it's expected from a woman. Women have to pretend to
+feel a great deal that they don't feel. Liz used to be angry with me for
+plumping out the truth about it. She used to say that when every woman
+could learn enough from what was going on in the world before her eyes,
+there was no need to talk about it to her. But then Liz was such a
+perfect lady! She had the true instinct of it; while I was always a bit
+of a vulgarian. I used to be so pleased when you sent me your photos
+to see that you were growing up like Liz: you've just her ladylike,
+determined way. But I can't stand saying one thing when everyone knows
+I mean another. Whats the use in such hypocrisy? If people arrange the
+world that way for women, theres no good pretending it's arranged the
+other way. No: I never was a bit ashamed really. I consider I had a
+right to be proud of how we managed everything so respectably, and never
+had a word against us, and how the girls were so well taken care of.
+Some of them did very well: one of them married an ambassador. But of
+course now I daren't talk about such things: whatever would they think
+of us! [She yawns]. Oh dear! I do believe I'm getting sleepy after all.
+[She stretches herself lazily, thoroughly relieved by her explosion, and
+placidly ready for her night's rest].
+
+VIVIE. I believe it is I who will not be able to sleep now. [She goes
+to the dresser and lights the candle. Then she extinguishes the lamp,
+darkening the room a good deal]. Better let in some fresh air before
+locking up. [She opens the cottage door, and finds that it is broad
+moonlight]. What a beautiful night! Look! [She draws the curtains of the
+window. The landscape is seen bathed in the radiance of the harvest moon
+rising over Blackdown].
+
+MRS WARREN [with a perfunctory glance at the scene] Yes, dear; but take
+care you don't catch your death of cold from the night air.
+
+VIVIE [contemptuously] Nonsense.
+
+MRS WARREN [querulously] Oh yes: everything I say is nonsense, according
+to you.
+
+VIVIE [turning to her quickly] No: really that is not so, mother.
+
+You have got completely the better of me tonight, though I intended it
+to be the other way. Let us be good friends now.
+
+MRS WARREN [shaking her head a little ruefully] So it _has_ been the
+other way. But I suppose I must give in to it. I always got the worst of
+it from Liz; and now I suppose it'll be the same with you.
+
+VIVIE. Well, never mind. Come: good-night, dear old mother. [She takes
+her mother in her arms].
+
+MRS WARREN [fondly] I brought you up well, didn't I, dearie?
+
+VIVIE. You did.
+
+MRS WARREN. And youll be good to your poor old mother for it, won't you?
+
+VIVIE. I will, dear. [Kissing her] Good-night.
+
+MRS WARREN [with unction] Blessings on my own dearie darling! a mother's
+blessing!
+
+[She embraces her daughter protectingly, instinctively looking upward
+for divine sanction.]
+
+
+
+
+ACT III
+
+
+[In the Rectory garden next morning, with the sun shining from a
+cloudless sky. The garden wall has a five-barred wooden gate, wide
+enough to admit a carriage, in the middle. Beside the gate hangs a bell
+on a coiled spring, communicating with a pull outside. The carriage
+drive comes down the middle of the garden and then swerves to its left,
+where it ends in a little gravelled circus opposite the Rectory porch.
+Beyond the gate is seen the dusty high road, parallel with the wall,
+bounded on the farther side by a strip of turf and an unfenced pine
+wood. On the lawn, between the house and the drive, is a clipped yew
+tree, with a garden bench in its shade. On the opposite side the garden
+is shut in by a box hedge; and there is a little sundial on the turf,
+with an iron chair near it. A little path leads through the box hedge,
+behind the sundial.]
+
+[Frank, seated on the chair near the sundial, on which he has placed the
+morning paper, is reading The Standard. His father comes from the house,
+red-eyed and shivery, and meets Frank's eye with misgiving.]
+
+FRANK [looking at his watch] Half-past eleven. Nice hour for a rector to
+come down to breakfast!
+
+REV. S. Don't mock, Frank: don't mock. I am a little--er--[Shivering]--
+
+FRANK. Off color?
+
+REV. S. [repudiating the expression] No, sir: _unwell_ this morning.
+Where's your mother?
+
+FRANK. Don't be alarmed: she's not here. Gone to town by the 11.13
+with Bessie. She left several messages for you. Do you feel equal to
+receiving them now, or shall I wait til you've breakfasted?
+
+REV. S. I h a v e breakfasted, sir. I am surprised at your mother
+going to town when we have people staying with us. They'll think it very
+strange.
+
+FRANK. Possibly she has considered that. At all events, if Crofts is
+going to stay here, and you are going to sit up every night with him
+until four, recalling the incidents of your fiery youth, it is clearly
+my mother's duty, as a prudent housekeeper, to go up to the stores and
+order a barrel of whisky and a few hundred siphons.
+
+REV. S. I did not observe that Sir George drank excessively.
+
+FRANK. You were not in a condition to, gov'nor.
+
+REV. S. Do you mean to say that _I_--?
+
+FRANK [calmly] I never saw a beneficed clergyman less sober. The
+anecdotes you told about your past career were so awful that I really
+don't think Praed would have passed the night under your roof if it hadnt
+been for the way my mother and he took to one another.
+
+REV. S. Nonsense, sir. I am Sir George Crofts' host. I must talk to him
+about something; and he has only one subject. Where is Mr Praed now?
+
+FRANK. He is driving my mother and Bessie to the station.
+
+REV. S. Is Crofts up yet?
+
+FRANK. Oh, long ago. He hasn't turned a hair: he's in much better
+practice than you. Has kept it up ever since, probably. He's taken
+himself off somewhere to smoke.
+
+[Frank resumes his paper. The parson turns disconsolately towards the
+gate; then comes back irresolutely.]
+
+REV. S. Er--Frank.
+
+FRANK. Yes.
+
+REV. S. Do you think the Warrens will expect to be asked here after
+yesterday afternoon?
+
+FRANK. Theyve been asked already.
+
+REV. S. [appalled] What!!!
+
+FRANK. Crofts informed us at breakfast that you told him to bring Mrs
+Warren and Vivie over here to-day, and to invite them to make this house
+their home. My mother then found she must go to town by the 11.13 train.
+
+REV. S. [with despairing vehemence] I never gave any such invitation. I
+never thought of such a thing.
+
+FRANK [compassionately] How do you know, gov'nor, what you said and
+thought last night?
+
+PRAED [coming in through the hedge] Good morning.
+
+REV. S. Good morning. I must apologize for not having met you at
+breakfast. I have a touch of--of--
+
+FRANK. Clergyman's sore throat, Praed. Fortunately not chronic.
+
+PRAED [changing the subject] Well I must say your house is in a charming
+spot here. Really most charming.
+
+REV. S. Yes: it is indeed. Frank will take you for a walk, Mr Praed,
+if you like. I'll ask you to excuse me: I must take the opportunity
+to write my sermon while Mrs Gardner is away and you are all amusing
+yourselves. You won't mind, will you?
+
+PRAED. Certainly not. Don't stand on the slightest ceremony with me.
+
+REV. S. Thank you. I'll--er--er--[He stammers his way to the porch and
+vanishes into the house].
+
+PRAED. Curious thing it must be writing a sermon every week.
+
+FRANK. Ever so curious, if he did it. He buys em. He's gone for some
+soda water.
+
+PRAED. My dear boy: I wish you would be more respectful to your father.
+You know you can be so nice when you like.
+
+FRANK. My dear Praddy: you forget that I have to live with the governor.
+When two people live together--it don't matter whether theyre father and
+son or husband and wife or brother and sister--they can't keep up the
+polite humbug thats so easy for ten minutes on an afternoon call.
+Now the governor, who unites to many admirable domestic qualities the
+irresoluteness of a sheep and the pompousness and aggressiveness of a
+jackass--
+
+PRAED. No, pray, pray, my dear Frank, remember! He is your father.
+
+FRANK. I give him due credit for that. [Rising and flinging down his
+paper] But just imagine his telling Crofts to bring the Warrens over
+here! He must have been ever so drunk. You know, my dear Praddy, my
+mother wouldn't stand Mrs Warren for a moment. Vivie mustn't come here
+until she's gone back to town.
+
+PRAED. But your mother doesn't know anything about Mrs Warren, does she?
+[He picks up the paper and sits down to read it].
+
+FRANK. I don't know. Her journey to town looks as if she did. Not that
+my mother would mind in the ordinary way: she has stuck like a brick to
+lots of women who had got into trouble. But they were all nice women.
+Thats what makes the real difference. Mrs Warren, no doubt, has her
+merits; but she's ever so rowdy; and my mother simply wouldn't put up
+with her. So--hallo! [This exclamation is provoked by the reappearance
+of the clergyman, who comes out of the house in haste and dismay].
+
+REV. S. Frank: Mrs Warren and her daughter are coming across the heath
+with Crofts: I saw them from the study windows. What _am_ I to say about
+your mother?
+
+FRANK. Stick on your hat and go out and say how delighted you are to see
+them; and that Frank's in the garden; and that mother and Bessie have
+been called to the bedside of a sick relative, and were ever so
+sorry they couldn't stop; and that you hope Mrs Warren slept well;
+and--and--say any blessed thing except the truth, and leave the rest to
+Providence.
+
+REV. S. But how are we to get rid of them afterwards?
+
+FRANK. Theres no time to think of that now. Here! [He bounds into the
+house].
+
+REV. S. He's so impetuous. I don't know what to do with him, Mr Praed.
+
+FRANK [returning with a clerical felt hat, which he claps on his
+father's head]. Now: off with you. [Rushing him through the gate].
+Praed and I'll wait here, to give the thing an unpremeditated air. [The
+clergyman, dazed but obedient, hurries off].
+
+FRANK. We must get the old girl back to town somehow, Praed. Come!
+Honestly, dear Praddy, do you like seeing them together?
+
+PRAED. Oh, why not?
+
+FRANK [his teeth on edge] Don't it make your flesh creep ever so little?
+that wicked old devil, up to every villainy under the sun, I'll swear,
+and Vivie--ugh!
+
+PRAED. Hush, pray. Theyre coming.
+
+[The clergyman and Crofts are seen coming along the road, followed by
+Mrs Warren and Vivie walking affectionately together.]
+
+FRANK. Look: she actually has her arm round the old woman's waist. It's
+her right arm: she began it. She's gone sentimental, by God! Ugh! ugh!
+Now do you feel the creeps? [The clergyman opens the gate: and Mrs
+Warren and Vivie pass him and stand in the middle of the garden looking
+at the house. Frank, in an ecstasy of dissimulation, turns gaily to Mrs
+Warren, exclaiming] Ever so delighted to see you, Mrs Warren. This quiet
+old rectory garden becomes you perfectly.
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, I never! Did you hear that, George? He says I look
+well in a quiet old rectory garden.
+
+REV. S. [still holding the gate for Crofts, who loafs through it,
+heavily bored] You look well everywhere, Mrs Warren.
+
+FRANK. Bravo, gov'nor! Now look here: lets have a treat before lunch.
+First lets see the church. Everyone has to do that. It's a regular old
+thirteenth century church, you know: the gov'nor's ever so fond of it,
+because he got up a restoration fund and had it completely rebuilt six
+years ago. Praed will be able to shew its points.
+
+PRAED [rising] Certainly, if the restoration has left any to shew.
+
+REV. S. [mooning hospitably at them] I shall be pleased, I'm sure, if
+Sir George and Mrs Warren really care about it.
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, come along and get it over.
+
+CROFTS [turning back toward the gate] I've no objection.
+
+REV. S. Not that way. We go through the fields, if you don't mind. Round
+here. [He leads the way by the little path through the box hedge].
+
+CROFTS. Oh, all right. [He goes with the parson].
+
+[Praed follows with Mrs Warren. Vivie does not stir: she watches them
+until they have gone, with all the lines of purpose in her face marking
+it strongly.]
+
+FRANK. Ain't you coming?
+
+VIVIE. No. I want to give you a warning, Frank. You were making fun of
+my mother just now when you said that about the rectory garden. That is
+barred in the future. Please treat my mother with as much respect as you
+treat your own.
+
+FRANK. My dear Viv: she wouldn't appreciate it: the two cases require
+different treatment. But what on earth has happened to you? Last night
+we were perfectly agreed as to your mother and her set. This morning I
+find you attitudinizing sentimentally with your arm around your parent's
+waist.
+
+VIVIE [flushing] Attitudinizing!
+
+FRANK. That was how it struck me. First time I ever saw you do a
+second-rate thing.
+
+VIVIE [controlling herself] Yes, Frank: there has been a change: but I
+don't think it a change for the worse. Yesterday I was a little prig.
+
+FRANK. And today?
+
+VIVIE [wincing; then looking at him steadily] Today I know my mother
+better than you do.
+
+FRANK. Heaven forbid!
+
+VIVIE. What do you mean?
+
+FRANK. Viv: theres a freemasonry among thoroughly immoral people that
+you know nothing of. You've too much character. _That's_ the bond
+between your mother and me: that's why I know her better than youll ever
+know her.
+
+VIVIE. You are wrong: you know nothing about her. If you knew the
+circumstances against which my mother had to struggle--
+
+FRANK [adroitly finishing the sentence for her] I should know why she is
+what she is, shouldn't I? What difference would that make?
+
+Circumstances or no circumstances, Viv, you won't be able to stand your
+mother.
+
+VIVIE [very angry] Why not?
+
+FRANK. Because she's an old wretch, Viv. If you ever put your arm around
+her waist in my presence again, I'll shoot myself there and then as a
+protest against an exhibition which revolts me.
+
+VIVIE. Must I choose between dropping your acquaintance and dropping my
+mother's?
+
+FRANK [gracefully] That would put the old lady at ever such a
+disadvantage. No, Viv: your infatuated little boy will have to stick to
+you in any case. But he's all the more anxious that you shouldn't make
+mistakes. It's no use, Viv: your mother's impossible. She may be a good
+sort; but she's a bad lot, a very bad lot.
+
+VIVIE [hotly] Frank--! [He stands his ground. She turns away and
+sits down on the bench under the yew tree, struggling to recover her
+self-command. Then she says] Is she to be deserted by the world because
+she's what you call a bad lot? Has she no right to live?
+
+FRANK. No fear of that, Viv: _she_ won't ever be deserted. [He sits on
+the bench beside her].
+
+VIVIE. But I am to desert her, I suppose.
+
+FRANK [babyishly, lulling her and making love to her with his voice]
+Mustn't go live with her. Little family group of mother and daughter
+wouldn't be a success. Spoil o u r little group.
+
+VIVIE [falling under the spell] What little group?
+
+FRANK. The babes in the wood: Vivie and little Frank. [He nestles
+against her like a weary child]. Lets go and get covered up with leaves.
+
+VIVIE [rhythmically, rocking him like a nurse] Fast asleep, hand in
+hand, under the trees.
+
+FRANK. The wise little girl with her silly little boy.
+
+VIVIE. The dear little boy with his dowdy little girl.
+
+FRANK. Ever so peaceful, and relieved from the imbecility of the little
+boy's father and the questionableness of the little girl's--
+
+VIVIE [smothering the word against her breast] Sh-sh-sh-sh! little girl
+wants to forget all about her mother. [They are silent for some moments,
+rocking one another. Then Vivie wakes up with a shock, exclaiming] What
+a pair of fools we are! Come: sit up. Gracious! your hair. [She smooths
+it]. I wonder do all grown up people play in that childish way when
+nobody is looking.
+
+I never did it when I was a child.
+
+FRANK. Neither did I. You are my first playmate. [He catches her hand to
+kiss it, but checks himself to look around first. Very unexpectedly, he
+sees Crofts emerging from the box hedge]. Oh damn!
+
+VIVIE. Why damn, dear?
+
+FRANK [whispering] Sh! Here's this brute Crofts. [He sits farther away
+from her with an unconcerned air].
+
+CROFTS. Could I have a few words with you, Miss Vivie?
+
+VIVIE. Certainly.
+
+CROFTS [to Frank] Youll excuse me, Gardner. Theyre waiting for you in
+the church, if you don't mind.
+
+FRANK [rising] Anything to oblige you, Crofts--except church. If you
+should happen to want me, Vivvums, ring the gate bell. [He goes into the
+house with unruffled suavity].
+
+CROFTS [watching him with a crafty air as he disappears, and speaking to
+Vivie with an assumption of being on privileged terms with her] Pleasant
+young fellow that, Miss Vivie. Pity he has no money, isn't it?
+
+VIVIE. Do you think so?
+
+CROFTS. Well, whats he to do? No profession. No property. Whats he good
+for?
+
+VIVIE. I realize his disadvantages, Sir George.
+
+CROFTS [a little taken aback at being so precisely interpreted] Oh, it's
+not that. But while we're in this world we're in it; and money's money.
+[Vivie does not answer]. Nice day, isn't it?
+
+VIVIE [with scarcely veiled contempt for this effort at conversation]
+Very.
+
+CROFTS [with brutal good humor, as if he liked her pluck] Well thats not
+what I came to say. [Sitting down beside her] Now listen, Miss Vivie.
+I'm quite aware that I'm not a young lady's man.
+
+VIVIE. Indeed, Sir George?
+
+CROFTS. No; and to tell you the honest truth I don't want to be either.
+But when I say a thing I mean it; and when I feel a sentiment I feel it
+in earnest; and what I value I pay hard money for. Thats the sort of man
+I am.
+
+VIVIE. It does you great credit, I'm sure.
+
+CROFTS. Oh, I don't mean to praise myself. I have my faults, Heaven
+knows: no man is more sensible of that than I am. I know I'm not
+perfect: thats one of the advantages of being a middle-aged man; for
+I'm not a young man, and I know it. But my code is a simple one, and, I
+think, a good one. Honor between man and man; fidelity between man and
+woman; and no can't about this religion or that religion, but an honest
+belief that things are making for good on the whole.
+
+VIVIE [with biting irony] "A power, not ourselves, that makes for
+righteousness," eh?
+
+CROFTS [taking her seriously] Oh certainly. Not ourselves, of course. Y
+o u understand what I mean. Well, now as to practical matters. You may
+have an idea that I've flung my money about; but I havn't: I'm richer
+today than when I first came into the property. I've used my knowledge of
+the world to invest my money in ways that other men have overlooked; and
+whatever else I may be, I'm a safe man from the money point of view.
+
+VIVIE. It's very kind of you to tell me all this.
+
+CROFTS. Oh well, come, Miss Vivie: you needn't pretend you don't see what
+I'm driving at. I want to settle down with a Lady Crofts. I suppose you
+think me very blunt, eh?
+
+VIVIE. Not at all: I am very much obliged to you for being so definite
+and business-like. I quite appreciate the offer: the money, the
+position, _Lady Crofts_, and so on. But I think I will say no, if you
+don't mind, I'd rather not. [She rises, and strolls across to the
+sundial to get out of his immediate neighborhood].
+
+CROFTS [not at all discouraged, and taking advantage of the additional
+room left him on the seat to spread himself comfortably, as if a few
+preliminary refusals were part of the inevitable routine of courtship]
+I'm in no hurry. It was only just to let you know in case young Gardner
+should try to trap you. Leave the question open.
+
+VIVIE [sharply] My no is final. I won't go back from it.
+
+[Crofts is not impressed. He grins; leans forward with his elbows on his
+knees to prod with his stick at some unfortunate insect in the grass;
+and looks cunningly at her. She turns away impatiently.]
+
+CROFTS. I'm a good deal older than you. Twenty-five years: quarter of
+a century. I shan't live for ever; and I'll take care that you shall be
+well off when I'm gone.
+
+VIVIE. I am proof against even that inducement, Sir George. Don't you
+think youd better take your answer? There is not the slightest chance of
+my altering it.
+
+CROFTS [rising, after a final slash at a daisy, and coming nearer to
+her] Well, no matter. I could tell you some things that would change
+your mind fast enough; but I wont, because I'd rather win you by honest
+affection. I was a good friend to your mother: ask her whether I wasn't.
+She'd never have make the money that paid for your education if it hadnt
+been for my advice and help, not to mention the money I advanced her.
+There are not many men who would have stood by her as I have. I put not
+less than forty thousand pounds into it, from first to last.
+
+VIVIE [staring at him] Do you mean to say that you were my mother's
+business partner?
+
+CROFTS. Yes. Now just think of all the trouble and the explanations
+it would save if we were to keep the whole thing in the family, so to
+speak. Ask your mother whether she'd like to have to explain all her
+affairs to a perfect stranger.
+
+VIVIE. I see no difficulty, since I understand that the business is
+wound up, and the money invested.
+
+CROFTS [stopping short, amazed] Wound up! Wind up a business thats
+paying 35 per cent in the worst years! Not likely. Who told you that?
+
+VIVIE [her color quite gone] Do you mean that it is still--? [She stops
+abruptly, and puts her hand on the sundial to support herself. Then she
+gets quickly to the iron chair and sits down].
+
+What business are you talking about?
+
+CROFTS. Well, the fact is it's not what would considered exactly a
+high-class business in my set--the country set, you know--o u r set it
+will be if you think better of my offer. Not that theres any mystery
+about it: don't think that. Of course you know by your mother's being
+in it that it's perfectly straight and honest. I've known her for many
+years; and I can say of her that she'd cut off her hands sooner than
+touch anything that was not what it ought to be. I'll tell you all about
+it if you like. I don't know whether you've found in travelling how hard
+it is to find a really comfortable private hotel.
+
+VIVIE [sickened, averting her face] Yes: go on.
+
+CROFTS. Well, thats all it is. Your mother has got a genius for managing
+such things. We've got two in Brussels, one in Ostend, one in Vienna,
+and two in Budapest. Of course there are others besides ourselves in
+it; but we hold most of the capital; and your mother's indispensable
+as managing director. You've noticed, I daresay, that she travels a good
+deal. But you see you can't mention such things in society. Once let out
+the word hotel and everybody thinks you keep a public-house. You wouldn't
+like people to say that of your mother, would you? Thats why we're so
+reserved about it. By the way, youll keep it to yourself, won't you?
+Since it's been a secret so long, it had better remain so.
+
+VIVIE. And this is the business you invite me to join you in?
+
+CROFTS. Oh no. My wife shan't be troubled with business. Youll not be in
+it more than you've always been.
+
+VIVIE. _I_ always been! What do you mean?
+
+CROFTS. Only that you've always lived on it. It paid for your education
+and the dress you have on your back. Don't turn up your nose at business,
+Miss Vivie: where would your Newnhams and Girtons be without it?
+
+VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself] Take care. I know what this
+business is.
+
+CROFTS [starting, with a suppressed oath] Who told you?
+
+VIVIE. Your partner. My mother.
+
+CROFTS [black with rage] The old--
+
+VIVIE. Just so.
+
+[He swallows the epithet and stands for a moment swearing and raging
+foully to himself. But he knows that his cue is to be sympathetic. He
+takes refuge in generous indignation.]
+
+CROFTS. She ought to have had more consideration for you. _I'd_ never
+have told you.
+
+VIVIE. I think you would probably have told me when we were married: it
+would have been a convenient weapon to break me in with.
+
+CROFTS [quite sincerely] I never intended that. On my word as a
+gentleman I didn't.
+
+[Vivie wonders at him. Her sense of the irony of his protest cools and
+braces her. She replies with contemptuous self-possession.]
+
+VIVIE. It does not matter. I suppose you understand that when we leave
+here today our acquaintance ceases.
+
+CROFTS. Why? Is it for helping your mother?
+
+VIVIE. My mother was a very poor woman who had no reasonable choice but
+to do as she did. You were a rich gentleman; and you did the same for
+the sake of 35 per cent. You are a pretty common sort of scoundrel, I
+think. That is my opinion of you.
+
+CROFTS [after a stare: not at all displeased, and much more at his ease
+on these frank terms than on their former ceremonious ones] Ha! ha! ha!
+ha! Go it, little missie, go it: it doesn't hurt me and it amuses you.
+Why the devil shouldn't I invest my money that way? I take the interest
+on my capital like other people: I hope you don't think I dirty my own
+hands with the work.
+
+Come! you wouldn't refuse the acquaintance of my mother's cousin the Duke
+of Belgravia because some of the rents he gets are earned in queer ways.
+You wouldn't cut the Archbishop of Canterbury, I suppose, because the
+Ecclesiastical Commissioners have a few publicans and sinners among
+their tenants. Do you remember your Crofts scholarship at Newnham? Well,
+that was founded by my brother the M.P. He gets his 22 per cent out of
+a factory with 600 girls in it, and not one of them getting wages enough
+to live on. How d'ye suppose they manage when they have no family to
+fall back on? Ask your mother. And do you expect me to turn my back on
+35 per cent when all the rest are pocketing what they can, like sensible
+men? No such fool! If youre going to pick and choose your acquaintances
+on moral principles, youd better clear out of this country, unless you
+want to cut yourself out of all decent society.
+
+VIVIE [conscience stricken] You might go on to point out that I myself
+never asked where the money I spent came from. I believe I am just as
+bad as you.
+
+CROFTS [greatly reassured] Of course you are; and a very good thing too!
+What harm does it do after all? [Rallying her jocularly] So you don't
+think me such a scoundrel now you come to think it over. Eh?
+
+VIVIE. I have shared profits with you: and I admitted you just now to
+the familiarity of knowing what I think of you.
+
+CROFTS [with serious friendliness] To be sure you did. You won't find
+me a bad sort: I don't go in for being superfine intellectually; but Ive
+plenty of honest human feeling; and the old Crofts breed comes out in
+a sort of instinctive hatred of anything low, in which I'm sure youll
+sympathize with me. Believe me, Miss Vivie, the world isn't such a bad
+place as the croakers make out. As long as you don't fly openly in the
+face of society, society doesn't ask any inconvenient questions; and
+it makes precious short work of the cads who do. There are no secrets
+better kept than the secrets everybody guesses. In the class of people
+I can introduce you to, no lady or gentleman would so far forget
+themselves as to discuss my business affairs or your mothers. No man can
+offer you a safer position.
+
+VIVIE [studying him curiously] I suppose you really think youre getting
+on famously with me.
+
+CROFTS. Well, I hope I may flatter myself that you think better of me
+than you did at first.
+
+VIVIE [quietly] I hardly find you worth thinking about at all now. When
+I think of the society that tolerates you, and the laws that protect
+you! when I think of how helpless nine out of ten young girls would
+be in the hands of you and my mother! the unmentionable woman and her
+capitalist bully--
+
+CROFTS [livid] Damn you!
+
+VIVIE. You need not. I feel among the damned already.
+
+[She raises the latch of the gate to open it and go out. He follows her
+and puts his hand heavily on the top bar to prevent its opening.]
+
+CROFTS [panting with fury] Do you think I'll put up with this from you,
+you young devil?
+
+VIVIE [unmoved] Be quiet. Some one will answer the bell. [Without
+flinching a step she strikes the bell with the back of her hand. It
+clangs harshly; and he starts back involuntarily. Almost immediately
+Frank appears at the porch with his rifle].
+
+FRANK [with cheerful politeness] Will you have the rifle, Viv; or shall
+I operate?
+
+VIVIE. Frank: have you been listening?
+
+FRANK [coming down into the garden] Only for the bell, I assure you; so
+that you shouldn't have to wait. I think I shewed great insight into your
+character, Crofts.
+
+CROFTS. For two pins I'd take that gun from you and break it across your
+head.
+
+FRANK [stalking him cautiously] Pray don't. I'm ever so careless in
+handling firearms. Sure to be a fatal accident, with a reprimand from
+the coroner's jury for my negligence.
+
+VIVIE. Put the rifle away, Frank: it's quite unnecessary.
+
+FRANK. Quite right, Viv. Much more sportsmanlike to catch him in a
+trap. [Crofts, understanding the insult, makes a threatening movement].
+Crofts: there are fifteen cartridges in the magazine here; and I am a
+dead shot at the present distance and at an object of your size.
+
+CROFTS. Oh, you needn't be afraid. I'm not going to touch you.
+
+FRANK. Ever so magnanimous of you under the circumstances! Thank you.
+
+CROFTS. I'll just tell you this before I go. It may interest you, since
+youre so fond of one another. Allow me, Mister Frank, to introduce you
+to your half-sister, the eldest daughter of the Reverend Samuel Gardner.
+Miss Vivie: you half-brother. Good morning! [He goes out through the
+gate and along the road].
+
+FRANK [after a pause of stupefaction, raising the rifle] Youll testify
+before the coroner that it's an accident, Viv. [He takes aim at the
+retreating figure of Crofts. Vivie seizes the muzzle and pulls it round
+against her breast].
+
+VIVIE. Fire now. You may.
+
+FRANK [dropping his end of the rifle hastily] Stop! take care. [She lets
+it go. It falls on the turf]. Oh, you've given your little boy such
+a turn. Suppose it had gone off! ugh! [He sinks on the garden seat,
+overcome].
+
+VIVIE. Suppose it had: do you think it would not have been a relief to
+have some sharp physical pain tearing through me?
+
+FRANK [coaxingly] Take it ever so easy, dear Viv. Remember: even if the
+rifle scared that fellow into telling the truth for the first time in
+his life, that only makes us the babes in the woods in earnest. [He
+holds out his arms to her]. Come and be covered up with leaves again.
+
+VIVIE [with a cry of disgust] Ah, not that, not that. You make all my
+flesh creep.
+
+FRANK. Why, whats the matter?
+
+VIVIE. Goodbye. [She makes for the gate].
+
+FRANK [jumping up] Hallo! Stop! Viv! Viv! [She turns in the gateway]
+Where are you going to? Where shall we find you?
+
+VIVIE. At Honoria Fraser's chambers, 67 Chancery Lane, for the rest of
+my life. [She goes off quickly in the opposite direction to that taken
+by Crofts].
+
+FRANK. But I say--wait--dash it! [He runs after her].
+
+
+
+
+ACT IV
+
+
+[Honoria Fraser's chambers in Chancery Lane. An office at the top of New
+Stone Buildings, with a plate-glass window, distempered walls, electric
+light, and a patent stove. Saturday afternoon. The chimneys of Lincoln's
+Inn and the western sky beyond are seen through the window. There is a
+double writing table in the middle of the room, with a cigar box, ash
+pans, and a portable electric reading lamp almost snowed up in heaps of
+papers and books. This table has knee holes and chairs right and left
+and is very untidy. The clerk's desk, closed and tidy, with its high
+stool, is against the wall, near a door communicating with the inner
+rooms. In the opposite wall is the door leading to the public corridor.
+Its upper panel is of opaque glass, lettered in black on the outside,
+FRASER AND WARREN. A baize screen hides the corner between this door and
+the window.]
+
+[Frank, in a fashionable light-colored coaching suit, with his stick,
+gloves, and white hat in his hands, is pacing up and down in the office.
+Somebody tries the door with a key.]
+
+FRANK [calling] Come in. It's not locked.
+
+[Vivie comes in, in her hat and jacket. She stops and stares at him.]
+
+VIVIE [sternly] What are you doing here?
+
+FRANK. Waiting to see you. I've been here for hours. Is this the way you
+attend to your business? [He puts his hat and stick on the table, and
+perches himself with a vault on the clerk's stool, looking at her with
+every appearance of being in a specially restless, teasing, flippant
+mood].
+
+VIVIE. I've been away exactly twenty minutes for a cup of tea. [She takes
+off her hat and jacket and hangs them behind the screen]. How did you
+get in?
+
+FRANK. The staff had not left when I arrived. He's gone to play cricket
+on Primrose Hill. Why don't you employ a woman, and give your sex a
+chance?
+
+VIVIE. What have you come for?
+
+FRANK [springing off the stool and coming close to her] Viv: lets go and
+enjoy the Saturday half-holiday somewhere, like the staff.
+
+What do you say to Richmond, and then a music hall, and a jolly supper?
+
+VIVIE. Can't afford it. I shall put in another six hours work before I go
+to bed.
+
+FRANK. Can't afford it, can't we? Aha! Look here. [He takes out a handful
+of sovereigns and makes them chink]. Gold, Viv: gold!
+
+VIVIE. Where did you get it?
+
+FRANK. Gambling, Viv: gambling. Poker.
+
+VIVIE. Pah! It's meaner than stealing it. No: I'm not coming. [She sits
+down to work at the table, with her back to the glass door, and begins
+turning over the papers].
+
+FRANK [remonstrating piteously] But, my dear Viv, I want to talk to you
+ever so seriously.
+
+VIVIE. Very well: sit down in Honoria's chair and talk here. I like ten
+minutes chat after tea. [He murmurs]. No use groaning: I'm inexorable.
+[He takes the opposite seat disconsolately]. Pass that cigar box, will
+you?
+
+FRANK [pushing the cigar box across] Nasty womanly habit. Nice men don't
+do it any longer.
+
+VIVIE. Yes: they object to the smell in the office; and we've had to take
+to cigarets. See! [She opens the box and takes out a cigaret, which she
+lights. She offers him one; but he shakes his head with a wry face. She
+settles herself comfortably in her chair, smoking]. Go ahead.
+
+FRANK. Well, I want to know what you've done--what arrangements you've
+made.
+
+VIVIE. Everything was settled twenty minutes after I arrived here.
+Honoria has found the business too much for her this year; and she was
+on the point of sending for me and proposing a partnership when I walked
+in and told her I hadn't a farthing in the world. So I installed myself
+and packed her off for a fortnight's holiday. What happened at Haslemere
+when I left?
+
+FRANK. Nothing at all. I said youd gone to town on particular business.
+
+VIVIE. Well?
+
+FRANK. Well, either they were too flabbergasted to say anything, or else
+Crofts had prepared your mother. Anyhow, she didn't say anything; and
+Crofts didn't say anything; and Praddy only stared. After tea they got up
+and went; and I've not seen them since.
+
+VIVIE [nodding placidly with one eye on a wreath of smoke] Thats all
+right.
+
+FRANK [looking round disparagingly] Do you intend to stick in this
+confounded place?
+
+VIVIE [blowing the wreath decisively away, and sitting straight up] Yes.
+These two days have given me back all my strength and self-possession. I
+will never take a holiday again as long as I live.
+
+FRANK [with a very wry face] Mps! You look quite happy. And as hard as
+nails.
+
+VIVIE [grimly] Well for me that I am!
+
+FRANK [rising] Look here, Viv: we must have an explanation. We parted
+the other day under a complete misunderstanding. [He sits on the table,
+close to her].
+
+VIVIE [putting away the cigaret] Well: clear it up.
+
+FRANK. You remember what Crofts said.
+
+VIVIE. Yes.
+
+FRANK. That revelation was supposed to bring about a complete change in
+the nature of our feeling for one another. It placed us on the footing
+of brother and sister.
+
+VIVIE. Yes.
+
+FRANK. Have you ever had a brother?
+
+VIVIE. No.
+
+FRANK. Then you don't know what being brother and sister feels like? Now
+I have lots of sisters; and the fraternal feeling is quite familiar to
+me. I assure you my feeling for you is not the least in the world like
+it. The girls will go _their_ way; I will go mine; and we shan't care
+if we never see one another again. Thats brother and sister. But as to
+you, I can't be easy if I have to pass a week without seeing you. Thats
+not brother and sister. Its exactly what I felt an hour before Crofts
+made his revelation. In short, dear Viv, it's love's young dream.
+
+VIVIE [bitingly] The same feeling, Frank, that brought your father to my
+mother's feet. Is that it?
+
+FRANK [so revolted that he slips off the table for a moment] I very
+strongly object, Viv, to have my feelings compared to any which the
+Reverend Samuel is capable of harboring; and I object still more to a
+comparison of you to your mother. [Resuming his perch] Besides, I don't
+believe the story. I have taxed my father with it, and obtained from him
+what I consider tantamount to a denial.
+
+VIVIE. What did he say?
+
+FRANK. He said he was sure there must be some mistake.
+
+VIVIE. Do you believe him?
+
+FRANK. I am prepared to take his word against Crofts'.
+
+VIVIE. Does it make any difference? I mean in your imagination or
+conscience; for of course it makes no real difference.
+
+FRANK [shaking his head] None whatever to _me_.
+
+VIVIE. Nor to me.
+
+FRANK [staring] But this is ever so surprising! [He goes back to his
+chair]. I thought our whole relations were altered in your imagination
+and conscience, as you put it, the moment those words were out of that
+brute's muzzle.
+
+VIVIE. No: it was not that. I didn't believe him. I only wish I could.
+
+FRANK. Eh?
+
+VIVIE. I think brother and sister would be a very suitable relation for
+us.
+
+FRANK. You really mean that?
+
+VIVIE. Yes. It's the only relation I care for, even if we could afford
+any other. I mean that.
+
+FRANK [raising his eyebrows like one on whom a new light has dawned, and
+rising with quite an effusion of chivalrous sentiment] My dear Viv:
+why didn't you say so before? I am ever so sorry for persecuting you. I
+understand, of course.
+
+VIVIE [puzzled] Understand what?
+
+FRANK. Oh, I'm not a fool in the ordinary sense: only in the Scriptural
+sense of doing all the things the wise man declared to be folly, after
+trying them himself on the most extensive scale. I see I am no longer
+Vivvums's little boy. Don't be alarmed: I shall never call you Vivvums
+again--at least unless you get tired of your new little boy, whoever he
+may be.
+
+VIVIE. My new little boy!
+
+FRANK [with conviction] Must be a new little boy. Always happens that
+way. No other way, in fact.
+
+VIVIE. None that you know of, fortunately for you.
+
+[Someone knocks at the door.]
+
+FRANK. My curse upon yon caller, whoe'er he be!
+
+VIVIE. It's Praed. He's going to Italy and wants to say goodbye. I asked
+him to call this afternoon. Go and let him in.
+
+FRANK. We can continue our conversation after his departure for Italy.
+I'll stay him out. [He goes to the door and opens it]. How are you,
+Praddy? Delighted to see you. Come in.
+
+[Praed, dressed for travelling, comes in, in high spirits.]
+
+PRAED. How do you do, Miss Warren? [She presses his hand cordially,
+though a certain sentimentality in his high spirits jars upon her]. I
+start in an hour from Holborn Viaduct. I wish I could persuade you to
+try Italy.
+
+VIVIE. What for?
+
+PRAED. Why, to saturate yourself with beauty and romance, of course.
+
+[Vivie, with a shudder, turns her chair to the table, as if the work
+waiting for her there were a support to her. Praed sits opposite to her.
+Frank places a chair near Vivie, and drops lazily and carelessly into
+it, talking at her over his shoulder.]
+
+FRANK. No use, Praddy. Viv is a little Philistine. She is indifferent to
+_my_ romance, and insensible to _my_ beauty.
+
+VIVIE. Mr Praed: once for all, there is no beauty and no romance in life
+for me. Life is what it is; and I am prepared to take it as it is.
+
+PRAED [enthusiastically] You will not say that if you come with me to
+Verona and on to Venice. You will cry with delight at living in such a
+beautiful world.
+
+FRANK. This is most eloquent, Praddy. Keep it up.
+
+PRAED. Oh, I assure you _I_ have cried--I shall cry again, I hope--at
+fifty! At your age, Miss Warren, you would not need to go so far as
+Verona. Your spirits would absolutely fly up at the mere sight of
+Ostend. You would be charmed with the gaiety, the vivacity, the happy
+air of Brussels.
+
+VIVIE [springing up with an exclamation of loathing] Agh!
+
+PRAED [rising] Whats the matter?
+
+FRANK [rising] Hallo, Viv!
+
+VIVIE [to Praed, with deep reproach] Can you find no better example of
+your beauty and romance than Brussels to talk to me about?
+
+PRAED [puzzled] Of course it's very different from Verona. I don't
+suggest for a moment that--
+
+VIVIE [bitterly] Probably the beauty and romance come to much the same
+in both places.
+
+PRAED [completely sobered and much concerned] My dear Miss Warren:
+I--[looking enquiringly at Frank] Is anything the matter?
+
+FRANK. She thinks your enthusiasm frivolous, Praddy. She's had ever such
+a serious call.
+
+VIVIE [sharply] Hold your tongue, Frank. Don't be silly.
+
+FRANK [sitting down] Do you call this good manners, Praed?
+
+PRAED [anxious and considerate] Shall I take him away, Miss Warren? I
+feel sure we have disturbed you at your work.
+
+VIVIE. Sit down: I'm not ready to go back to work yet. [Praed sits]. You
+both think I have an attack of nerves. Not a bit of it. But there are
+two subjects I want dropped, if you don't mind.
+
+One of them [to Frank] is love's young dream in any shape or form: the
+other [to Praed] is the romance and beauty of life, especially Ostend
+and the gaiety of Brussels. You are welcome to any illusions you may
+have left on these subjects: I have none. If we three are to remain
+friends, I must be treated as a woman of business, permanently single
+[to Frank] and permanently unromantic [to Praed].
+
+FRANK. I also shall remain permanently single until you change your
+mind. Praddy: change the subject. Be eloquent about something else.
+
+PRAED [diffidently] I'm afraid theres nothing else in the world that I
+_can_ talk about. The Gospel of Art is the only one I can preach. I know
+Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On; but we
+can't discuss that without hurting your feelings, Frank, since you are
+determined not to get on.
+
+FRANK. Oh, don't mind my feelings. Give me some improving advice by
+all means: it does me ever so much good. Have another try to make a
+successful man of me, Viv. Come: lets have it all: energy, thrift,
+foresight, self-respect, character. Don't you hate people who have no
+character, Viv?
+
+VIVIE [wincing] Oh, stop, stop. Let us have no more of that horrible
+cant. Mr Praed: if there are really only those two gospels in the world,
+we had better all kill ourselves; for the same taint is in both, through
+and through.
+
+FRANK [looking critically at her] There is a touch of poetry about you
+today, Viv, which has hitherto been lacking.
+
+PRAED [remonstrating] My dear Frank: aren't you a little unsympathetic?
+
+VIVIE [merciless to herself] No: it's good for me. It keeps me from
+being sentimental.
+
+FRANK [bantering her] Checks your strong natural propensity that way,
+don't it?
+
+VIVIE [almost hysterically] Oh yes: go on: don't spare me. I was
+sentimental for one moment in my life--beautifully sentimental--by
+moonlight; and now--
+
+FRANK [quickly] I say, Viv: take care. Don't give yourself away.
+
+VIVIE. Oh, do you think Mr Praed does not know all about my mother?
+[Turning on Praed] You had better have told me that morning, Mr Praed.
+You are very old fashioned in your delicacies, after all.
+
+PRAED. Surely it is you who are a little old fashioned in your
+prejudices, Miss Warren. I feel bound to tell you, speaking as an
+artist, and believing that the most intimate human relationships are
+far beyond and above the scope of the law, that though I know that your
+mother is an unmarried woman, I do not respect her the less on that
+account. I respect her more.
+
+FRANK [airily] Hear! hear!
+
+VIVIE [staring at him] Is that _all_ you know?
+
+PRAED. Certainly that is all.
+
+VIVIE. Then you neither of you know anything. Your guesses are innocence
+itself compared with the truth.
+
+PRAED [rising, startled and indignant, and preserving his politeness
+with an effort] I hope not. [More emphatically] I hope not, Miss Warren.
+
+FRANK [whistles] Whew!
+
+VIVIE. You are not making it easy for me to tell you, Mr Praed.
+
+PRAED [his chivalry drooping before their conviction] If there is
+anything worse--that is, anything else--are you sure you are right to
+tell us, Miss Warren?
+
+VIVIE. I am sure that if I had the courage I should spend the rest of my
+life in telling everybody--stamping and branding it into them until they
+all felt their part in its abomination as I feel mine. There is nothing
+I despise more than the wicked convention that protects these things
+by forbidding a woman to mention them. And yet I can't tell you. The two
+infamous words that describe what my mother is are ringing in my ears
+and struggling on my tongue; but I can't utter them: the shame of them
+is too horrible for me. [She buries her face in her hands. The two men,
+astonished, stare at one another and then at her. She raises her head
+again desperately and snatches a sheet of paper and a pen]. Here: let me
+draft you a prospectus.
+
+FRANK. Oh, she's mad. Do you hear, Viv? mad. Come! pull yourself
+together.
+
+VIVIE. You shall see. [She writes]. "Paid up capital: not less than
+forty thousand pounds standing in the name of Sir George Crofts,
+Baronet, the chief shareholder. Premises at Brussels, Ostend, Vienna,
+and Budapest. Managing director: Mrs Warren"; and now don't let us forget
+h e r qualifications: the two words. [She writes the words and pushes
+the paper to them]. There! Oh no: don't read it: don't! [She snatches it
+back and tears it to pieces; then seizes her head in her hands and hides
+her face on the table].
+
+[Frank, who has watched the writing over her shoulder, and opened his
+eyes very widely at it, takes a card from his pocket; scribbles the
+two words on it; and silently hands it to Praed, who reads it with
+amazement, and hides it hastily in his pocket.]
+
+FRANK [whispering tenderly] Viv, dear: thats all right. I read what you
+wrote: so did Praddy. We understand. And we remain, as this leaves us at
+present, yours ever so devotedly.
+
+PRAED. We do indeed, Miss Warren. I declare you are the most splendidly
+courageous woman I ever met.
+
+[This sentimental compliment braces Vivie. She throws it away from her
+with an impatient shake, and forces herself to stand up, though not
+without some support from the table.]
+
+FRANK. Don't stir, Viv, if you don't want to. Take it easy.
+
+VIVIE. Thank you. You an always depend on me for two things: not to cry
+and not to faint. [She moves a few steps towards the door of the inner
+room, and stops close to Praed to say] I shall need much more courage
+than that when I tell my mother that we have come to a parting of the
+ways. Now I must go into the next room for a moment to make myself neat
+again, if you don't mind.
+
+PRAED. Shall we go away?
+
+VIVIE. No: I'll be back presently. Only for a moment. [She goes into the
+other room, Praed opening the door for her].
+
+PRAED. What an amazing revelation! I'm extremely disappointed in Crofts:
+I am indeed.
+
+FRANK. I'm not in the least. I feel he's perfectly accounted for at
+last. But what a facer for me, Praddy! I can't marry her now.
+
+PRAED [sternly] Frank! [The two look at one another, Frank unruffled,
+Praed deeply indignant]. Let me tell you, Gardner, that if you desert
+her now you will behave very despicably.
+
+FRANK. Good old Praddy! Ever chivalrous! But you mistake: it's not the
+moral aspect of the case: it's the money aspect. I really can't bring
+myself to touch the old woman's money now.
+
+PRAED. And was that what you were going to marry on?
+
+FRANK. What else? _I_ havn't any money, nor the smallest turn for making
+it. If I married Viv now she would have to support me; and I should cost
+her more than I am worth.
+
+PRAED. But surely a clever bright fellow like you can make something by
+your own brains.
+
+FRANK. Oh yes, a little. [He takes out his money again]. I made all that
+yesterday in an hour and a half. But I made it in a highly speculative
+business. No, dear Praddy: even if Bessie and Georgina marry
+millionaires and the governor dies after cutting them off with a
+shilling, I shall have only four hundred a year. And he won't die until
+he's three score and ten: he hasn't originality enough. I shall be on
+short allowance for the next twenty years. No short allowance for Viv,
+if I can help it. I withdraw gracefully and leave the field to the
+gilded youth of England. So that settled. I shan't worry her about it:
+I'll just send her a little note after we're gone. She'll understand.
+
+PRAED [grasping his hand] Good fellow, Frank! I heartily beg your
+pardon. But must you never see her again?
+
+FRANK. Never see her again! Hang it all, be reasonable. I shall come
+along as often as possible, and be her brother. I can _not_ understand
+the absurd consequences you romantic people expect from the most
+ordinary transactions. [A knock at the door]. I wonder who this is.
+Would you mind opening the door? If it's a client it will look more
+respectable than if I appeared.
+
+PRAED. Certainly. [He goes to the door and opens it. Frank sits down in
+Vivie's chair to scribble a note]. My dear Kitty: come in: come in.
+
+[Mrs Warren comes in, looking apprehensively around for Vivie. She has
+done her best to make herself matronly and dignified. The brilliant hat
+is replaced by a sober bonnet, and the gay blouse covered by a costly
+black silk mantle. She is pitiably anxious and ill at ease: evidently
+panic-stricken.]
+
+MRS WARREN [to Frank] What! Y o u r e here, are you?
+
+FRANK [turning in his chair from his writing, but not rising] Here, and
+charmed to see you. You come like a breath of spring.
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, get out with your nonsense. [In a low voice] Where's
+Vivie?
+
+[Frank points expressively to the door of the inner room, but says
+nothing.]
+
+MRS WARREN [sitting down suddenly and almost beginning to cry] Praddy:
+won't she see me, don't you think?
+
+PRAED. My dear Kitty: don't distress yourself. Why should she not?
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, you never can see why not: youre too innocent. Mr Frank:
+did she say anything to you?
+
+FRANK [folding his note] She _must_ see you, if [very expressively] you
+wait til she comes in.
+
+MRS WARREN [frightened] Why shouldn't I wait?
+
+[Frank looks quizzically at her; puts his note carefully on the
+ink-bottle, so that Vivie cannot fail to find it when next she dips her
+pen; then rises and devotes his attention entirely to her.]
+
+FRANK. My dear Mrs Warren: suppose you were a sparrow--ever so tiny
+and pretty a sparrow hopping in the roadway--and you saw a steam roller
+coming in your direction, would you wait for it?
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, don't bother me with your sparrows. What did she run away
+from Haslemere like that for?
+
+FRANK. I'm afraid she'll tell you if you rashly await her return.
+
+MRS WARREN. Do you want me to go away?
+
+FRANK. No: I always want you to stay. But I _advise_ you to go away.
+
+MRS WARREN. What! And never see her again!
+
+FRANK. Precisely.
+
+MRS WARREN [crying again] Praddy: don't let him be cruel to me. [She
+hastily checks her tears and wipes her eyes]. She'll be so angry if she
+sees I've been crying.
+
+FRANK [with a touch of real compassion in his airy tenderness] You know
+that Praddy is the soul of kindness, Mrs Warren. Praddy: what do you
+say? Go or stay?
+
+PRAED [to Mrs Warren] I really should be very sorry to cause you
+unnecessary pain; but I think perhaps you had better not wait. The fact
+is--[Vivie is heard at the inner door].
+
+FRANK. Sh! Too late. She's coming.
+
+MRS WARREN. Don't tell her I was crying. [Vivie comes in. She
+stops gravely on seeing Mrs Warren, who greets her with hysterical
+cheerfulness]. Well, dearie. So here you are at last.
+
+VIVIE. I am glad you have come: I want to speak to you. You said you
+were going, Frank, I think.
+
+FRANK. Yes. Will you come with me, Mrs Warren? What do you say to a
+trip to Richmond, and the theatre in the evening? There is safety in
+Richmond. No steam roller there.
+
+VIVIE. Nonsense, Frank. My mother will stay here.
+
+MRS WARREN [scared] I don't know: perhaps I'd better go. We're disturbing
+you at your work.
+
+VIVIE [with quiet decision] Mr Praed: please take Frank away. Sit down,
+mother. [Mrs Warren obeys helplessly].
+
+PRAED. Come, Frank. Goodbye, Miss Vivie.
+
+VIVIE [shaking hands] Goodbye. A pleasant trip.
+
+PRAED. Thank you: thank you. I hope so.
+
+FRANK [to Mrs Warren] Goodbye: youd ever so much better have taken my
+advice. [He shakes hands with her. Then airily to Vivie] Byebye, Viv.
+
+VIVIE. Goodbye. [He goes out gaily without shaking hands with her].
+
+PRAED [sadly] Goodbye, Kitty.
+
+MRS WARREN [snivelling]--oobye!
+
+[Praed goes. Vivie, composed and extremely grave, sits down in Honoria's
+chair, and waits for her mother to speak. Mrs Warren, dreading a pause,
+loses no time in beginning.]
+
+MRS WARREN. Well, Vivie, what did you go away like that for without
+saying a word to me! How could you do such a thing! And what have you
+done to poor George? I wanted him to come with me; but he shuffled
+out of it. I could see that he was quite afraid of you. Only fancy:
+he wanted me not to come. As if [trembling] I should be afraid of you,
+dearie. [Vivie's gravity deepens]. But of course I told him it was all
+settled and comfortable between us, and that we were on the best
+of terms. [She breaks down]. Vivie: whats the meaning of this? [She
+produces a commercial envelope, and fumbles at the enclosure with
+trembling fingers]. I got it from the bank this morning.
+
+VIVIE. It is my month's allowance. They sent it to me as usual the other
+day. I simply sent it back to be placed to your credit, and asked them
+to send you the lodgment receipt. In future I shall support myself.
+
+MRS WARREN [not daring to understand] Wasn't it enough? Why didn't
+you tell me? [With a cunning gleam in her eye] I'll double it: I was
+intending to double it. Only let me know how much you want.
+
+VIVIE. You know very well that that has nothing to do with it. From this
+time I go my own way in my own business and among my own friends. And
+you will go yours. [She rises]. Goodbye.
+
+MRS WARREN [rising, appalled] Goodbye?
+
+VIVIE. Yes: goodbye. Come: don't let us make a useless scene: you
+understand perfectly well. Sir George Crofts has told me the whole
+business.
+
+MRS WARREN [angrily] Silly old--[She swallows an epithet, and then turns
+white at the narrowness of her escape from uttering it].
+
+VIVIE. Just so.
+
+MRS WARREN. He ought to have his tongue cut out. But I thought it was
+ended: you said you didn't mind.
+
+VIVIE [steadfastly] Excuse me: I _do_ mind.
+
+MRS WARREN. But I explained--
+
+VIVIE. You explained how it came about. You did not tell me that it is
+still going on [She sits].
+
+[Mrs Warren, silenced for a moment, looks forlornly at Vivie, who waits,
+secretly hoping that the combat is over. But the cunning expression
+comes back into Mrs Warren's face; and she bends across the table, sly
+and urgent, half whispering.]
+
+MRS WARREN. Vivie: do you know how rich I am?
+
+VIVIE. I have no doubt you are very rich.
+
+MRS WARREN. But you don't know all that that means; youre too young. It
+means a new dress every day; it means theatres and balls every night;
+it means having the pick of all the gentlemen in Europe at your feet;
+it means a lovely house and plenty of servants; it means the choicest of
+eating and drinking; it means everything you like, everything you want,
+everything you can think of. And what are you here? A mere drudge,
+toiling and moiling early and late for your bare living and two cheap
+dresses a year. Think over it. [Soothingly] Youre shocked, I know. I can
+enter into your feelings; and I think they do you credit; but trust me,
+nobody will blame you: you may take my word for that. I know what young
+girls are; and I know youll think better of it when you've turned it over
+in your mind.
+
+VIVIE. So that's how it is done, is it? You must have said all that to
+many a woman, to have it so pat.
+
+MRS WARREN [passionately] What harm am I asking you to do? [Vivie turns
+away contemptuously. Mrs Warren continues desperately] Vivie: listen to
+me: you don't understand: you were taught wrong on purpose: you don't know
+what the world is really like.
+
+VIVIE [arrested] Taught wrong on purpose! What do you mean?
+
+MRS WARREN. I mean that youre throwing away all your chances for
+nothing. You think that people are what they pretend to be: that the way
+you were taught at school and college to think right and proper is the
+way things really are. But it's not: it's all only a pretence, to keep
+the cowardly slavish common run of people quiet. Do you want to find
+that out, like other women, at forty, when you've thrown yourself away
+and lost your chances; or won't you take it in good time now from your
+own mother, that loves you and swears to you that it's truth: gospel
+truth? [Urgently] Vivie: the big people, the clever people, the managing
+people, all know it. They do as I do, and think what I think. I know
+plenty of them. I know them to speak to, to introduce you to, to make
+friends of for you. I don't mean anything wrong: thats what you don't
+understand: your head is full of ignorant ideas about me. What do the
+people that taught you know about life or about people like me? When did
+they ever meet me, or speak to me, or let anyone tell them about me? the
+fools! Would they ever have done anything for you if I hadn't paid them?
+Havn't I told you that I want you to be respectable? Havn't I brought you
+up to be respectable? And how can you keep it up without my money and my
+influence and Lizzie's friends? Can't you see that youre cutting your own
+throat as well as breaking my heart in turning your back on me?
+
+VIVIE. I recognize the Crofts philosophy of life, mother. I heard it all
+from him that day at the Gardners'.
+
+MRS WARREN. You think I want to force that played-out old sot on you! I
+don't, Vivie: on my oath I don't.
+
+VIVIE. It would not matter if you did: you would not succeed. [Mrs
+Warren winces, deeply hurt by the implied indifference towards her
+affectionate intention. Vivie, neither understanding this nor concerning
+herself about it, goes on calmly] Mother: you don't at all know the sort
+of person I am. I don't object to Crofts more than to any other coarsely
+built man of his class. To tell you the truth, I rather admire him
+for being strongminded enough to enjoy himself in his own way and
+make plenty of money instead of living the usual shooting, hunting,
+dining-out, tailoring, loafing life of his set merely because all
+the rest do it. And I'm perfectly aware that if I'd been in the same
+circumstances as my aunt Liz, I'd have done exactly what she did.
+
+I don't think I'm more prejudiced or straitlaced than you: I think
+I'm less. I'm certain I'm less sentimental. I know very well that
+fashionable morality is all a pretence, and that if I took your money
+and devoted the rest of my life to spending it fashionably, I might be
+as worthless and vicious as the silliest woman could possibly be without
+having a word said to me about it. But I don't want to be worthless. I
+shouldn't enjoy trotting about the park to advertize my dressmaker
+and carriage builder, or being bored at the opera to shew off a
+shopwindowful of diamonds.
+
+MRS WARREN [bewildered] But--
+
+VIVIE. Wait a moment: I've not done. Tell me why you continue your
+business now that you are independent of it. Your sister, you told me,
+has left all that behind her. Why don't you do the same?
+
+MRS WARREN. Oh, it's all very easy for Liz: she likes good society, and
+has the air of being a lady. Imagine _me_ in a cathedral town! Why, the
+very rooks in the trees would find me out even if I could stand
+the dulness of it. I must have work and excitement, or I should go
+melancholy mad. And what else is there for me to do? The life suits me:
+I'm fit for it and not for anything else. If I didn't do it somebody else
+would; so I don't do any real harm by it. And then it brings in money;
+and I like making money. No: it's no use: I can't give it up--not for
+anybody. But what need you know about it? I'll never mention it. I'll
+keep Crofts away. I'll not trouble you much: you see I have to be
+constantly running about from one place to another. Youll be quit of me
+altogether when I die.
+
+VIVIE. No: I am my mother's daughter. I am like you: I must have work,
+and must make more money than I spend. But my work is not your work, and
+my way is not your way. We must part. It will not make much difference
+to us: instead of meeting one another for perhaps a few months in twenty
+years, we shall never meet: thats all.
+
+MRS WARREN [her voice stifled in tears] Vivie: I meant to have been more
+with you: I did indeed.
+
+VIVIE. It's no use, mother: I am not to be changed by a few cheap tears
+and entreaties any more than you are, I daresay.
+
+MRS WARREN [wildly] Oh, you call a mother's tears cheap.
+
+VIVIE. They cost you nothing; and you ask me to give you the peace
+and quietness of my whole life in exchange for them. What use would my
+company be to you if you could get it? What have we two in common that
+could make either of us happy together?
+
+MRS WARREN [lapsing recklessly into her dialect] We're mother and
+daughter. I want my daughter. I've a right to you. Who is to care for me
+when I'm old? Plenty of girls have taken to me like daughters and cried
+at leaving me; but I let them all go because I had you to look forward
+to. I kept myself lonely for you. You've no right to turn on me now and
+refuse to do your duty as a daughter.
+
+VIVIE [jarred and antagonized by the echo of the slums in her mother's
+voice] My duty as a daughter! I thought we should come to that
+presently. Now once for all, mother, you want a daughter and Frank wants
+a wife. I don't want a mother; and I don't want a husband. I have spared
+neither Frank nor myself in sending him about his business. Do you think
+I will spare you?
+
+MRS WARREN [violently] Oh, I know the sort you are: no mercy for
+yourself or anyone else. _I_ know. My experience has done that for me
+anyhow: I can tell the pious, canting, hard, selfish woman when I meet
+her. Well, keep yourself to yourself: _I_ don't want you. But listen to
+this. Do you know what I would do with you if you were a baby again?
+aye, as sure as there's a Heaven above us.
+
+VIVIE. Strangle me, perhaps.
+
+MRS WARREN. No: I'd bring you up to be a real daughter to me, and not
+what you are now, with your pride and your prejudices and the college
+education you stole from me: yes, stole: deny it if you can: what was it
+but stealing? I'd bring you up in my own house, I would.
+
+VIVIE [quietly] In one of your own houses.
+
+MRS WARREN [screaming] Listen to her! listen to how she spits on her
+mother's grey hairs! Oh, may you live to have your own daughter tear and
+trample on you as you have trampled on me. And you will: you will. No
+woman ever had luck with a mother's curse on her.
+
+VIVIE. I wish you wouldn't rant, mother. It only hardens me. Come: I
+suppose I am the only young woman you ever had in your power that you
+did good to. Don't spoil it all now.
+
+MRS WARREN. Yes, Heaven forgive me, it's true; and you are the only
+one that ever turned on me. Oh, the injustice of it! the injustice! the
+injustice! I always wanted to be a good woman. I tried honest work; and
+I was slave-driven until I cursed the day I ever heard of honest work. I
+was a good mother; and because I made my daughter a good woman she turns
+me out as if I were a leper. Oh, if I only had my life to live over
+again! I'd talk to that lying clergyman in the school. From this time
+forth, so help me Heaven in my last hour, I'll do wrong and nothing but
+wrong. And I'll prosper on it.
+
+VIVIE. Yes: it's better to choose your line and go through with it. If
+I had been you, mother, I might have done as you did; but I should not
+have lived one life and believed in another. You are a conventional
+woman at heart. That is why I am bidding you goodbye now. I am right, am
+I not?
+
+MRS WARREN [taken aback] Right to throw away all my money!
+
+VIVIE. No: right to get rid of you? I should be a fool not to. Isn't that
+so?
+
+MRS WARREN [sulkily] Oh well, yes, if you come to that, I suppose you
+are. But Lord help the world if everybody took to doing the right thing!
+And now I'd better go than stay where I'm not wanted. [She turns to the
+door].
+
+VIVIE [kindly] Won't you shake hands?
+
+MRS WARREN [after looking at her fiercely for a moment with a savage
+impulse to strike her] No, thank you. Goodbye.
+
+VIVIE [matter-of-factly] Goodbye. [Mrs Warren goes out, slamming
+the door behind her. The strain on Vivie's face relaxes; her grave
+expression breaks up into one of joyous content; her breath goes out
+in a half sob, half laugh of intense relief. She goes buoyantly to her
+place at the writing table; pushes the electric lamp out of the way;
+pulls over a great sheaf of papers; and is in the act of dipping her pen
+in the ink when she finds Frank's note. She opens it unconcernedly
+and reads it quickly, giving a little laugh at some quaint turn of
+expression in it]. And goodbye, Frank. [She tears the note up and tosses
+the pieces into the wastepaper basket without a second thought. Then
+she goes at her work with a plunge, and soon becomes absorbed in its
+figures].
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Mrs. Warren's Profession, by George Bernard Shaw
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