MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION

MRS. WARREN’SPROFESSION

George Bernard Shaw

The preparer of this public-domain (U.S.) textis unknown. The text seems largely to followShaw’s spelling. (I.e., “Mr” for “Mr.”, “youre”for “you’re”, and so forth.) The Project Guten-berg edition (“wrpro10”) was subsequentlyconverted to LATEX using GutenMark soft-ware and re-edited (principally for format-ting) by Ron Burkey. Report problems [email protected].

Revision: ADate: 01/05/03

Contents

THE AUTHORS APOLOGY 1

ACT I 49

ACT II 77

ACT III 113

ACT IV 137

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ii

THE AUTHOR’SAPOLOGY

Mrs Warren’s Profession has been performedat last, after a delay of only eight years; andI have once more shared with Ibsen the tri-umphant amusement of startling all but thestrongest-headed of the London theatre crit-ics clean out of the practice of their profession.No author who has ever known the exultationof sending the Press into an hysterical tumultof protest, of moral panic, of involuntary andfrantic confession of sin, of a horror of con-science in which the power of distinguishingbetween the work of art on the stage and thereal life of the spectator is confused and over-whelmed, will ever care for the stereotypedcompliments which every successful farce ormelodrama elicits from the newspapers. Giveme that critic who rushed from my play to de-clare furiously that Sir George Crofts oughtto be kicked. What a triumph for the actor,

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2 MRS. WARREN’S PROFESSION

thus to reduce a jaded London journalist tothe condition of the simple sailor in the Wap-ping gallery, who shouts execrations at Iagoand warnings to Othello not to believe him!But dearer still than such simplicity is thatsense of the sudden earthquake shock to thefoundations of morality which sends a pallidcrowd of critics into the street shrieking thatthe pillars of society are cracking and the ruinof the State is at hand. Even the Ibsen cham-pions of ten years ago remonstrate with mejust as the veterans of those brave days re-monstrated with them. Mr Grein, the hardyiconoclast who first launched my plays on thestage alongside Ghosts and The Wild Duck,exclaimed that I have shattered his ideals. Ac-tually his ideals! What would Dr Relling say?And Mr William Archer himself disowns mebecause I “cannot touch pitch without wallow-ing in it”. Truly my play must be more neededthan I knew; and yet I thought I knew howlittle the others know.

Do not suppose, however, that the con-sternation of the Press reflects any conster-nation among the general public. Anybodycan upset the theatre critics, in a turn ofthe wrist, by substituting for the romanticcommonplaces of the stage the moral com-monplaces of the pulpit, platform, or the li-brary. Play Mrs Warren’s Profession to an


audience of clerical members of the Chris-tian Social Union and of women well experi-enced in Rescue, Temperance, and Girls’ Clubwork, and no moral panic will arise; everyman and woman present will know that aslong as poverty makes virtue hideous andthe spare pocket-money of rich bachelordommakes vice dazzling, their daily hand-to-handfight against prostitution with prayer and per-suasion, shelters and scanty alms, will be alosing one. There was a time when they wereable to urge that though “the white-lead fac-tory where Anne Jane was poisoned” may bea far more terrible place than Mrs Warren’shouse, yet hell is still more dreadful. Nowa-days they no longer believe in hell; and thegirls among whom they are working knowthat they do not believe in it, and would laughat them if they did. So well have the res-cuers learnt that Mrs Warren’s defence of her-self and indictment of society is the thing thatmost needs saying, that those who know mepersonally reproach me, not for writing thisplay, but for wasting my energies on “pleasantplays” for the amusement of frivolous people,when I can build up such excellent stage ser-mons on their own work. Mrs Warren’s Profes-sion is the one play of mine which I could sub-mit to a censorship without doubt of the re-sult; only, it must not be the censorship of the


minor theatre critic, nor of an innocent courtofficial like the Lord Chamberlain’s Examiner,much less of people who consciously profit byMrs Warren’s profession, or who personallymake use of it, or who hold the widely whis-pered view that it is an indispensable safety-valve for the protection of domestic virtue, or,above all, who are smitten with a sentimen-tal affection for our fallen sister, and would“take her up tenderly, lift her with care, fash-ioned so slenderly, young, and so fair.” Nor amI prepared to accept the verdict of the medicalgentlemen who would compulsorily sanitateand register Mrs Warren, whilst leaving MrsWarren’s patrons, especially her military pa-trons, free to destroy her health and anybodyelse’s without fear of reprisals. But I should bequite content to have my play judged by, say, ajoint committee of the Central Vigilance Soci-ety and the Salvation Army. And the sternermoralists the members of the committee were,the better.

Some of the journalists I have shocked rea-son so unripely that they will gather noth-ing from this but a confused notion that I amaccusing the National Vigilance Associationand the Salvation Army of complicity in myown scandalous immorality. It will seem tothem that people who would stand this playwould stand anything. They are quite mis-


taken. Such an audience as I have describedwould be revolted by many of our fashion-able plays. They would leave the theatre con-vinced that the Plymouth Brother who stillregards the playhouse as one of the gates ofhell is perhaps the safest adviser on the sub-ject of which he knows so little. If I do notdraw the same conclusion, it is not becauseI am one of those who claim that art is ex-empt from moral obligations, and deny thatthe writing or performance of a play is a moralact, to be treated on exactly the same footingas theft or murder if it produces equally mis-chievous consequences. I am convinced thatfine art is the subtlest, the most seductive,the most effective instrument of moral propa-ganda in the world, excepting only the exam-ple of personal conduct; and I waive even thisexception in favor of the art of the stage, be-cause it works by exhibiting examples of per-sonal conduct made intelligible and moving tocrowds of unobservant, unreflecting people towhom real life means nothing. I have pointedout again and again that the influence of thetheatre in England is growing so great thatwhilst private conduct, religion, law, science,politics, and morals are becoming more andmore theatrical, the theatre itself remains im-pervious to common sense, religion, science,politics, and morals. That is why I fight the


theatre, not with pamphlets and sermons andtreatises, but with plays; and so effective doI find the dramatic method that I have nodoubt I shall at last persuade even Londonto take its conscience and its brains with itwhen it goes to the theatre, instead of leav-ing them at home with its prayer-book as itdoes at present. Consequently, I am the lastman in the world to deny that if the net effectof performing Mrs Warren’s Profession werean increase in the number of persons enter-ing that profession, its performance should bedealt with accordingly.

Now let us consider how such recruitingcan be encouraged by the theatre. Nothing iseasier. Let the King’s Reader of Plays, backedby the Press, make an unwritten but per-fectly well understood regulation that mem-bers of Mrs Warren’s profession shall be toler-ated on the stage only when they are beau-tiful, exquisitely dressed, and sumptuouslylodged and fed; also that they shall, at the endof the play, die of consumption to the sympa-thetic tears of the whole audience, or step intothe next room to commit suicide, or at leastbe turned out by their protectors and passedon to be “redeemed” by old and faithful loverswho have adored them in spite of their levi-ties. Naturally, the poorer girls in the gallerywill believe in the beauty, in the exquisite


dresses, and the luxurious living, and will seethat there is no real necessity for the con-sumption, the suicide, or the ejectment: merepious forms, all of them, to save the Censor’sface. Even if these purely official catastrophescarried any conviction, the majority of Englishgirls remain so poor, so dependent, so wellaware that the drudgeries of such honest workas is within their reach are likely enough tolead them eventually to lung disease, prema-ture death, and domestic desertion or brutal-ity, that they would still see reason to preferthe 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 willtell you that only girls of a certain kind willreason in this way. But alas! that certainkind turns out on inquiry to be simply thepretty, dainty kind: that is, the only kind thatgets the chance of acting on such reasoning.Read the first report of the Commission on theHousing of the Working Classes [Bluebook C4402, 8d., 1889]; read the Report on Home In-dustries (sacred word, Home!) issued by theWomen’s Industrial Council [Home Industriesof Women in London, 1897, 1s., 12 Bucking-ham Street, W. C.]; and ask yourself whether,if the lot in life therein described were your lotin life, you would not prefer the lot of Cleopa-


tra, of Theodora, of the Lady of the Camellias,of Mrs Tanqueray, of Zaza, of Iris. If you cango deep enough into things to be able to sayno, how many ignorant half-starved girls willbelieve you are speaking sincerely? To themthe lot of Iris is heavenly in comparison withtheir own. Yet our King, like his predecessors,says to the dramatist, “Thus, and thus only,shall you present Mrs Warren’s profession onthe stage, or you shall starve. Witness Shaw,who told the untempting truth about it, andwhom We, by the Grace of God, accordinglydisallow and suppress, and do what in Us liesto silence.” Fortunately, Shaw cannot be si-lenced. “The harlot’s cry from street to street”is louder than the voices of all the kings. I amnot dependent on the theatre, and cannot bestarved into making my play a standing ad-vertisement of the attractive side of Mrs War-ren’s business.

Here I must guard myself against a misun-derstanding. It is not the fault of their authorsthat the long string of wanton’s tragedies,from Antony and Cleopatra to Iris, are snaresto poor girls, and are objected to on that ac-count by many earnest men and women whoconsider Mrs Warren’s Profession an excellentsermon. Mr Pinero is in no way bound to sup-press the fact that his Iris is a person to be en-vied by millions of better women. If he made


his play false to life by inventing fictitious dis-advantages for her, he would be acting as un-scrupulously as any tract writer. If societychooses to provide for its Irises better than forits working women, it must not expect hon-est playwrights to manufacture spurious evi-dence to save its credit. The mischief lies inthe deliberate suppression of the other side ofthe case: the refusal to allow Mrs Warren toexpose the drudgery and repulsiveness of ply-ing for hire among coarse, tedious drunkards;the determination not to let the Parisian girlin Brieux’s Les Avaries come on the stage anddrive into people’s minds what her diseasesmean 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 andgratifying? The answer to this question, I fear,must be a blunt Yes; for it seems impossibleto root out of an Englishman’s mind the no-tion that vice is delightful, and that absten-tion from it is privation. At all events, as longas the tempting side of it is kept towards thepublic, and softened by plenty of sentimentand sympathy, it is welcomed by our Censor,whereas the slightest attempt to place it inthe light of the policeman’s lantern or the Sal-vation Army shelter is checkmated at once as


not merely disgusting, but, if you please, un-necessary.

Everybody will, I hope, admit that thisstate of things is intolerable; that the sub-ject of Mrs Warren’s profession must be ei-ther tapu altogether, or else exhibited withthe warning side as freely displayed as thetempting side. But many persons will vote fora complete tapu, and an impartial sweep fromthe boards of Mrs Warren and Gretchen andthe rest; in short, for banishing the sexual in-stincts from the stage altogether. Those whothink this impossible can hardly have consid-ered the number and importance of the sub-jects which are actually banished from thestage. Many plays, among them Lear, Hamlet,Macbeth, Coriolanus, Julius Caesar, have nosex complications: the thread of their actioncan be followed by children who could not un-derstand a single scene of Mrs Warren’s Pro-fession or Iris. None of our plays rouse thesympathy of the audience by an exhibition ofthe pains of maternity, as Chinese plays con-stantly do. Each nation has its own particularset of tapus in addition to the common humanstock; and though each of these tapus limitsthe scope of the dramatist, it does not makedrama impossible. If the Examiner were torefuse to license plays with female charactersin them, he would only be doing to the stage


what our tribal customs already do to the pul-pit and the bar. I have myself written a ratherentertaining play with only one woman in it,and she is quite heartwhole; and I could justas easily write a play without a woman in itat all. I will even go so far as to promisethe Mr Redford my support if he will intro-duce this limitation for part of the year, sayduring Lent, so as to make a close season forthat dullest of stock dramatic subjects, adul-tery, and force our managers and authors tofind out what all great dramatists find outspontaneously: to wit, that people who sac-rifice every other consideration to love are ashopelessly unheroic on the stage as lunatics ordipsomaniacs. Hector is the world’s hero; notParis nor Antony.

But though I do not question the possibil-ity of a drama in which love should be as effec-tively ignored as cholera is at present, there isnot the slightest chance of that way out of thedifficulty being taken by the Mr Redford. If heattempted it there would be a revolt in whichhe would be swept away in spite of my single-handed efforts to defend him. A complete tapuis politically impossible. A complete tolerationis equally impossible to Mr Redford, becausehis occupation would be gone if there were notapu to enforce. He is therefore compelled tomaintain the present compromise of a partial


tapu, applied, to the best of his judgement,with a careful respect to persons and to pub-lic opinion. And a very sensible English so-lution of the difficulty, too, most readers willsay. I should not dispute it if dramatic poetsreally were what English public opinion gen-erally assumes them to be during their life-time: that is, a licentiously irregular groupto be kept in order in a rough and ready wayby a magistrate who will stand no nonsensefrom them. But I cannot admit that the classrepresented by Eschylus, Sophocles, Aristo-phanes, Euripides, Shakespear, Goethe, Ib-sen, and Tolstoy, not to mention our own con-temporary playwrights, is as much in place inMr Redford’s office as a pickpocket is in BowStreet. Further, it is not true that the Censor-ship, though it certainly suppresses Ibsen andTolstoy, and would suppress Shakespear butfor the absurd rule that a play once licensedis always licensed (so that Wycherly is permit-ted and Shelley prohibited), also suppressesunscrupulous playwrights. I challenge MrRedford to mention any extremity of sexualmisconduct which any manager in his senseswould risk presenting on the London stagethat has not been presented under his licenseand that of his predecessor. The compromise,in fact, works out in practice in favor of looseplays as against earnest ones.


To carry conviction on this point, I willtake the extreme course of narrating the plotsof two plays witnessed within the last tenyears by myself at London West End the-atres, one licensed by the late Queen Victo-ria’s Reader of Plays, the other by the presentReader to the King. Both plots conform to thestrictest rules of the period when La Dameaux Camellias was still a forbidden play, andwhen The Second Mrs Tanqueray would havebeen tolerated only on condition that she care-fully explained to the audience that when shemet Captain Ardale she sinned “but in inten-tion.”

Play number one. A prince is compelled byhis parents to marry the daughter of a neigh-boring king, but loves another maiden. Thescene represents a hall in the king’s palace atnight. The wedding has taken place that day;and the closed door of the nuptial chamber isin view of the audience. Inside, the princessawaits her bridegroom. A duenna is in atten-dance. The bridegroom enters. His sole desireis to escape from a marriage which is hatefulto him. An idea strikes him. He will assaultthe duenna, and get ignominiously expelledfrom the palace by his indignant father-in-law.To his horror, when he proceeds to carry outthis stratagem, the duenna, far from raisingan alarm, is flattered, delighted, and compli-


ant. The assaulter becomes the assaulted. Heflings her angrily to the ground, where she re-mains placidly. He flies. The father enters;dismisses the duenna; and listens at the key-hole of his daughter’s nuptial chamber, utter-ing various pleasantries, and declaring, with ashiver, that a sound of kissing, which he sup-poses to proceed from within, makes him feelyoung again.

In deprecation of the scandalized astonish-ment with which such a story as this will beread, I can only say that it was not presentedon the stage until its propriety had been cer-tified by the chief officer of the Queen of Eng-land’s household.

Story number two. A German officer findshimself in an inn with a French lady who haswounded his national vanity. He resolves tohumble her by committing a rape upon her.He announces his purpose. She remonstrates,implores, flies to the doors and finds themlocked, calls for help and finds none at hand,runs screaming from side to side, and, after aharrowing scene, is overpowered and faints.Nothing further being possible on the stagewithout actual felony, the officer then relentsand leaves her. When she recovers, she be-lieves that he has carried out his threat; andduring the rest of the play she is representedas vainly vowing vengeance upon him, whilst


she is really falling in love with him under theinfluence of his imaginary crime against her.Finally she consents to marry him; and thecurtain falls on their happiness.

This story was certified by the presentKing’s Reader, acting for the Lord Chamber-lain, as void in its general tendency of “any-thing immoral or otherwise improper for thestage.” But let nobody conclude therefore thatMr Redford is a monster, whose policy it isto deprave the theatre. As a matter of fact,both the above stories are strictly in orderfrom the official point of view. The incidentsof sex which they contain, though carried inboth to the extreme point at which anotherstep would be dealt with, not by the King’sReader, but by the police, do not involve adul-tery, nor any allusion to Mrs Warren’s profes-sion, nor to the fact that the children of anypolyandrous group will, when they grow up,inevitably be confronted, as those of Mrs War-ren’s group are in my play, with the insolubleproblem of their own possible consanguinity.In short, by depending wholly on the coarsehumors and the physical fascination of sex,they comply with all the formulable require-ments of the Censorship, whereas plays inwhich these humors and fascinations are dis-carded, and the social problems created by sexseriously faced and dealt with, inevitably ig-


nore the official formula and are suppressed.If the old rule against the exhibition of il-licit sex relations on stage were revived, andthe subject absolutely barred, the only resultwould be that Antony and Cleopatra, Oth-ello (because of the Bianca episode), Troilusand 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 LordQuex, Mrs Dane’s Defence, and Iris wouldbe swept from the stage, and placed underthe same ban as Tolstoy’s Dominion of Dark-ness and Mrs Warren’s Profession, whilst suchplays as the two described above would havea monopoly of the theatre as far as sexual in-terest is concerned.

What is more, the repulsiveness of theworst of the certified plays would protectthe Censorship against effective exposure andcriticism. Not long ago an American Review ofhigh standing asked me for an article on theCensorship of the English stage. I replied thatsuch an article would involve passages too dis-agreeable for publication in a magazine forgeneral family reading. The editor persistednevertheless; but not until he had declared hisreadiness to face this, and had pledged him-self to insert the article unaltered (the partic-ularity of the pledge extending even to a spec-


ification of the exact number of words in thearticle) did I consent to the proposal. Whatwas the result?

The editor, confronted with the two storiesgiven above, threw his pledge to the winds,and, instead of returning the article, printedit with the illustrative examples omitted, andnothing left but the argument from politicalprinciples against the Censorship. In doingthis he fired my broadside after withdraw-ing the cannon balls; for neither the Censornor any other Englishman, except perhaps MrLeslie Stephen and a few other veterans of thedwindling old guard of Benthamism, cares adump about political principle. The ordinaryBriton thinks that if every other Briton is notkept under some form of tutelage, the morechildish the better, he will abuse his freedomviciously. As far as its principle is concerned,the Censorship is the most popular institu-tion in England; and the playwright who crit-icizes it is slighted as a blackguard agitatingfor impunity. Consequently nothing can reallyshake the confidence of the public in the LordChamberlain’s department except a remorse-less and unbowdlerized narration of the licen-tious fictions which slip through its net, andare hallmarked by it with the approval of theThrone. But since these narrations cannot bemade public without great difficulty, owing to


the obligation an editor is under not to dealunexpectedly with matters that are not vir-ginibus puerisque, the chances are heavily infavor of the Censor escaping all remonstrance.With the exception of such comments as I wasable to make in my own critical articles inThe World and The Saturday Review when thepieces I have described were first produced,and a few ignorant protests by churchmenagainst much better plays which they con-fessed they had not seen nor read, nothinghas been said in the press that could seriouslydisturb the easygoing notion that the stagewould be much worse than it admittedly isbut for the vigilance of the King’s Reader. Thetruth is, that no manager would dare produceon his own responsibility the pieces he cannow get royal certificates for at two guineasper piece.

I hasten to add that I believe these evilsto be inherent in the nature of all censorship,and not merely a consequence of the form theinstitution takes in London. No doubt thereis a staggering absurdity in appointing an or-dinary clerk to see that the leaders of Eu-ropean literature do not corrupt the moralsof the nation, and to restrain Sir Henry Irv-ing, as a rogue and a vagabond, from pre-suming to impersonate Samson or David onthe stage, though any other sort of artist


may daub these scriptural figures on a sign-board or carve them on a tombstone with-out hindrance. If the General Medical Coun-cil, the Royal College of Physicians, the RoyalAcademy of Arts, the Incorporated Law So-ciety, and Convocation were abolished, andtheir functions handed over to the Mr Red-ford, the Concert of Europe would presumablydeclare England mad, and treat her accord-ingly. Yet, though neither medicine nor paint-ing nor law nor the Church moulds the char-acter of the nation as potently as the theatredoes, nothing can come on the stage unless itsdimensions admit of its passing through MrRedford’s mind! Pray do not think that I ques-tion Mr Redford’s honesty. I am quite surethat he sincerely thinks me a blackguard, andmy play a grossly improper one, because, likeTolstoy’s Dominion of Darkness, it produces,as they are both meant to produce, a verystrong and very painful impression of evil. Ido not doubt for a moment that the rapineplay which I have described, and which he li-censed, was quite incapable in manuscript ofproducing any particular effect on his mind atall, and that when he was once satisfied thatthe ill-conducted hero was a German and notan English officer, he passed the play with-out studying its moral tendencies. Even ifhe had undertaken that study, there is no


more reason to suppose that he is a competentmoralist than there is to suppose that I am acompetent mathematician. But truly it doesnot matter whether he is a moralist or not.Let nobody dream for a moment that what iswrong with the Censorship is the shortcom-ing of the gentleman who happens at any mo-ment to be acting as Censor. Replace himto-morrow by an Academy of Letters and anAcademy of Dramatic Poetry, and the new andenlarged filter will still exclude original andepoch-making work, whilst passing conven-tional, old-fashioned, and vulgar work with-out question. The conclave which compiles theindex of the Roman Catholic Church is themost august, ancient, learned, famous, andauthoritative censorship in Europe. Is it moreenlightened, more liberal, more tolerant thanthe comparatively infinitesimal office of theLord Chamberlain? On the contrary, it hasreduced itself to a degree of absurdity whichmakes a Catholic university a contradiction interms. All censorships exist to prevent any-one from challenging current conceptions andexisting institutions. All progress is initiatedby challenging current concepts, and executedby supplanting existing institutions. Conse-quently the first condition of progress is theremoval of censorships. There is the wholecase against censorships in a nutshell.


It will be asked whether theatrical man-agers are to be allowed to produce what theylike, without regard to the public interest. Butthat is not the alternative. The managersof our London music-halls are not subject toany censorship. They produce their entertain-ments on their own responsibility, and haveno two-guinea certificates to plead if theirhouses are conducted viciously. They knowthat if they lose their character, the CountyCouncil will simply refuse to renew their li-cense at the end of the year; and nothingin the history of popular art is more amaz-ing than the improvement in music-halls thatthis simple arrangement has produced withina few years. Place the theatres on the samefooting, and we shall promptly have a simi-lar revolution: a whole class of frankly black-guardly plays, in which unscrupulous low co-medians attract crowds to gaze at bevies ofgirls who have nothing to exhibit but theirprettiness, will vanish like the obscene songswhich were supposed to enliven the squaliddulness, incredible to the younger generation,of the music-halls fifteen years ago. On theother hand, plays which treat sex questionsas problems for thought instead of as aphro-disiacs will be freely performed. Gentlemen ofMr Redford’s way of thinking will have plentyof opportunity of protesting against them in


Council; but the result will be that the MrRedford will find his natural level; Ibsen andTolstoy theirs; so no harm will be done.

This question of the Censorship remindsme that I have to apologize to those who wentto the recent performance of Mrs Warren’sProfession expecting to find it what I have justcalled an aphrodisiac. That was not my fault;it was Mr Redford’s. After the specimens Ihave given of the tolerance of his department,it was natural enough for thoughtless peopleto infer that a play which overstepped his in-dulgence must be a very exciting play indeed.Accordingly, I find one critic so explicit as tothe nature of his disappointment as to saycandidly that “such airy talk as there is uponthe matter is utterly unworthy of acceptanceas being a representation of what people withblood in them think or do on such occasions.”Thus am I crushed between the upper mill-stone of the Mr Redford, who thinks me alibertine, and the nether popular critic, whothinks me a prude. Critics of all grades andages, middle-aged fathers of families no lessthan ardent young enthusiasts, are equallyindignant with me. They revile me as lackingin passion, in feeling, in manhood. Some ofthem even sum the matter up by denying meany dramatic power: a melancholy betrayalof what dramatic power has come to mean on


our stage under the Censorship! Can I be ex-pected to refrain from laughing at the spec-tacle of a number of respectable gentlemenlamenting because a playwright lures them tothe theatre by a promise to excite their sensesin a very special and sensational manner, andthen, having successfully trapped them in ex-ceptional numbers, proceeds to ignore theirsenses 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 knownthat my plays are built to induce, not volup-tuous reverie but intellectual interest, not ro-mantic rhapsody but humane concern. Ac-cordingly, I do not find those critics who aregifted with intellectual appetite and politicalconscience complaining of want of dramaticpower. Rather do they protest, not altogetherunjustly, against a few relapses into staginessand caricature which betray the young play-wright and the old playgoer in this early workof mine.

As to the voluptuaries, I can assure themthat the playwright, whether he be myself oranother, will always disappoint them. Thedrama can do little to delight the senses: allthe apparent instances to the contrary areinstances of the personal fascination of theperformers. The drama of pure feeling is no


longer in the hands of the playwright: it hasbeen conquered by the musician, after whoseenchantments all the verbal arts seem coldand tame. Romeo and Juliet with the loveliestJuliet is dry, tedious, and rhetorical in com-parison with Wagner’s Tristan, even thoughIsolde be both fourteen stone and forty, as sheoften is in Germany. Indeed, it needed noWagner to convince the public of this. Thevoluptuous sentimentality of Gounod’s Faustand Bizet’s Carmen has captured the commonplaygoer; and there is, flatly, no future now forany drama without music except the dramaof thought. The attempt to produce a genusof opera without music (and this absurdity iswhat our fashionable theatres have been driv-ing at for a long time without knowing it) isfar less hopeful than my own determinationto accept problem as the normal materiel ofthe drama.

That this determination will throw me intoa long conflict with our theatre critics, andwith the few playgoers who go to the theatreas often as the critics, I well know; but I amtoo well equipped for the strife to be deterredby it, or to bear malice towards the losingside. In trying to produce the sensuous effectsof opera, the fashionable drama has becomeso flaccid in its sentimentality, and the intel-lect of its frequenters so atrophied by disuse,


that the reintroduction of problem, with itsremorseless logic and iron framework of fact,inevitably produces at first an overwhelmingimpression of coldness and inhuman rational-ism. But this will soon pass away. Whenthe intellectual muscle and moral nerve of thecritics has been developed in the struggle withmodern problem plays, the pettish luxurious-ness of the clever ones, and the sulky senseof disadvantaged weakness in the sentimen-tal ones, will clear away; and it will be seenthat only in the problem play is there anyreal drama, because drama is no mere set-ting up of the camera to nature: it is the pre-sentation in parable of the conflict betweenMan’s will and his environment: in a word,of problem. The vapidness of such drama asthe pseudo-operatic plays contain lies in thefact that in them animal passion, sentimen-tally diluted, is shewn in conflict, not withreal circumstances, but with a set of conven-tions and assumptions half of which do notexist off the stage, whilst the other half caneither be evaded by a pretence of complianceor defied with complete impunity by any rea-sonably strong-minded person. Nobody canfeel that such conventions are really compul-sory; and consequently nobody can believe inthe stage pathos that accepts them as an in-exorable fate, or in the genuineness of the


people who indulge in such pathos. Sittingat such plays, we do not believe: we make-believe. And the habit of make-believe be-comes at last so rooted that criticism of thetheatre insensibly ceases to be criticism at all,and becomes more and more a chronicle ofthe fashionable enterprises of the only reali-ties left on the stage: that is, the performersin their own persons. In this phase the play-wright who attempts to revive genuine dramaproduces the disagreeable impression of thepedant who attempts to start a serious discus-sion at a fashionable at-home. Later on, whenhe has driven the tea services out and madethe people who had come to use the theatreas a drawing-room understand that it is theyand not the dramatist who are the intruders,he has to face the accusation that his plays ig-nore human feeling, an illusion produced bythat very resistance of fact and law to hu-man feeling which creates drama. It is thedeus ex machina who, by suspending that re-sistance, makes the fall of the curtain an im-mediate necessity, since drama ends exactlywhere resistance ends. Yet the introductionof this resistance produces so strong an im-pression of heartlessness nowadays that a dis-tinguished critic has summed up the impres-sion made on him by Mrs Warren’s Profession,by declaring that “the difference between the


spirit of Tolstoy and the spirit of Mr Shawis the difference between the spirit of Christand the spirit of Euclid.” But the epigramwould be as good if Tolstoy’s name were put inplace of mine and D’Annunzio’s in place of Tol-stoy. At the same time I accept the enormouscompliment to my reasoning powers with sin-cere complacency; and I promise my flattererthat when he is sufficiently accustomed to andtherefore undazzled by problem on the stageto be able to attend to the familiar factor of hu-manity in it as well as to the unfamiliar one ofa real environment, he will both see and feelthat Mrs Warren’s Profession is no mere theo-rem, but a play of instincts and temperamentsin conflict with each other and with a flinty so-cial problem that never yields an inch to meresentiment.

I go further than this. I declare that thereal secret of the cynicism and inhumanity ofwhich shallower critics accuse me is the un-expectedness with which my characters be-have like human beings, instead of conform-ing to the romantic logic of the stage. Theaxioms and postulates of that dreary miman-thropometry are so well known that it is al-most impossible for its slaves to write toler-able last acts to their plays, so convention-ally do their conclusions follow from theirpremises. Because I have thrown this logic


ruthlessly overboard, I am accused of ignor-ing, not stage logic, but, of all things, hu-man feeling. People with completely theatri-fied imaginations tell me that no girl wouldtreat her mother as Vivie Warren does, mean-ing that no stage heroine would in a popularsentimental play. They say this just as theymight say that no two straight lines wouldenclose a space. They do not see how com-pletely inverted their vision has become evenwhen I throw its preposterousness in theirfaces, as I repeatedly do in this very play.Praed, the sentimental artist (fool that I wasnot to make him a theatre critic instead ofan architect!) burlesques them by expectingall through the piece that the feelings of oth-ers will be logically deducible from their fam-ily relationships and from his “conventionallyunconventional” social code. The sarcasm islost on the critics: they, saturated with thesame logic, only think him the sole sensibleperson on the stage. Thus it comes about thatthe more completely the dramatist is emanci-pated from the illusion that men and womenare primarily reasonable beings, and the morepowerfully he insists on the ruthless indiffer-ence of their great dramatic antagonist, theexternal world, to their whims and emotions,the surer he is to be denounced as blind tothe very distinction on which his whole work


is built. Far from ignoring idiosyncrasy, will,passion, impulse, whim, as factors in humanaction, I have placed them so nakedly on thestage that the elderly citizen, accustomed tosee them clothed with the veil of manufac-tured logic about duty, and to disguise evenhis own impulses from himself in this way,finds the picture as unnatural as Carlyle’ssuggested painting of parliament sitting with-out its clothes.

I now come to those critics who, intellectu-ally baffled by the problem in Mrs Warren’sProfession, have made a virtue of runningaway from it. I will illustrate their method byquotation from Dickens, taken from the fifthchapter of Our Mutual Friend:

“Hem!” began Wegg. “This, MrBoffin and Lady, is the first chapterof the first wollume of the Declineand Fall off—” here he looked hardat the book, and stopped.

“What’s the matter, Wegg?”“Why, it comes into my mind, do

you know, sir,” said Wegg with anair of insinuating frankness (hav-ing first again looked hard at thebook), that you made a little mis-take this morning, which I hadmeant to set you right in; onlysomething 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 ofbreaking down, when a brightthought flashed upon him. “Thedifference, sir? There you place mein a difficulty, Mr Boffin. Sufficeit to observe, that the difference isbest postponed to some other oc-casion when Mrs Boffin does nothonor us with her company. In MrsBoffin’s presence, sir, we had betterdrop it.”

Mr Wegg thus came out of his disadvan-tage with quite a chivalrous air, and not onlythat, but by dint of repeating with a manlydelicacy, “In Mrs Boffin’s presence, sir, we hadbetter drop it!” turned the disadvantage onBoffin, who felt that he had committed him-self in a very painful manner.

I am willing to let Mr Wegg drop it onthese terms, provided I am allowed to mentionhere that Mrs Warren’s Profession is a play forwomen; that it was written for women; thatit has been performed and produced mainlythrough the determination of women that


it should be performed and produced; thatthe enthusiasm of women made its first per-formance excitingly successful; and that notone of these women had any inducement tosupport it except their belief in the timeli-ness and the power of the lesson the playteaches. Those who were “surprised to seeladies present” were men; and when they pro-ceeded to explain that the journals they repre-sented could not possibly demoralize the pub-lic by describing such a play, their editors cru-elly devoted the space saved by their delicacyto an elaborate and respectful account of theprogress of a young lord’s attempt to breakthe bank at Monte Carlo. A few days soonerMrs Warren would have been crowded out oftheir papers by an exceptionally abominablepolice case. I do not suggest that the policecase should have been suppressed; but nei-ther do I believe that regard for public moral-ity had anything to do with their failure tograpple with the performance by the StageSociety. And, after all, there was no need tofall back on Silas Wegg’s subterfuge. Severalcritics saved the faces of their papers easilyenough by the simple expedient of saying allthey had to say in the tone of a shocked gov-erness lecturing a naughty child. To them Imight 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 ef-fect produced by Miss Fanny Brough’s deliv-ery of that line, that gentlemen who shiveredlike violets in a zephyr as it swept throughthem, should so completely miss the full widthof its application as to go home and straight-way make a public exhibition of mock mod-esty.

My old Independent Theatre manager, MrGrein, besides that reproach to me for shat-tering his ideals, complains that Mrs Warrenis not wicked enough, and names several ro-mancers who would have clothed her blacksoul with all the terrors of tragedy. I haveno doubt they would; but if you please, mydear Grein, that is just what I did not want todo. Nothing would please our sanctimoniousBritish public more than to throw the wholeguilt of Mrs Warren’s profession on Mrs War-ren herself. Now the whole aim of my playis to throw that guilt on the British public it-self. You may remember that when you pro-duced my first play, Widowers’ Houses, exactlythe same misunderstanding arose. When thevirtuous young gentleman rose up in wrathagainst the slum landlord, the slum landlordvery effectively shewed him that slums arethe product, not of individual Harpagons, butof the indifference of virtuous young gentle-men to the condition of the city they live in,


provided they live at the west end of it onmoney earned by someone else’s labor. The no-tion that prostitution is created by the wicked-ness of Mrs Warren is as silly as the notion—prevalent, nevertheless, to some extent inTemperance circles—that drunkenness is cre-ated by the wickedness of the publican. MrsWarren is not a whit a worse woman than thereputable daughter who cannot endure her.Her indifference to the ultimate social conse-quences of her means of making money, andher discovery of that means by the ordinarymethod of taking the line of least resistanceto getting it, are too common in English soci-ety to call for any special remark. Her vitality,her thrift, her energy, her outspokenness, herwise care of her daughter, and the managingcapacity which has enabled her and her sis-ter to climb from the fried fish shop down bythe Mint to the establishments of which sheboasts, are all high English social virtues. Herdefence of herself is so overwhelming that itprovokes the St James Gazette to declare that“the tendency of the play is wholly evil” be-cause “it contains one of the boldest and mostspecious defences of an immoral life for poorwomen that has ever been penned.” Happilythe St James Gazette here speaks in its haste.Mrs Warren’s defence of herself is not onlybold and specious, but valid and unanswer-


able. But it is no defence at all of the vicewhich she organizes. It is no defence of an im-moral life to say that the alternative offeredby society collectively to poor women is a mis-erable life, starved, overworked, fetid, ailing,ugly. Though it is quite natural and right forMrs Warren to choose what is, according toher lights, the least immoral alternative, itis none the less infamous of society to offersuch alternatives. For the alternatives offeredare not morality and immorality, but two sortsof immorality. The man who cannot see thatstarvation, overwork, dirt, and disease are asanti-social as prostitution— that they are thevices and crimes of a nation, and not merelyits misfortunes—is (to put it as politely as pos-sible) a hopelessly Private Person.

The notion that Mrs Warren must be afiend is only an example of the violence andpassion which the slightest reference to sexarouses in undisciplined minds, and whichmakes it seem natural for our lawgivers topunish silly and negligible indecencies with aferocity unknown in dealing with, for exam-ple, ruinous financial swindling. Had my playbeen titled Mr Warren’s Profession, and MrWarren been a bookmaker, nobody would haveexpected me to make him a villain as well. Yetgambling is a vice, and bookmaking an insti-tution, for which there is absolutely nothing


to be said. The moral and economic evil doneby trying to get other people’s money withoutworking for it (and this is the essence of gam-bling) is not only enormous but uncompen-sated. There are no two sides to the questionof gambling, no circumstances which force usto tolerate it lest its suppression lead to worsethings, no consensus of opinion among respon-sible classes, such as magistrates and mili-tary commanders, that it is a necessity, noAthenian records of gambling made splendidby the talents of its professors, no contentionthat instead of violating morals it only vio-lates a legal institution which is in many re-spects oppressive and unnatural, no possibleplea that the instinct on which it is foundedis a vital one. Prostitution can confuse the is-sue with all these excuses: gambling has noneof them. Consequently, if Mrs Warren mustneeds be a demon, a bookmaker must be acacodemon. Well, does anybody who knowsthe sporting world really believe that book-makers are worse than their neighbors? Onthe contrary, they have to be a good deal bet-ter; for in that world nearly everybody whosesocial rank does not exclude such an occupa-tion would be a bookmaker if he could; butthe strength of character for handling largesums of money and for strict settlements andunflinching payment of losses is so rare that


successful bookmakers are rare too. It mayseem that at least public spirit cannot be oneof a bookmaker’s virtues; but I can testifyfrom personal experience that excellent publicwork is done with money subscribed by book-makers. It is true that there are abysses inbookmaking: for example, welshing. Mr Greinhints that there are abysses in Mrs Warren’sprofession also. So there are in every profes-sion: the error lies in supposing that everymember of them sounds these depths. I sit ona public body which prosecutes Mrs Warrenzealously; and I can assure Mr Grein that sheis often leniently dealt with because she hasconducted her business “respectably” and heldherself above its vilest branches. The degreesin infamy are as numerous and as scrupu-lously observed as the degrees in the peerage:the moralist’s notion that there are depths atwhich the moral atmosphere ceases is as delu-sive as the rich man’s notion that there are nosocial jealousies or snobberies among the verypoor. No: had I drawn Mrs Warren as a fiendin human form, the very people who now re-buke me for flattering her would probably bethe first to deride me for deducing her char-acter logically from occupation instead of ob-serving it accurately in society.

One critic is so enslaved by this sort of logicthat 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 anattack on knighthood, and King Claudius anattack on royalty. Here again the clamor fornaturalness and human feeling, raised by somany critics when they are confronted by thereal thing on the stage, is really a clamorfor the most mechanical and superficial sortof logic. The dramatic reason for makingthe clergyman what Mrs Warren calls “an oldstick-in-the-mud,” whose son, in spite of muchcapacity and charm, is a cynically worthlessmember of society, is to set up a mordantcontrast between him and the woman of in-famous profession, with her well brought-up,straightforward, hardworking daughter. Thecritics who have missed the contrast havedoubtless observed often enough that manyclergymen are in the Church through no gen-uine calling, but simply because, in circleswhich can command preferment, it is therefuge of “the fool of the family”; and that cler-gymen’s sons are often conspicuous reaction-ists against the restraints imposed on them inchildhood by their father’s profession. Thesecritics must know, too, from history if not fromexperience, that women as unscrupulous asMrs Warren have distinguished themselvesas administrators and rulers, both commer-


cially and politically. But both observationand knowledge are left behind when journal-ists go to the theatre. Once in their stalls, theyassume that it is “natural” for clergymen to besaintly, for soldiers to be heroic, for lawyersto be hard-hearted, for sailors to be simpleand generous, for doctors to perform miracleswith little bottles, and for Mrs Warren to bea beast and a demon. All this is not only notnatural, but not dramatic. A man’s professiononly enters into the drama of his life when itcomes into conflict with his nature. The resultof this conflict is tragic in Mrs Warren’s case,and comic in the clergyman’s case (at least weare savage enough to laugh at it); but in bothcases it is illogical, and in both cases natural.I repeat, the critics who accuse me of sacri-ficing nature to logic are so sophisticated bytheir profession that to them logic is nature,and nature absurdity.

Many friendly critics are too little skilledin social questions and moral discussions tobe able to conceive that respectable gentle-men like themselves, who would instantly callthe police to remove Mrs Warren if she ven-tured to canvass them personally, could possi-bly be in any way responsible for her proceed-ings. They remonstrate sincerely, asking mewhat good such painful exposures can possi-bly do. They might as well ask what good Lord


Shaftesbury did by devoting his life to the ex-posure of evils (by no means yet remedied)compared to which the worst things broughtinto view or even into surmise by this play aretrifles. The good of mentioning them is thatyou make people so extremely uncomfortableabout them that they finally stop blaming “hu-man nature” for them, and begin to supportmeasures for their reform.

Can anything be more absurd than thecopy of The Echo which contains a notice of theperformance of my play? It is edited by a gen-tleman who, having devoted his life to workof the Shaftesbury type, exposes social evilsand clamors for their reform in every columnexcept one; and that one is occupied by thedeclaration of the paper’s kindly theatre critic,that the performance left him “wonderingwhat useful purpose the play was intended toserve.” The balance has to be redressed bythe more fashionable papers, which usuallycombine capable art criticism with West-Endsolecism on politics and sociology. It is verynoteworthy, however, on comparing the pressexplosion produced by Mrs Warren’s Profes-sion in 1902 with that produced by Widowers’Houses about ten years earlier, that whereasin 1892 the facts were frantically denied andthe persons of the drama flouted as monstersof wickedness, in 1902 the facts are admit-


ted and the characters recognized, though itis suggested that this is exactly why no gen-tleman should mention them in public. Onlyone writer has ventured to imply this timethat the poverty mentioned by Mrs Warrenhas since been quietly relieved, and need nothave been dragged back to the footlights. Icompliment him on his splendid mendacity,in which he is unsupported, save by a littleplea in a theatrical paper which is innocentenough to think that ten guineas a year withboard and lodging is an impossibly low wagefor a barmaid. It goes on to cite Mr CharlesBooth as having testified that there are manylaborers’ wives who are happy and contentedon eighteen shillings a week. But I can go fur-ther than that myself. I have seen an Oxfordagricultural laborer’s wife looking cheerful oneight shillings a week; but that does not con-sole me for the fact that agriculture in Eng-land is a ruined industry. If poverty does notmatter as long as it is contented, then crimedoes not matter as long as it is unscrupulous.The truth is that it is only then that it doesmatter most desperately. Many persons aremore comfortable when they are dirty thanwhen they are clean; but that does not rec-ommend dirt as a national policy.

Here I must for the present break off myarduous work of educating the Press. We shall


resume our studies later on; but just now I amtired of playing the preceptor; and the eagerthirst of my pupils for improvement does notconsole me for the slowness of their progress.Besides, I must reserve space to gratify myown vanity and do justice to the six artistswho acted my play, by placing on record thehitherto unchronicled success of the first rep-resentation. It is not often that an author, af-ter a couple of hours of those rare alternationsof excitement and intensely attentive silencewhich only occur in the theatre when actorsand audience are reacting on one another tothe utmost, is able to step on the stage and ap-ply the strong word genius to the representa-tion with the certainty of eliciting an instantand overwhelming assent from the audience.That was my good fortune on the afternoon ofSunday, the fifth of January last. I was cer-tainly extremely fortunate in my interpretersin the enterprise, and that not alone in re-spect of their artistic talent; for had it notbeen for their superhuman patience, their im-perturbable good humor and good fellowship,there could have been no performance. Theterror of the Censor’s power gave us troubleenough to break up any ordinary commercialenterprise. Managers promised and even en-gaged their theatres to us after the most ex-plicit warnings that the play was unlicensed,


and at the last moment suddenly realized thatMr Redford had their livelihoods in the hollowof his hand, and backed out. Over and overagain the date and place were fixed and thetickets printed, only to be canceled, until atlast the desperate and overworked managerof the Stage Society could only laugh, as crim-inals broken on the wheel used to laugh at thesecond stroke. We rehearsed under great dif-ficulties. Christmas pieces and plays for thenew year were being produced in all direc-tions; and my six actor colleagues were busypeople, with engagements in these pieces inaddition to their current professional work ev-ery night. On several raw winter days stagesfor rehearsal were unattainable even by themost distinguished applicants; and we sharedcorridors and saloons with them whilst thestage was given over to children in trainingfor Boxing night. At last we had to rehearse atan hour at which no actor or actress has beenout of bed within the memory of man; andwe sardonically congratulated one another ev-ery morning on our rosy matutinal looks andthe improvement wrought by our early risingin our health and characters. And all this,please observe, for a society without treasuryor commercial prestige, for a play which wasbeing denounced in advance as unmention-able, for an author without influence at the


fashionable theatres! I victoriously challengethe West End managers to get as much donefor interested motives, if they can.

Three causes made the production themost notable that has fallen to my lot. First,the veto of the Censor, which put the sup-porters of the play on their mettle. Second,the chivalry of the Stage Society, which, inspite of my urgent advice to the contrary, andmy demonstration of the difficulties, dangers,and expenses the enterprise would cost, putmy discouragements to shame and resolvedto give battle at all costs to the attempt ofthe Censorship to suppress the play. Third,the artistic spirit of the actors, who madethe play their own and carried it through tri-umphantly in spite of a series of disappoint-ments and annoyances much more trying tothe dramatic temperament than mere difficul-ties.

The acting, too, required courage and char-acter as well as skill and intelligence. Theveto of the Censor introduced quite a novelelement of moral responsibility into the un-dertaking. And the characters were very un-usual on the English stage. The younger hero-ine is, like her mother, an Englishwoman tothe backbone, and not, like the heroines ofour fashionable drama, a prima donna of Ital-ian origin. Consequently she was sure to be


denounced as unnatural and undramatic bythe critics. The most vicious man in the playis not in the least a stage villain; indeed,he regards his own moral character with thesincere complacency of a hero of melodrama.The amiable devotee of romance and beautyis shewn at an age which brings out the futi-lization which these worships are apt to pro-duce if they are made the staple of life insteadof the sauce. The attitude of the clever youngpeople to their elders is faithfully representedas one of pitiless ridicule and unsympatheticcriticism, and forms a spectacle incredible tothose who, when young, were not clevererthan their nearest elders, and painful to thosesentimental parents who shrink from the cru-elty of youth, which pardons nothing becauseit knows nothing. In short, the characters andtheir relations are of a kind that the routineercritic has not yet learned to place; so that theirmisunderstanding was a foregone conclusion.Nevertheless, there was no hesitation behindthe curtain. When it went up at last, a stagemuch too small for the company was revealedto an auditorium much too small for the audi-ence. But the players, though it was impossi-ble for them to forget their own discomfort, atonce made the spectators forget theirs. It cer-tainly was a model audience, responsive fromthe first line to the last; and it got no less than


it deserved in return.I grieve to add that the second perfor-

mance, given for the edification of the Lon-don Press and of those members of the StageSociety who cannot attend the Sunday perfor-mances, was a less inspiriting one than thefirst. A solid phalanx of theatre-weary jour-nalists in an afternoon humor, most of themcommitted to irreconcilable disparagement ofproblem plays, and all of them bound by eti-quette to be as undemonstrative as possible,is not exactly the sort of audience that risesat the performers and cures them of the in-evitable reaction after an excitingly success-ful first night. The artist nature is a sensitiveand therefore a vindictive one; and master-ful players have a way with recalcitrant au-diences of rubbing a play into them insteadof delighting them with it. I should describethe second performance of Mrs Warren’s Pro-fession, especially as to its earlier stages, asdecidedly a rubbed-in one. The rubbing wasno doubt salutary; but it must have hurt someof the thinner skins. The charm of the lighterpassages fled; and the strong scenes, thoughthey again carried everything before them,yet discharged that duty in a grim fashion, do-ing execution on the enemy rather than mov-ing them to repentance and confession. Still,to those who had not seen the first perfor-


mance, the effect was sufficiently impressive;and they had the advantage of witnessing afresh development in Mrs Warren, who, artis-tically jealous, as I took it, of the overwhelm-ing effect of the end of the second act on theprevious day, threw herself into the fourthact in quite a new way, and achieved the ap-parently impossible feat of surpassing herself.The compliments paid to Miss Fanny Broughby the critics, eulogistic as they are, are thecompliments of men three-fourths duped asPartridge was duped by Garrick. By much ofher acting they were so completely taken inthat they did not recognize it as acting at all.Indeed, none of the six players quite escapedthis consequence of their own thoroughness.There was a distinct tendency among the lessexperienced critics to complain of their sen-timents and behavior. Naturally, the authordoes not share that grievance.

PICCARD’S COTTAGE,JANUARY 1902.

[Mrs Warren’s Profession was performedfor the first time in the theatre of the NewLyric Club, London, on the 5th and 6th Jan-uary 1902, with Madge McIntosh as Vivie,Julius Knight as Praed, Fanny Brough as MrsWarren, Charles Goodhart as Crofts, Harley


Granville-Barker as Frank, and Cosmo Stuartas the Reverend Samuel Gardner.]


ACT I

[Summer afternoon in a cottage garden on theeastern slope of a hill a little south of Hasle-mere in Surrey. Looking up the hill, the cot-tage is seen in the left hand corner of the gar-den, with its thatched roof and porch, and alarge latticed window to the left of the porch.A paling completely shuts in the garden, ex-cept for a gate on the right. The commonrises uphill beyond the paling to the sky line.Some folded canvas garden chairs are leaningagainst the side bench in the porch. A lady’sbicycle is propped against the wall, under thewindow. A little to the right of the porch ahammock is slung from two posts. A big can-vas umbrella, stuck in the ground, keeps thesun off the hammock, in which a young lady isreading and making notes, her head towardsthe cottage and her feet towards the gate. Infront of the hammock, and within reach of herhand, is a common kitchen chair, with a pile ofserious-looking books and a supply of writing

49


paper on it.][A gentleman walking on the common

comes into sight from behind the cottage. He ishardly past middle age, with something of theartist about him, unconventionally but care-fully dressed, and clean-shaven except for amoustache, with an eager susceptible face andvery amiable and considerate manners. Hehas silky black hair, with waves of grey andwhite in it. His eyebrows are white, his mous-tache black. He seems not certain of his way.He looks over the palings; takes stock of theplace; and sees the young lady.]

THE GENTLEMAN [taking off his hat] Ibeg your pardon. Can you direct me to Hind-head View—Mrs Alison’s?

THE YOUNG LADY [glancing up from herbook] This is Mrs Alison’s. [She resumes herwork].

THE GENTLEMAN. Indeed! Perhaps—may I ask are you Miss Vivie Warren?

THE YOUNG LADY [sharply, as she turnson her elbow to get a good look at him] Yes.

THE GENTLEMAN [daunted and concil-iatory] I’m afraid I appear intrusive. My nameis Praed. [Vivie at once throws her books uponthe chair, and gets out of the hammock]. Oh,pray don’t let me disturb you.

VIVIE [striding to the gate and opening itfor him] Come in, Mr Praed. [He comes in].

ACT I 51

Glad to see you. [She proffers her hand andtakes his with a resolute and hearty grip. Sheis an attractive specimen of the sensible, able,highly-educated young middle-class English-woman. Age 22. Prompt, strong, confident,self-possessed. Plain business-like dress, butnot dowdy. She wears a chatelaine at her belt,with a fountain pen and a paper knife amongits pendants].

PRAED. Very kind of you indeed, MissWarren. [She shuts the gate with a vigorousslam. He passes in to the middle of the gar-den, exercising his fingers, which are slightlynumbed by her greeting]. Has your mother ar-rived?

VIVIE [quickly, evidently scenting aggres-sion] Is she coming?

PRAED [surprised] Didn’t you expect us?VIVIE. No.PRAED. Now, goodness me, I hope Ive not

mistaken the day. That would be just like me,you know. Your mother arranged that she wasto come down from London and that I was tocome over from Horsham to be introduced toyou.

VIVIE [not at all pleased] Did she? Hm!My mother has rather a trick of taking me bysurprise—to see how I behave myself whileshe’s away, I suppose. I fancy I shall takemy mother very much by surprise one of these


days, if she makes arrangements that concernme without consulting me beforehand. Shehasnt come.

PRAED [embarrassed] I’m really verysorry.

VIVIE [throwing off her displeasure] It’snot your fault, Mr Praed, is it? And I’m veryglad youve come. You are the only one ofmy mother’s friends I have ever asked her tobring to see me.

PRAED [relieved and delighted] Oh, nowthis is really very good of you, Miss Warren!

VIVIE. Will you come indoors; or wouldyou rather sit out here and talk?

PRAED. It will be nicer out here, dont youthink?

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! Al-low me. [He lays hands on the chair].

VIVIE [letting him take it] Take care ofyour fingers; theyre rather dodgy things,those chairs. [She goes across to the chair withthe books on it; pitches them into the ham-mock; and brings the chair forward with oneswing].

PRAED [who has just unfolded his chair]Oh, now do let me take that hard chair. I likehard chairs.

VIVIE. So do I. Sit down, Mr Praed. [This

ACT I 53

invitation she gives with a genial peremptori-ness, his anxiety to please her clearly strikingher as a sign of weakness of character on hispart. But he does not immediately obey].

PRAED. By the way, though, hadnt we bet-ter 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 befriends with me.

PRAED [again beaming] Thank you, mydear Miss Warren; thank you. Dear me! I’mso glad your mother hasnt spoilt you!

VIVIE. How?PRAED. Well, in making you too conven-

tional. You know, my dear Miss Warren, I ama born anarchist. I hate authority. It spoilsthe relations between parent and child; evenbetween mother and daughter. Now I was al-ways afraid that your mother would strain herauthority to make you very conventional. It’ssuch a relief to find that she hasnt.

VIVIE. Oh! have I been behaving uncon-ventionally?

PRAED. Oh no: oh dear no. At least, notconventionally unconventionally, you under-stand. [She nods and sits down. He goes on,with a cordial outburst] But it was so charm-


ing of you to say that you were disposed to befriends with me! You modern young ladies aresplendid: perfectly splendid!

VIVIE [dubiously] Eh? [watching him withdawning disappointment as to the quality ofhis brains and character].

PRAED. When I was your age, young menand women were afraid of each other: therewas no good fellowship. Nothing real. Onlygallantry copied out of novels, and as vulgarand affected as it could be. Maidenly reserve!gentlemanly chivalry! always saying no whenyou meant yes! simple purgatory for shy andsincere souls.

VIVIE. Yes, I imagine there must havebeen a frightful waste of time. Especiallywomen’s time.

PRAED. Oh, waste of life, waste of every-thing. But things are improving. Do youknow, I have been in a positive state of excite-ment about meeting you ever since your mag-nificent achievements at Cambridge: a thingunheard of in my day. It was perfectly splen-did, your tieing with the third wrangler. Justthe right place, you know. The first wrangleris always a dreamy, morbid fellow, in whomthe thing is pushed to the length of a disease.

VIVIE. It doesnt pay. I wouldnt do it againfor the same money.

PRAED [aghast] The same money!

ACT I 55

VIVIE. Yes. Fifty pounds. Perhaps youdont know how it was. Mrs Latham, my tu-tor at Newnham, told my mother that I coulddistinguish myself in the mathematical triposif I went in for it in earnest. The papers werefull just then of Phillipa Summers beating thesenior wrangler. You remember about it, ofcourse.

PRAED [shakes his head energetically] !!!VIVIE. Well, anyhow, she did; and noth-

ing would please my mother but that I shoulddo the same thing. I said flatly that it wasnot worth my while to face the grind since Iwas not going in for teaching; but I offered totry for fourth wrangler or thereabouts for fiftypounds. She closed with me at that, after a lit-tle grumbling; and I was better than my bar-gain. But I wouldnt do it again for that. Twohundred pounds would have been nearer themark.

PRAED [much damped] Lord bless me!Thats a very practical way of looking at it.

VIVIE. Did you expect to find me an un-practical person?

PRAED. But surely it’s practical to con-sider not only the work these honors cost, butalso the culture they bring.

VIVIE. Culture! My dear Mr Praed: do youknow what the mathematical tripos means?It means grind, grind, grind for six to eight


hours a day at mathematics, and nothing butmathematics. I’m supposed to know some-thing about science; but I know nothing ex-cept the mathematics it involves. I can makecalculations for engineers, electricians, insur-ance companies, and so on; but I know nextto nothing about engineering or electricityor insurance. I dont even know arithmeticwell. Outside mathematics, lawn-tennis, eat-ing, sleeping, cycling, and walking, I’m a moreignorant barbarian than any woman couldpossibly be who hadnt gone in for the tripos.

PRAED [revolted] What a monstrous,wicked, rascally system! I knew it! I felt atonce that it meant destroying all that makeswomanhood beautiful!

VIVIE. I dont object to it on that score inthe 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 con-veyancing. Under cover of that I shall do somelaw, with one eye on the Stock Exchange allthe time. Ive come down here by myself toread law: not for a holiday, as my motherimagines. I hate holidays.

PRAED. You make my blood run cold. Areyou to have no romance, no beauty in yourlife?

ACT I 57

VIVIE. I dont care for either, I assure you.PRAED. You cant mean that.VIVIE. Oh yes I do. I like working and

getting paid for it. When I’m tired of work-ing, I like a comfortable chair, a cigar, a lit-tle whisky, and a novel with a good detectivestory in it.

PRAED [rising in a frenzy of repudiation]I dont believe it. I am an artist; and I cant be-lieve it: I refuse to believe it. It’s only that youhavnt discovered yet what a wonderful worldart can open up to you.

VIVIE. Yes I have. Last May I spentsix weeks in London with Honoria Fraser.Mamma thought we were doing a round ofsightseeing together; but I was really at Hono-ria’s chambers in Chancery Lane every day,working away at actuarial calculations forher, and helping her as well as a greenhorncould. In the evenings we smoked and talked,and never dreamt of going out except for ex-ercise. And I never enjoyed myself more inmy life. I cleared all my expenses and got ini-tiated into the business without a fee in thebargain.

PRAED. But bless my heart and soul, MissWarren, do you call that discovering art?

VIVIE. Wait a bit. That wasnt the begin-ning. I went up to town on an invitation fromsome artistic people in Fitzjohn’s Avenue: one


of the girls was a Newnham chum. They tookme 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 Wag-ner and so on. I wouldnt go through thatexperience again for anything you could of-fer me. I held out for civility’s sake until thethird day; and then I said, plump out, that Icouldnt stand any more of it, and went off toChancery Lane. Now you know the sort of per-fectly splendid modern young lady I am. Howdo 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 fromany shortcoming on your part, you know: Idont mean that. But you are so different fromher 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,

ACT I 59

Miss Warren, that people who are dissatisfiedwith their own bringing-up generally thinkthat the world would be all right if every-body were to be brought up quite differently.Now your mother’s life has been—er—I sup-pose you know—

VIVIE. Dont suppose anything, Mr Praed.I hardly know my mother. Since I was a child Ihave lived in England, at school or at college,or with people paid to take charge of me. Ihave been boarded out all my life. My motherhas lived in Brussels or Vienna and never letme go to her. I only see her when she visitsEngland for a few days. I dont complain: it’sbeen very pleasant; for people have been verygood to me; and there has always been plentyof money to make things smooth. But dontimagine I know anything about my mother. Iknow far less than you do.

PRAED [very ill at ease] In that case— [Hestops, quite at a loss. Then, with a forced at-tempt at gaiety] But what nonsense we aretalking! Of course you and your mother willget on capitally. [He rises, and looks abroad atthe view]. What a charming little place youhave here!

VIVIE [unmoved] Rather a violent changeof subject, Mr Praed. Why wont my mother’slife bear being talked about?

PRAED. Oh, you mustnt say that. Isnt it


natural that I should have a certain delicacyin talking to my old friend’s daughter abouther behind her back? You and she will haveplenty of opportunity of talking about it whenshe comes.

VIVIE. No: she wont talk about it either.[Rising] However, I daresay you have goodreasons for telling me nothing. Only, mindthis, Mr Praed, I expect there will be a battleroyal when my mother hears of my ChanceryLane project.

PRAED [ruefully] I’m afraid there will.VIVIE. Well, I shall win because I want

nothing but my fare to London to start thereto-morrow earning my own living by devillingfor Honoria. Besides, I have no mysteries tokeep up; and it seems she has. I shall use thatadvantage 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 sentimen-tality]. Besides, you may be too bold. Yourmother is not to be trifled with when she’s an-gry.

VIVIE. You cant frighten me, Mr Praed.In that month at Chancery Lane I had oppor-tunities of taking the measure of one or twowomen very like my mother. You may back

ACT I 61

me to win. But if I hit harder in my ignorancethan I need, remember it is you who refuseto enlighten me. Now, let us drop the subject.[She takes her chair and replaces it near thehammock with the same vigorous swing as be-fore].

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 arriveat the gate. Mrs Warren is between 40 and50, formerly pretty, showily dressed in a bril-liant hat and a gay blouse fitting tightly overher bust and flanked by fashionable sleeves.Rather spoilt and domineering, and decidedlyvulgar, but, on the whole, a genial and fairlypresentable old blackguard of a woman.]

[Crofts is a tall powerfully-built man ofabout 50, fashionably dressed in the style of ayoung man. Nasal voice, reedier than might beexpected from his strong frame. Clean-shavenbulldog jaws, large flat ears, and thick neck:gentlemanly combination of the most brutaltypes of city man, sporting man, and manabout town.]

VIVIE. Here they are. [Coming to themas they enter the garden] How do, mater? MrPraed’s been here this half hour, waiting foryou.

MRS WARREN. Well, if youve been wait-


ing, Praddy, it’s your own fault: I thoughtyoud have had the gumption to know I wascoming by the 3.10 train. Vivie: put your haton, dear: youll get sunburnt. Oh, I forgot tointroduce you. Sir George Crofts: my littleVivie.

[Crofts advances to Vivie with his mostcourtly manner. She nods, but makes no mo-tion to shake hands.]

CROFTS. May I shake hands with a younglady whom I have known by reputation verylong as the daughter of one of my oldestfriends?

VIVIE [who has been looking him up anddown sharply] If you like. [She takes his ten-derly proferred hand and gives it a squeezethat makes him open his eyes; then turnsaway, and says to her mother] Will you comein, or shall I get a couple more chairs? [Shegoes into the porch for the chairs].

MRS WARREN. Well, George, what do youthink 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 SirGeorge help you with the chairs, dear.

ACT I 63

VIVIE [pitching them into his arms] Hereyou are. [She dusts her hands and turns toMrs Warren]. Youd like some tea, wouldntyou?

MRS WARREN [sitting in Praed’s chairand fanning herself ] I’m dying for a drop todrink.

VIVIE. I’ll see about it. [She goes into thecottage].

[Sir George has by this time managed tounfold a chair and plant it by Mrs Warren, onher left. He throws the other on the grass andsits down, looking dejected and rather fool-ish, with the handle of his stick in his mouth.Praed, still very uneasy, fidgets around thegarden on their right.]

MRS WARREN [to Praed, looking atCrofts] Just look at him, Praddy: he lookscheerful, dont he? He’s been worrying my lifeout these three years to have that little girl ofmine 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 yourmouth. [Crofts sulkily obeys].

PRAED. I think, you know—if you dontmind my saying so—that we had better getout of the habit of thinking of her as a littlegirl. You see she has really distinguished her-self; and I’m not sure, from what I have seenof her, that she is not older than any of us.


MRS WARREN [greatly amused] Only lis-ten to him, George! Older than any of us! Wellshe has been stuffing you nicely with her im-portance.

PRAED. But young people are particularlysensitive about being treated in that way.

MRS WARREN. Yes; and young peoplehave to get all that nonsense taken out ofthem, and good deal more besides. Dont youinterfere, Praddy: I know how to treat my ownchild as well as you do. [Praed, with a graveshake of his head, walks up the garden withhis hands behind his back. Mrs Warren pre-tends to laugh, but looks after him with per-ceptible concern. Then, she whispers to Crofts]Whats the matter with him? What does hetake it like that for?

CROFTS [morosely] Youre afraid of Praed.MRS WARREN. What! Me! Afraid of dear

old Praddy! Why, a fly wouldnt be afraid ofhim.

CROFTS. Youre afraid of him.MRS WARREN [angry] I’ll trouble you to

mind your own business, and not try any ofyour sulks on me. I’m not afraid of you, any-how. If you cant make yourself agreeable,youd better go home. [She gets up, and, turn-ing her back on him, finds herself face to facewith Praed]. Come, Praddy, I know it wasonly your tender-heartedness. Youre afraid

ACT I 65

I’ll bully her.PRAED. My dear Kitty: you think I’m of-

fended. Dont imagine that: pray dont. Butyou know I often notice things that escapeyou; and though you never take my advice,you sometimes admit afterwards that youought to have taken it.

MRS WARREN. Well, what do you noticenow?

PRAED. Only that Vivie is a grownwoman. Pray, Kitty, treat her with every re-spect.

MRS WARREN [with genuine amazement]Respect! Treat my own daughter with respect!What next, pray!

VIVIE [appearing at the cottage door andcalling to Mrs Warren] Mother: will you cometo my room before tea?

MRS WARREN. Yes, dearie. [She laughsindulgently at Praed’s gravity, and pats himon the cheek as she passes him on her way tothe porch]. Dont be cross, Praddy. [She fol-lows Vivie into the cottage].

CROFTS [furtively] I say, Praed.PRAED. Yes.CROFTS. I want to ask you a rather par-

ticular 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 evertell 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 notto tell if she had said anything to you. But it’svery awkward to be uncertain about it nowthat we shall be meeting the girl every day.We dont exactly know how we ought to feel to-wards her.

PRAED. What difference can that make?We take her on her own merits. What does itmatter who her father was?

CROFTS [suspiciously] Then you knowwho he was?

PRAED [with a touch of temper] I said nojust now. Did you not hear me?

CROFTS. Look here, Praed. I ask you as aparticular favor. If you do know [movement ofprotest from Praed] —I only say, if you know,you might at least set my mind at rest abouther. The fact is, I feel attracted.

PRAED [sternly] What do you mean?CROFTS. Oh, dont be alarmed: it’s quite

an innocent feeling. Thats what puzzles meabout it. Why, for all I know, I might be herfather.

ACT I 67

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 leastresemblance.

CROFTS. As to that, theres no resem-blance between her and her mother that I cansee. I suppose she’s not your daughter, is she?

PRAED [rising indignantly] Really,Crofts—!

CROFTS. No offence, Praed. Quite allow-able as between two men of the world.

PRAED [recovering himself with an effortand speaking gently and gravely] Now listento me, my dear Crofts. [He sits down again].I have nothing to do with that side of MrsWarren’s life, and never had. She has neverspoken to me about it; and of course I havenever spoken to her about it. Your delicacywill tell you that a handsome woman needssome friends who are not—well, not on thatfooting with her. The effect of her own beautywould become a torment to her if she could notescape from it occasionally. You are probablyon much more confidential terms with Kittythan I am. Surely you can ask her the ques-tion yourself.

CROFTS. I have asked her, often enough.


But she’s so determined to keep the child allto herself that she would deny that it ever hada father if she could. [Rising] I’m thoroughlyuncomfortable about it, Praed.

PRAED [rising also] Well, as you are, atall events, old enough to be her father, I dontmind agreeing that we both regard Miss Viviein a parental way, as a young girl who we arebound to protect and help. What do you say?

CROFTS [aggressively] I’m no older thanyou, if you come to that.

PRAED. Yes you are, my dear fellow: youwere born old. I was born a boy: Ive neverbeen able to feel the assurance of a grown-upman in my life. [He folds his chair and carriesit to the porch].

MRS WARREN [calling from within thecottage] Prad-dee! George! Tea-ea-ea-ea!

CROFTS [hastily] She’s calling us. [He hur-ries in].

[Praed shakes his head bodingly, and is fol-lowing Crofts when he is hailed by a younggentleman who has just appeared on the com-mon, and is making for the gate. He is pleas-ant, pretty, smartly dressed, cleverly good-for-nothing, not long turned 20, with a charmingvoice and agreeably disrespectful manners. Hecarries a light sporting magazine rifle.]

THE YOUNG GENTLEMAN. Hallo!Praed!

ACT I 69

PRAED. Why, Frank Gardner! [Frankcomes in and shakes hands cordially]. Whaton 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 econ-omy. Things came to a crisis in July: the Ro-man father had to pay my debts. He’s stonybroke in consequence; and so am I. What areyou up to in these parts? do you know the peo-ple here?

PRAED. Yes: I’m spending the day with aMiss Warren.

FRANK [enthusiastically] What! Do youknow Vivie? Isnt she a jolly girl? I’m teachingher to shoot with this [putting down the rifle].I’m so glad she knows you: youre just the sortof fellow she ought to know. [He smiles, andraises the charming voice almost to a singingtone as he exclaims] It’s ever so jolly to find youhere, Praed.

PRAED. I’m an old friend of her mother.Mrs Warren brought me over to make herdaughter’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. Ive 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 ac-

cept 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. Ive no doubt youll make yourself

popular, as usual. Come in and try [movingtowards the house].

FRANK. Stop a bit. [Seriously] I want totake you into my confidence.

PRAED. Pray dont. It’s only some freshfolly, like the barmaid at Redhill.

FRANK. It’s ever so much more seriousthan that. You say youve only just met Viviefor 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 win-dow] I say, Praed: what are you about? Docome along. [He disappears].

ACT I 71

FRANK. Hallo! Sort of chap that wouldtake a prize at a dog show, aint he? Who’s he?

PRAED. Sir George Crofts, an old friend ofMrs Warren’s. I think we had better come in.

[On their way to the porch they are inter-rupted by a call from the gate. Turning, theysee an elderly clergyman looking over it.]

THE CLERGYMAN [calling] Frank!FRANK. Hallo! [To Praed] The Roman fa-

ther. [To the clergyman] Yes, gov’nor: allright: presently. [To Praed] Look here, Praed:youd better go in to tea. I’ll join you directly.

PRAED. Very good. [He goes into the cot-tage].

[The clergyman remains outside the gate,with his hands on the top of it. The Rev.Samuel Gardner, a beneficed clergyman of theEstablished Church, is over 50. Externally heis pretentious, booming, noisy, important. Re-ally he is that obsolescent phenomenon the foolof the family dumped on the Church by his fa-ther the patron, clamorously asserting himselfas father and clergyman without being able tocommand respect in either capacity.]

REV. S. Well, sir. Who are your friendshere, if I may ask?

FRANK. Oh, it’s all right, gov’nor! Comein.

REV. S. No, sir; not until I know whose gar-den 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 wran-

gler. Ever so intellectual. Took a higher de-gree than you did; so why should she go tohear you preach?

REV. S. Dont be disrespectful, sir.FRANK. Oh, it dont matter: nobody hears

us. Come in. [He opens the gate, unceremo-niously pulling his father with it into the gar-den]. I want to introduce you to her. Do youremember the advice you gave me last July,gov’nor?

REV. S. [severely] Yes. I advised you toconquer your idleness and flippancy, and towork your way into an honorable professionand live on it and not upon me.

FRANK. No: thats what you thought of af-terwards. What you actually said was thatsince I had neither brains nor money, I’d bet-ter turn my good looks to account by marry-ing someone with both. Well, look here. MissWarren has brains: you cant 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 ofhigher things. Social position, for instance.

ACT I 73

FRANK. I dont care a rap about that.REV. S. But I do, sir.FRANK. Well, nobody wants you to marry

her. Anyhow, she has what amounts to a highCambridge degree; and she seems to have asmuch money as she wants.

REV. S. [sinking into a feeble vein of hu-mor] I greatly doubt whether she has as muchmoney as you will want.

FRANK. Oh, come: I havnt been so veryextravagant. I live ever so quietly; I dontdrink; I dont bet much; and I never go regu-larly to the razzle-dazzle as you did when youwere my age.

REV. S. [booming hollowly] Silence, sir.FRANK. Well, you told me yourself, when

I was making ever such an ass of myself aboutthe barmaid at Redhill, that you once offereda woman fifty pounds for the letters you wroteto her when—

REV. S. [terrified] Sh-sh-sh, Frank, forHeaven’s sake! [He looks round apprehen-sively Seeing no one within earshot he plucksup courage to boom again, but more sub-duedly]. You are taking an ungentlemanlyadvantage of what I confided to you for yourown good, to save you from an error you wouldhave repented all your life long. Take warn-ing by your father’s follies, sir; and dont makethem an excuse for your own.


FRANK. Did you ever hear the story of theDuke of Wellington and his letters?

REV. S. No, sir; and I dont want to hear it.FRANK. The old Iron Duke didnt throw

away fifty pounds: not he. He just wrote:“Dear Jenny: publish and be damned! Yoursaffectionately, Wellington.” Thats what youshould have done.

REV. S. [piteously] Frank, my boy,: whenI wrote those letters I put myself into thatwoman’s power. When I told you about themI put myself, to some extent, I am sorry tosay, in your power. She refused my moneywith these words, which I shall never forget.“Knowledge is power” she said; “and I neversell power.” Thats more than twenty yearsago; and she has never made use of her poweror caused me a moment’s uneasiness. You arebehaving worse to me than she did, Frank.

FRANK. Oh yes I dare say! Did you everpreach at her the way you preach at me everyday?

REV. S. [wounded almost to tears] I leaveyou, sir. You are incorrigible. [He turns to-wards the gate].

FRANK [utterly unmoved] Tell them Ishant be home to tea, will you, gov’nor, likea good fellow? [He moves towards the cottagedoor and is met by Praed and Vivie comingout].

ACT I 75

VIVIE [to Frank] Is that your father,Frank? I do so want to meet him.

FRANK. Certainly. [Calling after his fa-ther] Gov’nor. Youre wanted. [The parsonturns at the gate, fumbling nervously at hishat. Praed crosses the garden to the oppositeside, beaming in anticipation of civilities]. Myfather: Miss Warren.

VIVIE [going to the clergyman and shakinghis hand] Very glad to see you here, Mr Gard-ner. [Calling to the cottage] Mother: comealong: youre wanted.

[Mrs Warren appears on the threshold, andis immediately transfixed, recognizing the cler-gyman.]

VIVIE [continuing] Let me introduce—MRS WARREN [swooping on the Reverend

Samuel] Why it’s Sam Gardner, gone into theChurch! Well, I never! Dont you know us,Sam? This is George Crofts, as large as lifeand twice as natural. Dont 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: Icame across them only the other day.

REV. S. [miserably confused] Miss Vava-sour, I believe.

MRS WARREN [correcting him quickly ina loud whisper] Tch! Nonsense! Mrs Warren:dont you see my daughter there?


ACT II

[Inside the cottage after nightfall. Lookingeastward from within instead of westwardfrom without, the latticed window, with itscurtains drawn, is now seen in the middle ofthe front wall of the cottage, with the porchdoor to the left of it. In the left-hand side wallis the door leading to the kitchen. Farther backagainst the same wall is a dresser with a can-dle and matches on it, and Frank’s rifle stand-ing beside them, with the barrel resting in theplate-rack. In the centre a table stands with alighted lamp on it. Vivie’s books and writingmaterials are on a table to the right of the win-dow, against the wall. The fireplace is on theright, with a settle: there is no fire. Two of thechairs are set right and left of the table.]

[The cottage door opens, shewing a finestarlit night without; and Mrs Warren, hershoulders wrapped in a shawl borrowed fromVivie, enters, followed by Frank, who throwshis cap on the window seat. She has had

77


enough of walking, and gives a gasp of reliefas she unpins her hat; takes it off; sticks thepin through the crown; and puts it on the ta-ble.]

MRS WARREN. O Lord! I dont knowwhich is the worst of the country, the walk-ing or the sitting at home with nothing to do.I could do with a whisky and soda now verywell, if only they had such a things in thisplace.

FRANK. Perhaps Vivie’s got some.MRS WARREN. Nonsense! What would a

young girl like her be doing with such things!Never mind: it dont matter. I wonder how shepasses her time here! I’d a good deal rather bein Vienna.

FRANK. Let me take you there. [He helpsher to take off her shawl, gallantly giving hershoulders a very perceptible squeeze as he doesso].

MRS WARREN. Ah! would you? I’m begin-ning to think youre a chip of the old block.

FRANK. Like the gov’nor, eh? [He hangsthe shawl on the nearest chair, and sits down].

MRS WARREN. Never you mind. What doyou know about such things? Youre only a boy.[She goes to the hearth to be farther from temp-tation].

FRANK. Do come to Vienna with me? It’dbe ever such larks.

ACT II 79

MRS WARREN. No, thank you. Vienna isno place for you—at least not until youre a lit-tle older. [She nods at him to emphasize thispiece 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, littleboy [taking his face in her hands and turningit up to her]: I know you through and throughby your likeness to your father, better thanyou know yourself. Dont you go taking anysilly ideas into your head about me. Do youhear?

FRANK [gallantly wooing her with hisvoice] Cant help it, my dear Mrs Warren: itruns in the family.

[She pretends to box his ears; then looksat the pretty laughing upturned face of a mo-ment, tempted. At last she kisses him, and im-mediately turns away, out of patience with her-self.]

MRS WARREN. There! I shouldnt havedone that. I am wicked. Never you mind, mydear: it’s only a motherly kiss. Go and makelove 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 wont have any young scamp tam-


pering with my little girl. Do you hear? I wonthave it.

FRANK [quite unabashed] My dear MrsWarren: dont you be alarmed. My intentionsare honorable: ever so honorable; and your lit-tle girl is jolly well able to take care of herself.She dont need looking after half so much asher mother. She aint so handsome, you know.

MRS WARREN [taken aback by his assur-ance] Well, you have got a nice healthy twoinches of cheek all over you. I dont knowwhere you got it. Not from your father, any-how.

CROFTS [in the garden] The gipsies, I sup-pose?

REV. S. [replying] The broomsquires arefar worse.

MRS WARREN [to Frank] S-sh! Remem-ber! youve had your warning.

[Crofts and the Reverend Samuel Gardnercome in from the garden, the clergyman con-tinuing his conversation as he enters.]

REV. S. The perjury at the Winchester as-sizes is deplorable.

MRS WARREN. Well? what became of youtwo? And wheres Praddy and Vivie?

CROFTS [putting his hat on the settle andhis stick in the chimney corner] They went upthe hill. We went to the village. I wanted adrink. [He sits down on the settle, putting his

ACT II 81

legs up along the seat].MRS WARREN. Well, she oughtnt to go off

like that without telling me. [To Frank] Getyour father a chair, Frank: where are yourmanners? [Frank springs up and gracefullyoffers his father his chair; then takes anotherfrom the wall and sits down at the table, in themiddle, with his father on his right and MrsWarren on his left]. George: where are you go-ing to stay to-night? You cant stay here. Andwhats Praddy going to do?

CROFTS. Gardner’ll put me up.MRS WARREN. Oh, no doubt youve taken

care of yourself! But what about Praddy?CROFTS. Dont know. I suppose he can

sleep at the inn.MRS WARREN. Havnt 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 MrPraed’s social position?

MRS WARREN. Oh, he’s all right: he’s anarchitect. What an old stick-in-the-mud youare, Sam!

FRANK. Yes, it’s all right, gov’nor. Hebuilt that place down in Wales for the Duke.Caernarvon Castle they call it. You must haveheard of it. [He winks with lightning smart-ness at Mrs Warren, and regards his fatherblandly].


REV. S. Oh, in that case, of course we shallonly be too happy. I suppose he knows theDuke personally.

FRANK. Oh, ever so intimately! We canstick him in Georgina’s old room.

MRS WARREN. Well, thats settled. Now ifthose two would only come in and let us havesupper. Theyve no right to stay out after darklike this.

CROFTS [aggressively] What harm arethey doing you?

MRS WARREN. Well, harm or not, I dontlike it.

FRANK. Better not wait for them, MrsWarren. Praed will stay out as long as pos-sible. He has never known before what it is tostray over the heath on a summer night withmy Vivie.

CROFTS [sitting up in some consternation]I say, you know! Come!

REV. S. [rising, startled out of his profes-sional manner into real force and sincerity]Frank, once and for all, it’s out of the ques-tion. Mrs Warren will tell you that it’s not tobe thought of.

CROFTS. Of course not.FRANK [with enchanting placidity] Is that

so, Mrs Warren?MRS WARREN [reflectively] Well, Sam, I

dont know. If the girl wants to get married, no

ACT II 83

good can come of keeping her unmarried.REV. S. [astounded] But married to him!—

your daughter to my son! Only think: it’s im-possible.

CROFTS. Of course it’s impossible. Dontbe a fool, Kitty.

MRS WARREN [nettled] Why not? Isnt mydaughter good enough for your son?

REV. S. But surely, my dear Mrs Warren,you know the reasons—

MRS WARREN [defiantly] I know no rea-sons. If you know any, you can tell them tothe lad, or to the girl, or to your congregation,if you like.

REV. S. [collapsing helplessly into hischair] You know very well that I couldnt tellanyone the reasons. But my boy will believeme when I tell him there are reasons.

FRANK. Quite right, Dad: he will. Buthas your boy’s conduct ever been influencedby your reasons?

CROFTS. You cant marry her; and thatsall about it. [He gets up and stands on thehearth, with his back to the fireplace, frowningdeterminedly].

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, inmy own graceful fashion.


CROFTS [to Mrs Warren] I suppose youdont want to marry the girl to a man youngerthan herself and without either a professionor twopence to keep her on. Ask Sam, if youdont believe me. [To the parson] How muchmore money are you going to give him?

REV. S. Not another penny. He has had hispatrimony; 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 putshis legs on the seat again, as if the matter werefinally disposed of ].

FRANK [plaintively] This is ever so merce-nary. Do you suppose Miss Warren’s going tomarry for money? If we love one another—

MRS WARREN. Thank you. Your love’s apretty cheap commodity, my lad. If you haveno means of keeping a wife, that settles it; youcant have Vivie.

FRANK [much amused] What do you 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 ever so sorry to sur-

prise you, Crofts; but you allowed yourself theliberty of speaking to me like a father a mo-

ACT II 85

ment 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, Ishall lose no time in placing my case beforeher. [They stare at him; and he begins to de-claim 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 recit-ing; and Vivie and Praed come in. He breaksoff. Praed puts his hat on the dresser. There isan immediate improvement in the company’sbehavior. Crofts takes down his legs from thesettle and pulls himself together as Praed joinshim at the fireplace. Mrs Warren loses her easeof manner and takes refuge in querulousness.]

MRS WARREN. Wherever have you been,Vivie?

VIVIE [taking off her hat and throwing itcarelessly on the table] On the hill.

MRS WARREN. Well, you shouldnt go offlike that without letting me know. How could


I tell what had become of you? And night com-ing on too!

VIVIE [going to the door of the kitchen andopening it, ignoring her mother] Now, aboutsupper? [All rise except Mrs Warren] We shallbe rather crowded in here, I’m afraid.

MRS WARREN. Did you hear what I said,Vivie?

VIVIE [quietly] Yes, mother. [Revertingto the supper difficulty] How many are we?[Counting] One, two, three, four, five, six.Well, two will have to wait until the rest aredone: Mrs Alison has only plates and knivesfor four.

PRAED. Oh, it doesnt matter about me.I—

VIVIE. You have had a long walk and arehungry, Mr Praed: you shall have your supperat once. I can wait myself. I want one personto wait with me. Frank: are you hungry?

FRANK. Not the least in the world. Com-pletely off my peck, in fact.

MRS WARREN [to Crofts] Neither are you,George. You can wait.

CROFTS. Oh, hang it, Ive eaten nothingsince tea-time. Cant Sam do it?

FRANK. Would you starve my poor father?REV. S. [testily] Allow me to speak for my-

self, sir. I am perfectly willing to wait.VIVIE [decisively] There’s no need. Only

ACT II 87

two are wanted. [She opens the door of thekitchen]. Will you take my mother in, MrGardner. [The parson takes Mrs Warren; andthey pass into the kitchen. Praed and Croftsfollow. All except Praed clearly disapprove ofthe arrangement, but do not know how to re-sist it. Vivie stands at the door looking in atthem]. Can you squeeze past to that corner,Mr Praed: it’s rather a tight fit. Take care ofyour 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 checksher with a gesture, and steals to the cottagedoor, which he softly sets wide open]. Oh Lor,what a draught! Youd better shut it, dear.

[Vivie shuts it with a slam, and then, not-ing with disgust that her mother’s hat andshawl are lying about, takes them tidily to thewindow seat, whilst Frank noiselessly shutsthe cottage door.]

FRANK [exulting] Aha! Got rid of em.Well, Vivvums: what do you think of my gov-ernor?

VIVIE [preoccupied and serious] Ivehardly spoken to him. He doesnt strike me asa particularly able person.

FRANK. Well, you know, the old man is notaltogether such a fool as he looks. You see, he


was shoved into the Church, rather; and intrying to live up to it he makes a much biggerass of himself than he really is. I dont dislikehim as much as you might expect. He meanswell. How do you think youll get on with him?

VIVIE [rather grimly] I dont think my fu-ture life will be much concerned with him, orwith any of that old circle of my mother’s, ex-cept perhaps Praed. [She sits down on thesettle] 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, isnt 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 goingto be a waster, shifting along from one mealto another with no purpose, and no character,and no grit in me, I’d open an artery and bleedto death without one moment’s hesitation.

FRANK. Oh no, you wouldnt. Why shouldthey take any grind when they can afford notto? I wish I had their luck. No: what I objectto is their form. It isnt the thing: it’s slovenly,ever so slovenly.

VIVIE. Do you think your form will be anybetter when youre as old as Crofts, if you dont

ACT II 89

work?FRANK. Of course I do. Ever so much bet-

ter. Vivvums mustnt lecture: her little boy’sincorrigible. [He attempts to take her face ca-ressingly in his hands].

VIVIE [striking his hands down sharply]Off with you: Vivvums is not in a humor forpetting her little boy this evening. [She risesand comes forward to the other side of theroom].

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 ad-vanced thinkers are agreed that half the dis-eases of modern civilization are due to starva-tion of the affections of the young. Now, I—

VIVIE [cutting him short] You are verytiresome. [She opens the inner door] Haveyou room for Frank there? He’s complainingof starvation.

MRS WARREN [within] Of course there is[clatter of knives and glasses as she moves thethings on the table]. Here! theres room nowbeside me. Come along, Mr Frank.

FRANK. Her little boy will be ever so evenwith his Vivvums for this. [He passes into thekitchen].

MRS WARREN [within] Here, Vivie: come


on you too, child. You must be famished. [Sheenters, followed by Crofts, who holds the dooropen with marked deference. She goes outwithout looking at him; and he shuts the doorafter her]. Why George, you cant be done:youve eaten nothing. Is there anything wrongwith you?

CROFTS. Oh, all I wanted was a drink.[He thrusts his hands in his pockets, and be-gins prowling about the room, restless andsulky].

MRS WARREN. Well, I like enough to eat.But a little of that cold beef and cheese andlettuce goes a long way. [With a sigh of onlyhalf repletion she sits down lazily on the set-tle].

CROFTS. What do you go encouraging thatyoung pup for?

MRS WARREN [on the alert at once] Nowsee here, George: what are you up to aboutthat girl? Ive been watching your way of look-ing at her. Remember: I know you and whatyour looks mean.

CROFTS. Theres no harm in looking ather, is there?

MRS WARREN. I’d put you out and packyou back to London pretty soon if I saw any ofyour nonsense. My girl’s little finger is moreto me than your whole body and soul. [Croftsreceives this with a sneering grin. Mrs War-

ACT II 91

ren, flushing a little at her failure to impose onhim in the character of a theatrically devotedmother, adds in a lower key] Make your mindeasy: the young pup has no more chance thanyou have.

CROFTS. Maynt a man take an interest ina 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 isnt

to be picked up every day. No other man in myposition would put up with you for a mother-in-law. Why shouldnt she marry me?

MRS WARREN. You!CROFTS. We three could live together

quite comfortably. I’d die before her and leaveher a bouncing widow with plenty of money.Why not? It’s been growing in my mind allthe time Ive been walking with that fool in-side 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 sortof awe behind her contemptuous disgust: hestealthily, with a carnal gleam in his eye anda loose grin.]

CROFTS [suddenly becoming anxious andurgent as he sees no sign of sympathy in her]Look here, Kitty: youre a sensible woman:you neednt put on any moral airs. I’ll ask nomore questions; and you need answer none.I’ll settle the whole property on her; and ifyou want a checque for yourself on the wed-ding day, you can name any figure you like—in reason.

MRS WARREN. So it’s come to that withyou, George, like all the other worn-out oldcreatures!

CROFTS [savagely] Damn you![Before she can retort the door of the kitchen

is opened; and the voices of the others areheard returning. Crofts, unable to recover hispresence of mind, hurries out of the cottage.The clergyman appears at the kitchen door.]

REV. S. [looking round] Where is SirGeorge?

MRS WARREN. Gone out to have a pipe.[The clergyman takes his hat from the table,and joins Mrs Warren at the fireside. Mean-while, Vivie comes in, followed by Frank, who

ACT II 93

collapses into the nearest chair with an air ofextreme exhaustion. Mrs Warren looks roundat Vivie and says, with her affectation of ma-ternal patronage even more forced than usual]Well, dearie: have you had a good supper?

VIVIE. You know what Mrs Alison’s sup-pers are. [She turns to Frank and pets him]Poor Frank! was all the beef gone? did itget nothing but bread and cheese and gin-ger beer? [Seriously, as if she had done quiteenough trifling for one evening] Her butter isreally awful. I must get some down from thestores.

FRANK. Do, in Heaven’s name![Vivie goes to the writing-table and makes a

memorandum to order the butter. Praed comesin from the kitchen, putting up his handker-chief, which he has been using as a napkin.]

REV. S. Frank, my boy: it is time for usto be thinking of home. Your mother does notknow 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’sa genuinely intellectual artistic woman; andshe sees nobody here from one year’s end toanother except the gov’nor; so you can imag-ine how jolly dull it pans out for her. [To hisfather] Youre not intellectual or artistic: areyou pater? So take Praed home at once; and


I’ll stay here and entertain Mrs Warren. Youllpick up Crofts in the garden. He’ll be excellentcompany 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 Viviefor a long time; and we have prevented themfrom having a moment together yet.

FRANK [quite softened, and looking atPraed with romantic admiration] Of course.I forgot. Ever so thanks for reminding me.Perfect gentleman, Praddy. Always were. Myideal through life. [He rises to go, but pausesa moment between the two older men, and putshis hand on Praed’s shoulder]. Ah, if you hadonly been my father instead of this unworthyold man! [He puts his other hand on his fa-ther’s shoulder].

REV. S. [blustering] Silence, sir, silence:you are profane.

MRS WARREN [laughing heartily] Youshould keep him in better order, Sam. Good-night. Here: take George his hat and stickwith my compliments.

REV. S. [taking them] Good-night. [Theyshake hands. As he passes Vivie he shakeshands with her also and bids her good-night.Then, in booming command, to Frank] Comealong, sir, at once. [He goes out].

MRS WARREN. Byebye, Praddy.

ACT II 95

PRAED. Byebye, Kitty.[They shake hands affectionately and go

out together, she accompanying him to the gar-den gate.]

FRANK [to Vivie] Kissums?VIVIE [fiercely] No. I hate you. [She takes

a couple of books and some paper from thewriting-table, and sits down with them at themiddle table, at the end next the fireplace].

FRANK [grimacing] Sorry. [He goes for hiscap and rifle. Mrs Warren returns. He takesher hand] Good-night, dear Mrs Warren. [Hekisses her hand. She snatches it away, her lipstightening, and looks more than half disposedto box his ears. He laughs mischievously andruns off, clapping-to the door behind him].

MRS WARREN [resigning herself to anevening of boredom now that the men are gone]Did you ever in your life hear anyone rattleon so? Isnt he a tease? [She sits at the ta-ble]. Now that I think of it, dearie, dont yougo encouraging him. I’m sure he’s a regulargood-for-nothing.

VIVIE [rising to fetch more books] I’mafraid so. Poor Frank! I shall have to get rid ofhim; but I shall feel sorry for him, though he’snot worth it. That man Crofts does not seemto me to be good for much either: is he? [Shethrows the books on the table rather roughly].

MRS WARREN [galled by Vivie’s indiffer-


ence] What do you know of men, child, to talkthat way of them? Youll have to make up yourmind to see a good deal of Sir George Crofts,as he’s a friend of mine.

VIVIE [quite unmoved] Why? [She sitsdown and opens a book]. Do you expect thatwe shall be much together? You and I, I mean?

MRS WARREN [staring at her] Of course:until youre married. Youre not going back tocollege again.

VIVIE. Do you think my way of life wouldsuit you? I doubt it.

MRS WARREN. Your way of life! What doyou mean?

VIVIE [cutting a page of her book with thepaper knife on her chatelaine] Has it reallynever occurred to you, mother, that I have away of life like other people?

MRS WARREN. What nonsense is thisyoure trying to talk? Do you want to shewyour independence, now that youre a great lit-tle person at school? Dont be a fool, child.

VIVIE [indulgently] Thats all you have tosay on the subject, is it, mother?

MRS WARREN [puzzled, then angry] Dontyou keep on asking me questions like that.[Violently] Hold your tongue. [Vivie workson, losing no time, and saying nothing]. Youand your way of life, indeed! What next? [Shelooks at Vivie again. No reply]. Your way of

ACT II 97

life will be what I please, so it will. [Anotherpause]. Ive been noticing these airs in youever since you got that tripos or whatever youcall it. If you think I’m going to put up withthem, youre mistaken; and the sooner you findit out, the better. [Muttering] All I have tosay on the subject, indeed! [Again raising hervoice angrily] Do you know who youre speak-ing to, Miss?

VIVIE [looking across at her without rais-ing her head from her book] No. Who are you?What are you?

MRS WARREN [rising breathless] Youyoung imp!

VIVIE. Everybody knows my reputation,my social standing, and the profession I in-tend to pursue. I know nothing about you.What is that way of life which you invite me toshare with you and Sir George Crofts, pray?

MRS WARREN. Take care. I shall dosomething I’ll be sorry for after, and you too.

VIVIE [putting aside her books with cooldecision] Well, let us drop the subject untilyou are better able to face it. [Looking criti-cally at her mother] You want some good walksand a little lawn tennis to set you up. You areshockingly out of condition: you were not ableto manage twenty yards uphill today withoutstopping to pant; and your wrists are mererolls of fat. Look at mine. [She holds out her


wrists].MRS WARREN [after looking at her help-

lessly, begins to whimper] Vivie—VIVIE [springing up sharply] Now pray

dont begin to cry. Anything but that. I reallycannot stand whimpering. I will go out of theroom if you do.

MRS WARREN [piteously] Oh, my darling,how can you be so hard on me? Have I norights over you as your mother?

VIVIE. Are you my mother?MRS WARREN. Am I your mother? Oh,

Vivie!VIVIE. Then where are our relatives? my

father? our family friends? You claim therights of a mother: the right to call me fooland child; to speak to me as no woman in au-thority over me at college dare speak to me;to dictate my way of life; and to force on methe acquaintance of a brute whom anyone cansee to be the most vicious sort of London manabout town. Before I give myself the troubleto resist such claims, I may as well find outwhether they have any real existence.

MRS WARREN [distracted, throwing her-self on her knees] Oh no, no. Stop, stop. I amyour mother: I swear it. Oh, you cant meanto turn on me—my own child! it’s not natural.You believe me, dont you? Say you believe me.

VIVIE. Who was my father?

ACT II 99

MRS WARREN. You dont know whatyoure asking. I cant tell you.

VIVIE [determinedly] Oh yes you can, ifyou like. I have a right to know; and youknow very well that I have that right. Youcan refuse to tell me if you please; but if youdo, you will see the last of me tomorrow morn-ing.

MRS WARREN. Oh, it’s too horrible tohear you talk like that. You wouldnt—youcouldnt leave me.

VIVIE [ruthlessly] Yes, without a mo-ment’s hesitation, if you trifle with me aboutthis. [Shivering with disgust] How can I feelsure that I may not have the contaminatedblood of that brutal waster in my veins?

MRS WARREN. No, no. On my oath it’snot he, nor any of the rest that you have evermet. I’m certain of that, at least.

[Vivie’s eyes fasten sternly on her mother asthe significance of this flashes on her.]

VIVIE [slowly] You are certain of that, atleast. Ah! You mean that that is all you arecertain of. [Thoughtfully] I see. [Mrs Warrenburies her face in her hands]. Dont do that,mother: you know you dont feel it a bit. [MrsWarren takes down her hands and looks up de-plorably at Vivie, who takes out her watch andsays] Well, that is enough for tonight. At whathour 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 dont un-derstand how it gets its business done. Come[taking her mother by the wrist and pullingher up pretty resolutely]: pull yourself to-gether. Thats right.

MRS WARREN [querulously] Youre veryrough with me, Vivie.

VIVIE. Nonsense. What about bed? It’spast ten.

MRS WARREN [passionately] Whats theuse of my going to bed? Do you think I couldsleep?

VIVIE. Why not? I shall.MRS WARREN. You! youve no heart. [She

suddenly breaks out vehemently in her naturaltongue—the dialect of a woman of the people—with all her affectations of maternal authorityand conventional manners gone, and an over-whelming inspiration of true conviction andscorn in her] Oh, I wont bear it: I wont put upwith the injustice of it. What right have you toset yourself up above me like this? You boastof what you are to me—to me, who gave youa chance of being what you are. What chancehad I? Shame on you for a bad daughter anda stuck-up prude!

ACT II 101

VIVIE [sitting down with a shrug, nolonger confident; for her replies, which havesounded sensible and strong to her so far, nowbegin to ring rather woodenly and even prig-gishly against the new tone of her mother]Dont think for a moment I set myself aboveyou in any way. You attacked me with the con-ventional authority of a mother: I defendedmyself with the conventional superiority of arespectable woman. Frankly, I am not goingto stand any of your nonsense; and when youdrop it I shall not expect you to stand any ofmine. I shall always respect your right to yourown opinions and your own way of life.

MRS WARREN. My own opinions and myown way of life! Listen to her talking! Do youthink I was brought up like you? able to pickand choose my own way of life? Do you think Idid what I did because I liked it, or thought itright, or wouldnt rather have gone to collegeand been a lady if I’d had the chance?

VIVIE. Everybody has some choice,mother. The poorest girl alive may not beable to choose between being Queen of Eng-land or Principal of Newnham; but she canchoose between ragpicking and flowerselling,according to her taste. People are alwaysblaming circumstances for what they are. Idont believe in circumstances. The peoplewho get on in this world are the people who


get up and look for the circumstances theywant, and, if they cant find them, make them.

MRS WARREN. Oh, it’s easy to talk, isntit? Here! would you like to know what my cir-cumstances were?

VIVIE. Yes: you had better tell me. Wontyou sit down?

MRS WARREN. Oh, I’ll sit down: dont yoube afraid. [She plants her chair farther for-ward with brazen energy, and sits down. Vivieis impressed in spite of herself ]. D’you knowwhat your gran’mother was?

VIVIE. No.MRS WARREN. No, you dont. I do. She

called herself a widow and had a fried-fishshop down by the Mint, and kept herself andfour daughters out of it. Two of us weresisters: that was me and Liz; and we wereboth good-looking and well made. I supposeour father was a well-fed man: mother pre-tended he was a gentleman; but I dont know.The other two were only half sisters: under-sized, ugly, starved looking, hard working,honest poor creatures: Liz and I would havehalf-murdered them if mother hadnt half-murdered us to keep our hands off them. Theywere the respectable ones. Well, what did theyget by their respectability? I’ll tell you. Oneof them worked in a whitelead factory twelvehours a day for nine shillings a week until she

ACT II 103

died of lead poisoning. She only expected toget her hands a little paralyzed; but she died.The other was always held up to us as a modelbecause she married a Government laborer inthe Deptford victualling yard, and kept hisroom and the three children neat and tidy oneighteen shillings a week—until he took todrink. That was worth being respectable for,wasnt it?

VIVIE [now thoughtfully attentive] Did youand your sister think so?

MRS WARREN. Liz didnt, I can tell you:she had more spirit. We both went to a churchschool—that was part of the ladylike airswe gave ourselves to be superior to the chil-dren that knew nothing and went nowhere—and we stayed there until Liz went out onenight and never came back. I know theschoolmistress thought I’d soon follow her ex-ample; for the clergyman was always warn-ing me that Lizzie’d end by jumping off Wa-terloo Bridge. Poor fool: that was all he knewabout it! But I was more afraid of the white-lead factory than I was of the river; and sowould you have been in my place. That cler-gyman got me a situation as a scullery maidin a temperance restaurant where they sentout for anything you liked. Then I was a wait-ress; and then I went to the bar at Waterloostation: fourteen hours a day serving drinks


and washing glasses for four shillings a weekand my board. That was considered a greatpromotion for me. Well, one cold, wretchednight, when I was so tired I could hardly keepmyself awake, who should come up for a halfof Scotch but Lizzie, in a long fur cloak, ele-gant and comfortable, with a lot of sovereignsin her purse.

VIVIE [grimly] My aunt Lizzie!MRS WARREN. Yes; and a very good aunt

to have, too. She’s living down at Winchesternow, close to the cathedral, one of the mostrespectable ladies there. Chaperones girls atthe country ball, if you please. No river forLiz, thank you! You remind me of Liz a lit-tle: she was a first-rate business woman—saved money from the beginning—never letherself look too like what she was—never losther head or threw away a chance. Whenshe saw I’d grown up good-looking she saidto me across the bar “What are you doingthere, you little fool? wearing out your healthand your appearance for other people’s profit!”Liz was saving money then to take a housefor herself in Brussels; and she thought wetwo could save faster than one. So she lentme some money and gave me a start; and Isaved steadily and first paid her back, andthen went into business with her as a part-ner. Why shouldnt I have done it? The house

ACT II 105

in Brussels was real high class: a much bet-ter place for a woman to be in than the fac-tory where Anne Jane got poisoned. None ofthe girls were ever treated as I was treatedin the scullery of that temperance place, or atthe Waterloo bar, or at home. Would you havehad me stay in them and become a worn outold 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 suc-ceed in any business.

MRS WARREN. Yes, saving money. Butwhere can a woman get the money to save inany other business? Could you save out of fourshillings a week and keep yourself dressed aswell? Not you. Of course, if youre a plainwoman and cant earn anything more; or ifyou have a turn for music, or the stage, ornewspaper-writing: thats different. But nei-ther Liz nor I had any turn for such things atall: all we had was our appearance and ourturn for pleasing men. Do you think we weresuch fools as to let other people trade in ourgood looks by employing us as shopgirls, orbarmaids, or waitresses, when we could tradein them ourselves and get all the profits in-stead of starvation wages? Not likely.

VIVIE. You were certainly quite justified—from the business point of view.


MRS WARREN. Yes; or any other point ofview. What is any respectable girl broughtup to do but to catch some rich man’s fancyand get the benefit of his money by marryinghim?—as if a marriage ceremony could makeany difference in the right or wrong of thething! Oh, the hypocrisy of the world makesme sick! Liz and I had to work and saveand calculate just like other people; elsewayswe should be as poor as any good-for-nothingdrunken waster of a woman that thinks herluck will last for ever. [With great energy] Idespise such people: theyve no character; andif theres a thing I hate in a woman, it’s wantof character.

VIVIE. Come now, mother: frankly! Isntit part of what you call character in a womanthat she should greatly dislike such a way ofmaking money?

MRS WARREN. Why, of course. Everybodydislikes having to work and make money; butthey have to do it all the same. I’m sure Iveoften pitied a poor girl, tired out and in lowspirits, having to try to please some man thatshe doesnt care two straws for—some half-drunken fool that thinks he’s making himselfagreeable when he’s teasing and worrying anddisgusting a woman so that hardly any moneycould pay her for putting up with it. But shehas to bear with disagreeables and take the

ACT II 107

rough with the smooth, just like a nurse ina hospital or anyone else. It’s not work thatany woman would do for pleasure, goodnessknows; though to hear the pious people talkyou would suppose it was a bed of roses.

VIVIE. Still, you consider it worth while.It pays.

MRS WARREN. Of course it’s worth whileto a poor girl, if she can resist temptation andis good-looking and well conducted and sensi-ble. It’s far better than any other employmentopen to her. I always thought that it oughtntto be. It cant be right, Vivie, that thereshouldnt be better opportunities for women.I stick to that: it’s wrong. But it’s so, rightor wrong; and a girl must make the best of it.But of course it’s not worth while for a lady. Ifyou took to it youd be a fool; but I should havebeen a fool if I’d taken to anything else.

VIVIE [more and more deeply moved]Mother: suppose we were both as poor as youwere in those wretched old days, are you quitesure that you wouldnt advise me to try theWaterloo bar, or marry a laborer, or even gointo the factory?

MRS WARREN [indignantly] Of coursenot. What sort of mother do you take mefor! How could you keep your self-respect insuch starvation and slavery? And whats awoman worth? whats life worth? without self-


respect! Why am I independent and able togive my daughter a first-rate education, whenother women that had just as good opportu-nities are in the gutter? Because I alwaysknew how to respect myself and control my-self. Why is Liz looked up to in a cathedraltown? The same reason. Where would we benow if we’d minded the clergyman’s foolish-ness? Scrubbing floors for one and sixpencea day and nothing to look forward to but theworkhouse infirmary. Dont you be led astrayby people who dont know the world, my girl.The only way for a woman to provide for her-self decently is for her to be good to some manthat can afford to be good to her. If she’s in hisown station of life, let her make him marryher; but if she’s far beneath him she cant ex-pect it: why should she? it wouldnt be for herown happiness. Ask any lady in London soci-ety that has daughters; and she’ll tell you thesame, except that I tell you straight and she’lltell you crooked. Thats all the difference.

VIVIE [fascinated, gazing at her] My dearmother: you are a wonderful woman: you arestronger than all England. And are you reallyand truly not one wee bit doubtful—or—or—ashamed?

MRS WARREN. Well, of course, dearie, it’sonly good manners to be ashamed of it: it’s ex-pected from a woman. Women have to pretend

ACT II 109

to feel a great deal that they dont feel. Lizused to be angry with me for plumping out thetruth about it. She used to say that when ev-ery woman could learn enough from what wasgoing on in the world before her eyes, therewas no need to talk about it to her. But thenLiz was such a perfect lady! She had the trueinstinct of it; while I was always a bit of a vul-garian. I used to be so pleased when you sentme your photos to see that you were grow-ing up like Liz: youve just her ladylike, deter-mined way. But I cant stand saying one thingwhen everyone knows I mean another. Whatsthe use in such hypocrisy? If people arrangethe world that way for women, theres no goodpretending it’s arranged the other way. No:I never was a bit ashamed really. I consider Ihad a right to be proud of how we managed ev-erything so respectably, and never had a wordagainst us, and how the girls were so welltaken care of. Some of them did very well:one of them married an ambassador. But ofcourse now I darent talk about such things:whatever would they think of us! [She yawns].Oh dear! I do believe I’m getting sleepy afterall. [She stretches herself lazily, thoroughlyrelieved by her explosion, and placidly readyfor her night’s rest].

VIVIE. I believe it is I who will not be ableto sleep now. [She goes to the dresser and


lights the candle. Then she extinguishes thelamp, darkening the room a good deal]. Bet-ter let in some fresh air before locking up.[She opens the cottage door, and finds that itis broad moonlight]. What a beautiful night!Look! [She draws the curtains of the window.The landscape is seen bathed in the radianceof the harvest moon rising over Blackdown].

MRS WARREN [with a perfunctory glanceat the scene] Yes, dear; but take care you dontcatch your death of cold from the night air.

VIVIE [contemptuously] Nonsense.MRS WARREN [querulously] Oh yes: ev-

erything I say is nonsense, according to you.VIVIE [turning to her quickly] No: really

that is not so, mother. You have got completelythe better of me tonight, though I intended itto be the other way. Let us be good friendsnow.

MRS WARREN [shaking her head a littleruefully] So it has been the other way. But Isuppose I must give in to it. I always got theworst of it from Liz; and now I suppose it’ll bethe same with you.

VIVIE. Well, never mind. Come: good-night, dear old mother. [She takes her motherin her arms].

MRS WARREN [fondly] I brought you upwell, didnt I, dearie?

VIVIE. You did.

ACT II 111

MRS WARREN. And youll be good to yourpoor old mother for it, wont you?

VIVIE. I will, dear. [Kissing her] Good-night.

MRS WARREN [with unction] Blessingson my own dearie darling! a mother’s bless-ing!

[She embraces her daughter protectingly,instinctively looking upward for divine sanc-tion.]


ACT III

[In the Rectory garden next morning, with thesun shining from a cloudless sky. The gar-den wall has a five-barred wooden gate, wideenough to admit a carriage, in the middle. Be-side the gate hangs a bell on a coiled spring,communicating with a pull outside. The car-riage drive comes down the middle of the gar-den and then swerves to its left, where it endsin a little gravelled circus opposite the Rectoryporch. Beyond the gate is seen the dusty highroad, parallel with the wall, bounded on thefarther side by a strip of turf and an unfencedpine wood. On the lawn, between the houseand the drive, is a clipped yew tree, with a gar-den bench in its shade. On the opposite sidethe garden is shut in by a box hedge; and thereis a little sundial on the turf, with an ironchair near it. A little path leads through thebox hedge, behind the sundial.]

[Frank, seated on the chair near the sun-dial, on which he has placed the morning

113


paper, is reading The Standard. His fathercomes from the house, red-eyed and shivery,and meets Frank’s eye with misgiving.]

FRANK [looking at his watch] Half-pasteleven. Nice hour for a rector to come downto breakfast!

REV. S. Dont mock, Frank: dont mock. Iam a little—er— [Shivering]—

FRANK. Off color?REV. S. [repudiating the expression] No,

sir: unwell this morning. Wheres yourmother?

FRANK. Dont be alarmed: she’s not here.Gone to town by the 11.13 with Bessie. Sheleft several messages for you. Do you feelequal to receiving them now, or shall I waittil youve breakfasted?

REV. S. I have breakfasted, sir. I am sur-prised at your mother going to town when wehave people staying with us. Theyll think itvery 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 withhim until four, recalling the incidents of yourfiery youth, it is clearly my mother’s duty, asa prudent housekeeper, to go up to the storesand order a barrel of whisky and a few hun-dred siphons.

REV. S. I did not observe that Sir George

ACT III 115

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 toldabout your past career were so awful that I re-ally dont think Praed would have passed thenight under your roof if it hadnt been for theway my mother and he took to one another.

REV. S. Nonsense, sir. I am Sir GeorgeCrofts’ host. I must talk to him about some-thing; and he has only one subject. Where isMr Praed now?

FRANK. He is driving my mother andBessie to the station.

REV. S. Is Crofts up yet?FRANK. Oh, long ago. He hasnt turned

a hair: he’s in much better practice than you.Has kept it up ever since, probably. He’s takenhimself off somewhere to smoke.

[Frank resumes his paper. The parsonturns disconsolately towards the gate; thencomes back irresolutely.]

REV. S. Er—Frank.FRANK. Yes.REV. S. Do you think the Warrens will ex-

pect to be asked here after yesterday after-noon?

FRANK. Theyve been asked already.


REV. S. [appalled] What!!!FRANK. Crofts informed us at breakfast

that you told him to bring Mrs Warren andVivie over here to-day, and to invite them tomake this house their home. My mother thenfound she must go to town by the 11.13 train.

REV. S. [with despairing vehemence] Inever gave any such invitation. I neverthought of such a thing.

FRANK [compassionately] How do youknow, gov’nor, what you said and thought lastnight?

PRAED [coming in through the hedge]Good morning.

REV. S. Good morning. I must apologizefor not having met you at breakfast. I have atouch of—of—

FRANK. Clergyman’s sore throat, Praed.Fortunately not chronic.

PRAED [changing the subject] Well I mustsay your house is in a charming spot here. Re-ally most charming.

REV. S. Yes: it is indeed. Frank will takeyou for a walk, Mr Praed, if you like. I’ll askyou to excuse me: I must take the opportu-nity to write my sermon while Mrs Gardner isaway and you are all amusing yourselves. Youwont mind, will you?

PRAED. Certainly not. Dont stand on theslightest ceremony with me.

ACT III 117

REV. S. Thank you. I’ll—er—er— [Hestammers his way to the porch and vanishesinto the house].

PRAED. Curious thing it must be writinga sermon every week.

FRANK. Ever so curious, if he did it. Hebuys em. He’s gone for some soda water.

PRAED. My dear boy: I wish you would bemore respectful to your father. You know youcan be so nice when you like.

FRANK. My dear Praddy: you forget thatI have to live with the governor. When twopeople live together—it dont matter whethertheyre father and son or husband and wifeor brother and sister—they cant keep up thepolite humbug thats so easy for ten min-utes on an afternoon call. Now the gover-nor, who unites to many admirable domes-tic qualities the irresoluteness of a sheepand the pompousness and aggressiveness of ajackass—

PRAED. No, pray, pray, my dear Frank, re-member! He is your father.

FRANK. I give him due credit for that.[Rising and flinging down his paper] But justimagine his telling Crofts to bring the War-rens over here! He must have been ever sodrunk. You know, my dear Praddy, my motherwouldnt stand Mrs Warren for a moment.Vivie mustnt come here until she’s gone back


to town.PRAED. But your mother doesnt know

anything about Mrs Warren, does she? [Hepicks up the paper and sits down to read it].

FRANK. I dont know. Her journey to townlooks as if she did. Not that my mother wouldmind in the ordinary way: she has stuck likea brick to lots of women who had got into trou-ble. But they were all nice women. Thatswhat makes the real difference. Mrs Warren,no doubt, has her merits; but she’s ever sorowdy; and my mother simply wouldnt put upwith her. So—hallo! [This exclamation is pro-voked by the reappearance of the clergyman,who comes out of the house in haste and dis-may].

REV. S. Frank: Mrs Warren and herdaughter are coming across the heath withCrofts: I saw them from the study windows.What am I to say about your mother?

FRANK. Stick on your hat and go out andsay how delighted you are to see them; andthat Frank’s in the garden; and that motherand Bessie have been called to the bedside ofa sick relative, and were ever so sorry theycouldnt stop; and that you hope Mrs Warrenslept well; and—and—say any blessed thingexcept the truth, and leave the rest to Provi-dence.

REV. S. But how are we to get rid of them

ACT III 119

afterwards?FRANK. Theres no time to think of that

now. Here! [He bounds into the house].REV. S. He’s so impetuous. I dont know

what to do with him, Mr Praed.FRANK [returning with a clerical felt hat,

which he claps on his father’s head]. Now: offwith you. [Rushing him through the gate].Praed and I’ll wait here, to give the thing anunpremeditated air. [The clergyman, dazedbut obedient, hurries off ].

FRANK. We must get the old girl back totown somehow, Praed. Come! Honestly, dearPraddy, do you like seeing them together?

PRAED. Oh, why not?FRANK [his teeth on edge] Dont it make

your flesh creep ever so little? that wicked olddevil, up to every villainy under the sun, I’llswear, and Vivie—ugh!

PRAED. Hush, pray. Theyre coming.[The clergyman and Crofts are seen coming

along the road, followed by Mrs Warren andVivie walking affectionately together.]

FRANK. Look: she actually has her armround the old woman’s waist. It’s her rightarm: she began it. She’s gone sentimental, byGod! Ugh! ugh! Now do you feel the creeps?[The clergyman opens the gate: and Mrs War-ren and Vivie pass him and stand in the mid-dle of the garden looking at the house. Frank,


in an ecstasy of dissimulation, turns gaily toMrs Warren, exclaiming] Ever so delighted tosee you, Mrs Warren. This quiet old rectorygarden becomes you perfectly.

MRS WARREN. Well, I never! Did youhear that, George? He says I look well in aquiet old rectory garden.

REV. S. [still holding the gate for Crofts,who loafs through it, heavily bored] You lookwell everywhere, Mrs Warren.

FRANK. Bravo, gov’nor! Now look here:lets have a treat before lunch. First lets seethe church. Everyone has to do that. It’s a reg-ular old thirteenth century church, you know:the gov’nor’s ever so fond of it, because he gotup a restoration fund and had it completelyrebuilt six years ago. Praed will be able toshew its points.

PRAED [rising] Certainly, if the restora-tion has left any to shew.

REV. S. [mooning hospitably at them] Ishall be pleased, I’m sure, if Sir George andMrs Warren really care about it.

MRS WARREN. Oh, come along and get itover.

CROFTS [turning back toward the gate]Ive no objection.

REV. S. Not that way. We go through thefields, if you dont mind. Round here. [Heleads the way by the little path through the box

ACT III 121

hedge].CROFTS. Oh, all right. [He goes with the

parson].[Praed follows with Mrs Warren. Vivie does

not stir: she watches them until they havegone, with all the lines of purpose in her facemarking it strongly.]

FRANK. Aint you coming?VIVIE. No. I want to give you a warning,

Frank. You were making fun of my motherjust now when you said that about the rectorygarden. That is barred in the future. Pleasetreat my mother with as much respect as youtreat your own.

FRANK. My dear Viv: she wouldnt appre-ciate it: the two cases require different treat-ment. But what on earth has happened toyou? Last night we were perfectly agreed asto your mother and her set. This morningI find you attitudinizing sentimentally withyour 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 dont think ita change for the worse. Yesterday I was a lit-tle prig.

FRANK. And today?VIVIE [wincing; then looking at him


steadily] Today I know my mother better thanyou do.

FRANK. Heaven forbid!VIVIE. What do you mean?FRANK. Viv: theres a freemasonry among

thoroughly immoral people that you knownothing of. Youve too much character. Thatsthe bond between your mother and me: thatswhy I know her better than youll ever knowher.

VIVIE. You are wrong: you know noth-ing about her. If you knew the circumstancesagainst which my mother had to struggle—

FRANK [adroitly finishing the sentence forher] I should know why she is what she is,shouldnt I? What difference would that make?Circumstances or no circumstances, Viv, youwont 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 inmy presence again, I’ll shoot myself there andthen as a protest against an exhibition whichrevolts me.

VIVIE. Must I choose between droppingyour acquaintance and dropping my mother’s?

FRANK [gracefully] That would put theold lady at ever such a disadvantage. No, Viv:your infatuated little boy will have to stick toyou in any case. But he’s all the more anxious

ACT III 123

that you shouldnt make mistakes. It’s no use,Viv: your mother’s impossible. She may be agood sort; but she’s a bad lot, a very bad lot.

VIVIE [hotly] Frank—! [He stands hisground. She turns away and sits down on thebench under the yew tree, struggling to recoverher self-command. Then she says] Is she to bedeserted by the world because she’s what youcall a bad lot? Has she no right to live?

FRANK. No fear of that, Viv: she wont everbe deserted. [He sits on the bench beside her].

VIVIE. But I am to desert her, I suppose.FRANK [babyishly, lulling her and mak-

ing love to her with his voice] Mustnt go livewith her. Little family group of mother anddaughter wouldnt be a success. Spoil our lit-tle group.

VIVIE [falling under the spell] What littlegroup?

FRANK. The babes in the wood: Vivie andlittle Frank. [He nestles against her like aweary child]. Lets go and get covered up withleaves.

VIVIE [rhythmically, rocking him like anurse] Fast asleep, hand in hand, under thetrees.

FRANK. The wise little girl with her sillylittle boy.

VIVIE. The deal little boy with his dowdylittle girl.


FRANK. Ever so peaceful, and relievedfrom the imbecility of the little boy’s fatherand the questionableness of the little girl’s —

VIVIE [smothering the word against herbreast] Sh-sh-sh-sh! little girl wants to forgetall about her mother. [They are silent for somemoments, rocking one another. Then Viviewakes up with a shock, exclaiming] What apair of fools we are! Come: sit up. Gracious!your hair. [She smooths it]. I wonder doall grown up people play in that childish waywhen nobody is looking. I never did it when Iwas a child.

FRANK. Neither did I. You are my firstplaymate. [He catches her hand to kiss it, butchecks himself to look around first. Very unex-pectedly, he sees Crofts emerging from the boxhedge]. Oh damn!

VIVIE. Why damn, dear?FRANK [whispering] Sh! Here’s this brute

Crofts. [He sits farther away from her with anunconcerned air].

CROFTS. Could I have a few words withyou, Miss Vivie?

VIVIE. Certainly.CROFTS [to Frank] Youll excuse me, Gard-

ner. Theyre waiting for you in the church, ifyou dont mind.

FRANK [rising] Anything to oblige you,Crofts—except church. If you should happen

ACT III 125

to want me, Vivvums, ring the gate bell. [Hegoes into the house with unruffled suavity].

CROFTS [watching him with a crafty airas he disappears, and speaking to Vivie withan assumption of being on privileged termswith her] Pleasant young fellow that, MissVivie. Pity he has no money, isnt it?

VIVIE. Do you think so?CROFTS. Well, whats he to do? No profes-

sion. 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. Butwhile we’re in this world we’re in it; andmoney’s money. [Vivie does not answer]. Niceday, isnt it?

VIVIE [with scarcely veiled contempt forthis effort at conversation] Very.

CROFTS [with brutal good humor, as if heliked her pluck] Well thats not what I cameto say. [Sitting down beside her] Now listen,Miss Vivie. I’m quite aware that I’m not ayoung lady’s man.

VIVIE. Indeed, Sir George?CROFTS. No; and to tell you the honest

truth I dont want to be either. But when Isay a thing I mean it; and when I feel a sen-timent I feel it in earnest; and what I value Ipay hard money for. Thats the sort of man I


am.VIVIE. It does you great credit, I’m sure.CROFTS. Oh, I dont mean to praise my-

self. I have my faults, Heaven knows: no manis more sensible of that than I am. I know I’mnot perfect: thats one of the advantages of be-ing a middle-aged man; for I’m not a youngman, and I know it. But my code is a sim-ple one, and, I think, a good one. Honor be-tween man and man; fidelity between manand woman; and no cant about this religion orthat religion, but an honest belief that thingsare making for good on the whole.

VIVIE [with biting irony] “A power, notourselves, that makes for righteousness,” eh?

CROFTS [taking her seriously] Oh cer-tainly. Not ourselves, of course. You under-stand what I mean. Well, now as to practicalmatters. You may have an idea that Ive flungmy money about; but I havnt: I’m richer to-day than when I first came into the property.Ive used my knowledge of the world to investmy money in ways that other men have over-looked; and whatever else I may be, I’m a safeman from the money point of view.

VIVIE. It’s very kind of you to tell me allthis.

CROFTS. Oh well, come, Miss Vivie: youneednt pretend you dont see what I’m drivingat. I want to settle down with a Lady Crofts. I

ACT III 127

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, theposition, Lady Crofts, and so on. But I thinkI will say no, if you dont mind, I’d rather not.[She rises, and strolls across to the sundial toget out of his immediate neighborhood].

CROFTS [not at all discouraged, and tak-ing advantage of the additional room left himon the seat to spread himself comfortably, as ifa few preliminary refusals were part of the in-evitable routine of courtship] I’m in no hurry.It was only just to let you know in case youngGardner should try to trap you. Leave thequestion open.

VIVIE [sharply] My no is final. I wont goback from it.

[Crofts is not impressed. He grins; leansforward with his elbows on his knees to prodwith his stick at some unfortunate insect in thegrass; and looks cunningly at her. She turnsaway impatiently.]

CROFTS. I’m a good deal older than you.Twenty-five years: quarter of a century. Ishant live for ever; and I’ll take care that youshall be well off when I’m gone.

VIVIE. I am proof against even that in-ducement, Sir George. Dont you think youdbetter 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 mat-ter. I could tell you some things that wouldchange your mind fast enough; but I wont,because I’d rather win you by honest affec-tion. I was a good friend to your mother: askher whether I wasnt. She’d never have madethe money that paid for your education if ithadnt been for my advice and help, not tomention the money I advanced her. There arenot many men who would have stood by heras I have. I put not less than forty thousandpounds into it, from first to last.

VIVIE [staring at him] Do you mean to saythat you were my mother’s business partner?

CROFTS. Yes. Now just think of all thetrouble and the explanations it would save ifwe were to keep the whole thing in the family,so to speak. Ask your mother whether she’dlike to have to explain all her affairs to a per-fect stranger.

VIVIE. I see no difficulty, since I under-stand that the business is wound up, and themoney invested.

CROFTS [stopping short, amazed] Woundup! Wind up a business thats paying 35 percent in the worst years! Not likely. Who toldyou that?

VIVIE [her color quite gone] Do you mean

ACT III 129

that it is still—? [She stops abruptly, and putsher hand on the sundial to support herself.Then she gets quickly to the iron chair and sitsdown]. What business are you talking about?

CROFTS. Well, the fact is it’s not whatwould considered exactly a high-class busi-ness in my set—the country set, you know—our set it will be if you think better of myoffer. Not that theres any mystery about it:dont think that. Of course you know by yourmother’s being in it that it’s perfectly straightand honest. Ive known her for many years;and I can say of her that she’d cut off herhands sooner than touch anything that wasnot what it ought to be. I’ll tell you all about itif you like. I dont know whether youve foundin travelling how hard it is to find a reallycomfortable private hotel.

VIVIE [sickened, averting her face] Yes: goon.

CROFTS. Well, thats all it is. Your motherhas got a genius for managing such things.We’ve got two in Brussels, one in Ostend, onein Vienna, and two in Budapest. Of coursethere are others besides ourselves in it; but wehold most of the capital; and your mother’s in-dispensable as managing director. Youve no-ticed, I daresay, that she travels a good deal.But you see you cant mention such things insociety. Once let out the word hotel and ev-


erybody thinks you keep a public-house. Youwouldnt like people to say that of your mother,would you? Thats why we’re so reserved aboutit. By the way, youll keep it to yourself, wontyou? Since it’s been a secret so long, it hadbetter remain so.

VIVIE. And this is the business you inviteme to join you in?

CROFTS. Oh no. My wife shant be trou-bled with business. Youll not be in it morethan youve always been.

VIVIE. I always been! What do you mean?CROFTS. Only that youve always lived on

it. It paid for your education and the dress youhave on your back. Dont turn up your noseat business, Miss Vivie: where would yourNewnhams and Girtons be without it?

VIVIE [rising, almost beside herself ] Takecare. 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 con-sideration for you. I’d never have told you.

ACT III 131

VIVIE. I think you would probably havetold me when we were married: it would havebeen a convenient weapon to break me inwith.

CROFTS [quite sincerely] I never intendedthat. On my word as a gentleman I didnt.

[Vivie wonders at him. Her sense of theirony of his protest cools and braces her. Shereplies with contemptuous self-possession.]

VIVIE. It does not matter. I suppose youunderstand that when we leave here todayour acquaintance ceases.

CROFTS. Why? Is it for helping yourmother?

VIVIE. My mother was a very poor womanwho had no reasonable choice but to do as shedid. You were a rich gentleman; and you didthe same for the sake of 35 per cent. You are apretty common sort of scoundrel, I think. Thatis my opinion of you.

CROFTS [after a stare: not at all dis-pleased, and much more at his ease on thesefrank terms than on their former ceremoni-ous ones] Ha! ha! ha! ha! Go it, little missie,go it: it doesnt hurt me and it amuses you.Why the devil shouldnt I invest my moneythat way? I take the interest on my capi-tal like other people: I hope you dont thinkI dirty my own hands with the work. Come!you wouldnt refuse the acquaintance of my


mother’s cousin the Duke of Belgravia be-cause some of the rents he gets are earned inqueer ways. You wouldnt cut the Archbishopof Canterbury, I suppose, because the Ecclesi-astical Commissioners have a few publicansand sinners among their tenants. Do youremember your Crofts scholarship at Newn-ham? Well, that was founded by my brotherthe M.P. He gets his 22 per cent out of a fac-tory with 600 girls in it, and not one of themgetting wages enough to live on. How d’yesuppose they manage when they have no fam-ily to fall back on? Ask your mother. And doyou expect me to turn my back on 35 per centwhen all the rest are pocketing what they can,like sensible men? No such fool! If youre go-ing to pick and choose your acquaintances onmoral principles, youd better clear out of thiscountry, unless you want to cut yourself out ofall decent society.

VIVIE [conscience stricken] You might goon to point out that I myself never askedwhere the money I spent came from. I believeI am just as bad as you.

CROFTS [greatly reassured] Of course youare; and a very good thing too! What harmdoes it do after all? [Rallying her jocularly] Soyou dont think me such a scoundrel now youcome to think it over. Eh?

VIVIE. I have shared profits with you: and

ACT III 133

I admitted you just now to the familiarity ofknowing what I think of you.

CROFTS [with serious friendliness] To besure you did. You wont find me a bad sort:I dont go in for being superfine intellectually;but Ive plenty of honest human feeling; andthe old Crofts breed comes out in a sort of in-stinctive hatred of anything low, in which I’msure youll sympathize with me. Believe me,Miss Vivie, the world isnt such a bad place asthe croakers make out. As long as you dontfly openly in the face of society, society doesntask any inconvenient questions; and it makesprecious short work of the cads who do. Thereare no secrets better kept than the secrets ev-erybody guesses. In the class of people I canintroduce you to, no lady or gentleman wouldso far forget themselves as to discuss my busi-ness affairs or your mothers. No man can offeryou a safer position.

VIVIE [studying him curiously] I supposeyou really think youre getting on famouslywith me.

CROFTS. Well, I hope I may flatter myselfthat you think better of me than you did atfirst.

VIVIE [quietly] I hardly find you worththinking about at all now. When I think ofthe society that tolerates you, and the lawsthat protect you! when I think of how help-


less nine out of ten young girls would be inthe hands of you and my mother! the unmen-tionable 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 handheavily on the top bar to prevent its opening.]

CROFTS [panting with fury] Do you thinkI’ll put up with this from you, you young devil?

VIVIE [unmoved] Be quiet. Some one willanswer the bell. [Without flinching a step shestrikes the bell with the back of her hand. Itclangs harshly; and he starts back involuntar-ily. Almost immediately Frank appears at theporch with his rifle].

FRANK [with cheerful politeness] Will youhave 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 youshouldnt have to wait. I think I shewed greatinsight into your character, Crofts.

CROFTS. For two pins I’d take that gunfrom you and break it across your head.

FRANK [stalking him cautiously] Praydont. I’m ever so careless in handlingfirearms. Sure to be a fatal accident, with areprimand from the coroner’s jury for my neg-

ACT III 135

ligence.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 threaten-ing movement]. Crofts: there are fifteen car-tridges in the magazine here; and I am a deadshot at the present distance and at an objectof your size.

CROFTS. Oh, you neednt be afraid. I’mnot going to touch you.

FRANK. Ever so magnanimous of you un-der the circumstances! Thank you.

CROFTS. I’ll just tell you this before I go.It may interest you, since youre so fond of oneanother. Allow me, Mister Frank, to introduceyou to your half-sister, the eldest daughter ofthe Reverend Samuel Gardner. Miss Vivie:you half-brother. Good morning! [He goes outthrough the gate and along the road].

FRANK [after a pause of stupefaction, rais-ing the rifle] Youll testify before the coronerthat it’s an accident, Viv. [He takes aim atthe retreating figure of Crofts. Vivie seizes themuzzle 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. Itfalls on the turf ]. Oh, youve 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 itwould not have been a relief to have somesharp physical pain tearing through me?

FRANK [coaxingly] Take it ever so easy,dear Viv. Remember: even if the rifle scaredthat fellow into telling the truth for the firsttime in his life, that only makes us the babesin the woods in earnest. [He holds out hisarms to her]. Come and be covered up withleaves 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 yougoing to? Where shall we find you?

VIVIE. At Honoria Fraser’s chambers, 67Chancery Lane, for the rest of my life. [Shegoes off quickly in the opposite direction to thattaken by Crofts].

FRANK. But I say—wait—dash it! [Heruns 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 af-ternoon. The chimneys of Lincoln’s Inn andthe western sky beyond are seen through thewindow. There is a double writing table in themiddle of the room, with a cigar box, ash pans,and a portable electric reading lamp almostsnowed up in heaps of papers and books. Thistable has knee holes and chairs right and leftand is very untidy. The clerk’s desk, closed andtidy, with its high stool, is against the wall,near a door communicating with the innerrooms. In the opposite wall is the door lead-ing to the public corridor. Its upper panel is ofopaque glass, lettered in black on the outside,FRASER AND WARREN. A baize screen hidesthe corner between this door and the window.]

[Frank, in a fashionable light-coloredcoaching suit, with his stick, gloves, and white

137


hat in his hands, is pacing up and down in theoffice. 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. Ive been here

for hours. Is this the way you attend to yourbusiness? [He puts his hat and stick on thetable, and perches himself with a vault on theclerk’s stool, looking at her with every appear-ance of being in a specially restless, teasing,flippant mood].

VIVIE. Ive been away exactly twenty min-utes for a cup of tea. [She takes off her hatand jacket and hangs them behind the screen].How did you get in?

FRANK. The staff had not left when I ar-rived. He’s gone to play cricket on PrimroseHill. Why dont you employ a woman, and giveyour sex a chance?

VIVIE. What have you come for?FRANK [springing off the stool and com-

ing close to her] Viv: lets go and enjoy the Sat-urday half-holiday somewhere, like the staff.What do you say to Richmond, and then a mu-sic hall, and a jolly supper?

VIVIE. Cant afford it. I shall put in an-other six hours work before I go to bed.

FRANK. Cant afford it, cant we? Aha!

ACT IV 139

Look here. [He takes out a handful of sover-eigns 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 atthe table, with her back to the glass door, andbegins turning over the papers].

FRANK [remonstrating piteously] But, mydear Viv, I want to talk to you ever so seri-ously.

VIVIE. Very well: sit down in Honoria’schair and talk here. I like ten minutes chat af-ter tea. [He murmurs]. No use groaning: I’minexorable. [He takes the opposite seat discon-solately]. Pass that cigar box, will you?

FRANK [pushing the cigar box across]Nasty womanly habit. Nice men dont do itany longer.

VIVIE. Yes: they object to the smell in theoffice; and weve had to take to cigarets. See![She opens the box and takes out a cigaret,which she lights. She offers him one; but heshakes his head with a wry face. She settlesherself comfortably in her chair, smoking]. Goahead.

FRANK. Well, I want to know what youvedone—what arrangements youve made.

VIVIE. Everything was settled twentyminutes 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 andproposing a partnership when I walked in andtold her I hadnt a farthing in the world. So Iinstalled myself and packed her off for a fort-night’s holiday. What happened at Haslemerewhen I left?

FRANK. Nothing at all. I said youd goneto town on particular business.

VIVIE. Well?FRANK. Well, either they were too flab-

bergasted to say anything, or else Crofts hadprepared your mother. Anyhow, she didnt sayanything; and Crofts didnt say anything; andPraddy only stared. After tea they got up andwent; and Ive not seen them since.

VIVIE [nodding placidly with one eye on awreath of smoke] Thats all right.

FRANK [looking round disparagingly] Doyou intend to stick in this confounded place?

VIVIE [blowing the wreath decisivelyaway, and sitting straight up] Yes. These twodays have given me back all my strength andself-possession. I will never take a holidayagain as long as I live.

FRANK [with a very wry face] Mps! Youlook 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

ACT IV 141

under a complete misunderstanding. [He sitson 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 natureof our feeling for one another. It placed us onthe footing of brother and sister.

VIVIE. Yes.FRANK. Have you ever had a brother?VIVIE. No.FRANK. Then you dont know what being

brother and sister feels like? Now I have lotsof sisters; and the fraternal feeling is quite fa-miliar to me. I assure you my feeling for youis not the least in the world like it. The girlswill go their way; I will go mine; and we shantcare if we never see one another again. Thatsbrother and sister. But as to you, I cant beeasy if I have to pass a week without seeingyou. Thats not brother and sister. Its exactlywhat I felt an hour before Crofts made his rev-elation. In short, dear Viv, it’s love’s youngdream.

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 ta-


ble for a moment] I very strongly object, Viv, tohave my feelings compared to any which theReverend Samuel is capable of harboring; andI object still more to a comparison of you toyour mother. [Resuming his perch] Besides,I dont believe the story. I have taxed my fa-ther with it, and obtained from him what Iconsider 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; forof course it makes no real difference.

FRANK [shaking his head] None whateverto me.

VIVIE. Nor to me.FRANK [staring] But this is ever so sur-

prising! [He goes back to his chair]. I thoughtour whole relations were altered in your imag-ination and conscience, as you put it, the mo-ment those words were out of that brute’smuzzle.

VIVIE. No: it was not that. I didnt believehim. I only wish I could.

FRANK. Eh?VIVIE. I think brother and sister would be

ACT IV 143

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 risingwith quite an effusion of chivalrous sentiment]My dear Viv: why didnt you say so before? Iam ever so sorry for persecuting you. I under-stand, of course.

VIVIE [puzzled] Understand what?FRANK. Oh, I’m not a fool in the ordinary

sense: only in the Scriptural sense of doing allthe things the wise man declared to be folly,after trying them himself on the most exten-sive scale. I see I am no longer Vivvums’s littleboy. Dont be alarmed: I shall never call youVivvums again—at least unless you get tiredof 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 otherway, in fact.

VIVIE. None that you know of, fortunatelyfor 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 areyou, Praddy? Delighted to see you. Come in.

[Praed, dressed for travelling, comes in, inhigh spirits.]

PRAED. How do you do, Miss Warren?[She presses his hand cordially, though a cer-tain sentimentality in his high spirits jarsupon her]. I start in an hour from HolbornViaduct. I wish I could persuade you to tryItaly.

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 therewere a support to her. Praed sits opposite toher. Frank places a chair near Vivie, and dropslazily and carelessly into it, talking at her overhis shoulder.]

FRANK. No use, Praddy. Viv is a littlePhilistine. She is indifferent to my romance,and insensible to my beauty.

VIVIE. Mr Praed: once for all, there is nobeauty and no romance in life for me. Life iswhat it is; and I am prepared to take it as itis.

PRAED [enthusiastically] You will not say

ACT IV 145

that if you come with me to Verona and on toVenice. You will cry with delight at living insuch a beautiful world.

FRANK. This is most eloquent, Praddy.Keep it up.

PRAED. Oh, I assure you I have cried—Ishall cry again, I hope—at fifty! At your age,Miss Warren, you would not need to go so faras Verona. Your spirits would absolutely flyup at the mere sight of Ostend. You wouldbe charmed with the gaiety, the vivacity, thehappy air of Brussels.

VIVIE [springing up with an exclamationof 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 andromance than Brussels to talk to me about?

PRAED [puzzled] Of course it’s very differ-ent from Verona. I dont suggest for a momentthat—

VIVIE [bitterly] Probably the beauty andromance come to much the same in bothplaces.

PRAED [completely sobered and much con-cerned] My dear Miss Warren: I— [looking en-quiringly at Frank] Is anything the matter?

FRANK. She thinks your enthusiasmfrivolous, Praddy. She’s had ever such a se-


rious call.VIVIE [sharply] Hold your tongue, Frank.

Dont 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 wehave disturbed you at your work.

VIVIE. Sit down: I’m not ready to go backto work yet. [Praed sits]. You both thinkI have an attack of nerves. Not a bit of it.But there are two subjects I want dropped,if you dont mind. One of them [to Frank] islove’s young dream in any shape or form: theother [to Praed] is the romance and beauty oflife, especially Ostend and the gaiety of Brus-sels. You are welcome to any illusions youmay have left on these subjects: I have none.If we three are to remain friends, I must betreated as a woman of business, permanentlysingle [to Frank] and permanently unroman-tic [to Praed].

FRANK. I also shall remain permanentlysingle until you change your mind. Praddy:change the subject. Be eloquent about some-thing else.

PRAED [diffidently] I’m afraid theresnothing 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

ACT IV 147

Gospel of Getting On; but we cant discuss thatwithout hurting your feelings, Frank, sinceyou are determined not to get on.

FRANK. Oh, dont mind my feelings. Giveme some improving advice by all means: itdoes me ever so much good. Have another tryto make a successful man of me, Viv. Come:lets have it all: energy, thrift, foresight, self-respect, character. Dont you hate people whohave no character, Viv?

VIVIE [wincing] Oh, stop, stop. Let ushave no more of that horrible cant. Mr Praed:if there are really only those two gospels in theworld, we had better all kill ourselves; for thesame taint is in both, through and through.

FRANK [looking critically at her] There isa touch of poetry about you today, Viv, whichhas hitherto been lacking.

PRAED [remonstrating] My dear Frank:arnt you a little unsympathetic?

VIVIE [merciless to herself ] No: it’s goodfor me. It keeps me from being sentimental.

FRANK [bantering her] Checks yourstrong natural propensity that way, dont it?

VIVIE [almost hysterically] Oh yes: go on:dont spare me. I was sentimental for one mo-ment in my life—beautifully sentimental— bymoonlight; and now—

FRANK [quickly] I say, Viv: take care.Dont give yourself away.


VIVIE. Oh, do you think Mr Praed doesnot know all about my mother? [Turningon Praed] You had better have told me thatmorning, Mr Praed. You are very old fash-ioned in your delicacies, after all.

PRAED. Surely it is you who are a little oldfashioned in your prejudices, Miss Warren. Ifeel bound to tell you, speaking as an artist,and believing that the most intimate humanrelationships are far beyond and above thescope of the law, that though I know that yourmother is an unmarried woman, I do not re-spect her the less on that account. I respecther 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 any-

thing. Your guesses are innocence itself com-pared 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,

ACT IV 149

anything else—are you sure you are right totell us, Miss Warren?

VIVIE. I am sure that if I had the courageI should spend the rest of my life in tellingeverybody—stamping and branding it intothem until they all felt their part in its abom-ination as I feel mine. There is nothing I de-spise more than the wicked convention thatprotects these things by forbidding a womanto mention them. And yet I cant tell you. Thetwo infamous words that describe what mymother is are ringing in my ears and strug-gling on my tongue; but I cant utter them: theshame of them is too horrible for me. [Sheburies her face in her hands. The two men,astonished, stare at one another and then ather. She raises her head again desperately andsnatches a sheet of paper and a pen]. Here: letme 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 thou-sand pounds standing in the name of SirGeorge Crofts, Baronet, the chief shareholder.Premises at Brussels, Ostend, Vienna, andBudapest. Managing director: Mrs Warren”;and now dont let us forget her qualifications:the two words. [She writes the words andpushes the paper to them]. There! Oh no: dont


read it: dont! [She snatches it back and tearsit to pieces; then seizes her head in her handsand hides her face on the table].

[Frank, who has watched the writing overher shoulder, and opened his eyes very widelyat it, takes a card from his pocket; scribbles thetwo words on it; and silently hands it to Praed,who reads it with amazement, and hides ithastily in his pocket.]

FRANK [whispering tenderly] Viv, dear:thats all right. I read what you wrote: so didPraddy. We understand. And we remain, asthis leaves us at present, yours ever so devot-edly.

PRAED. We do indeed, Miss Warren. I de-clare you are the most splendidly courageouswoman I ever met.

[This sentimental compliment braces Vivie.She throws it away from her with an impatientshake, and forces herself to stand up, thoughnot without some support from the table.]

FRANK. Dont stir, Viv, if you dont want to.Take it easy.

VIVIE. Thank you. You can always dependon me for two things: not to cry and not tofaint. [She moves a few steps towards the doorof the inner room, and stops close to Praed tosay] I shall need much more courage than thatwhen I tell my mother that we have come to aparting of the ways. Now I must go into the

ACT IV 151

next room for a moment to make myself neatagain, if you dont 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’mextremely disappointed in Crofts: I am in-deed.

FRANK. I’m not in the least. I feel he’s per-fectly accounted for at last. But what a facerfor me, Praddy! I cant marry her now.

PRAED [sternly] Frank! [The two look atone another, Frank unruffled, Praed deeply in-dignant]. Let me tell you, Gardner, that if youdesert her now you will behave very despica-bly.

FRANK. Good old Praddy! Ever chival-rous! But you mistake: it’s not the moral as-pect of the case: it’s the money aspect. I reallycant bring myself to touch the old woman’smoney now.

PRAED. And was that what you were go-ing to marry on?

FRANK. What else? I havnt any money,nor the smallest turn for making it. If I mar-ried Viv now she would have to support me;and I should cost her more than I am worth.

PRAED. But surely a clever bright fellowlike you can make something by your own


brains.FRANK. Oh yes, a little. [He takes out his

money again]. I made all that yesterday inan hour and a half. But I made it in a highlyspeculative business. No, dear Praddy: evenif Bessie and Georgina marry millionaires andthe governor dies after cutting them off with ashilling, I shall have only four hundred a year.And he wont die until he’s three score andten: he hasnt originality enough. I shall beon short allowance for the next twenty years.No short allowance for Viv, if I can help it. Iwithdraw gracefully and leave the field to thegilded youth of England. So that settled. Ishant worry her about it: I’ll just send her alittle note after we’re gone. She’ll understand.

PRAED [grasping his hand] Good fellow,Frank! I heartily beg your pardon. But mustyou never see her again?

FRANK. Never see her again! Hang it all,be reasonable. I shall come along as often aspossible, and be her brother. I can not under-stand the absurd consequences you romanticpeople expect from the most ordinary transac-tions. [A knock at the door]. I wonder whothis is. Would you mind opening the door? Ifit’s a client it will look more respectable thanif I appeared.

PRAED. Certainly. [He goes to the doorand opens it. Frank sits down in Vivie’s chair

ACT IV 153

to scribble a note]. My dear Kitty: come in:come in.

[Mrs Warren comes in, looking apprehen-sively around for Vivie. She has done her bestto make herself matronly and dignified. Thebrilliant hat is replaced by a sober bonnet, andthe gay blouse covered by a costly black silkmantle. She is pitiably anxious and ill at ease:evidently panic-stricken.]

MRS WARREN [to Frank] What! Yourehere, are you?

FRANK [turning in his chair from his writ-ing, but not rising] Here, and charmed to seeyou. You come like a breath of spring.

MRS WARREN. Oh, get out with your non-sense. [In a low voice] Where’s Vivie?

[Frank points expressively to the door of theinner room, but says nothing.]

MRS WARREN [sitting down suddenlyand almost beginning to cry] Praddy: wontshe see me, dont you think?

PRAED. My dear Kitty: dont distress your-self. Why should she not?

MRS WARREN. Oh, you never can see whynot: youre too innocent. Mr Frank: did shesay anything to you?

FRANK [folding his note] She must seeyou, if [very expressively] you wait til shecomes in.

MRS WARREN [frightened] Why shouldnt


I wait?[Frank looks quizzically at her; puts his

note carefully on the ink-bottle, so that Viviecannot fail to find it when next she dips herpen; then rises and devotes his attention en-tirely to her.]

FRANK. My dear Mrs Warren: supposeyou were a sparrow—ever so tiny and prettya sparrow hopping in the roadway—and yousaw a steam roller coming in your direction,would you wait for it?

MRS WARREN. Oh, dont bother me withyour sparrows. What did she run away fromHaslemere like that for?

FRANK. I’m afraid she’ll tell you if yourashly await her return.

MRS WARREN. Do you want me to goaway?

FRANK. No: I always want you to stay.But I advise you to go away.

MRS WARREN. What! And never see heragain!

FRANK. Precisely.MRS WARREN [crying again] Praddy:

dont let him be cruel to me. [She hastilychecks her tears and wipes her eyes]. She’ll beso angry if she sees Ive been crying.

FRANK [with a touch of real compassionin his airy tenderness] You know that Praddyis the soul of kindness, Mrs Warren. Praddy:

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what do you say? Go or stay?PRAED [to Mrs Warren] I really should be

very sorry to cause you unnecessary pain; butI think perhaps you had better not wait. Thefact is— [Vivie is heard at the inner door].

FRANK. Sh! Too late. She’s coming.MRS WARREN. Dont tell her I was crying.

[Vivie comes in. She stops gravely on seeingMrs Warren, who greets her with hystericalcheerfulness]. Well, dearie. So here you areat last.

VIVIE. I am glad you have come: I want tospeak to you. You said you were going, Frank,I think.

FRANK. Yes. Will you come with me, MrsWarren? What do you say to a trip to Rich-mond, and the theatre in the evening? Thereis safety in Richmond. No steam roller there.

VIVIE. Nonsense, Frank. My mother willstay here.

MRS WARREN [scared] I dont know: per-haps I’d better go. We’re disturbing you atyour work.

VIVIE [with quiet decision] Mr Praed:please take Frank away. Sit down, mother.[Mrs Warren obeys helplessly].

PRAED. Come, Frank. Goodbye, MissVivie.

VIVIE [shaking hands] Goodbye. A pleas-ant 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 toVivie] Byebye, Viv.

VIVIE. Goodbye. [He goes out gaily with-out 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 waitsfor her mother to speak. Mrs Warren, dreadinga pause, loses no time in beginning.]

MRS WARREN. Well, Vivie, what did yougo away like that for without saying a wordto me! How could you do such a thing! Andwhat have you done to poor George? I wantedhim to come with me; but he shuffled out ofit. I could see that he was quite afraid ofyou. Only fancy: he wanted me not to come.As if [trembling] I should be afraid of you,dearie. [Vivie’s gravity deepens]. But of courseI told him it was all settled and comfortablebetween us, and that we were on the best ofterms. [She breaks down]. Vivie: whats themeaning of this? [She produces a commercialenvelope, and fumbles at the enclosure withtrembling fingers]. I got it from the bank thismorning.

VIVIE. It is my month’s allowance. They

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sent it to me as usual the other day. I simplysent it back to be placed to your credit, andasked them to send you the lodgment receipt.In future I shall support myself.

MRS WARREN [not daring to understand]Wasnt it enough? Why didnt you tell me?[With a cunning gleam in her eye] I’ll doubleit: I was intending to double it. Only let meknow how much you want.

VIVIE. You know very well that that hasnothing to do with it. From this time I gomy own way in my own business and amongmy own friends. And you will go yours. [Sherises]. Goodbye.

MRS WARREN [rising, appalled] Good-bye?

VIVIE. Yes: goodbye. Come: dont let usmake a useless scene: you understand per-fectly well. Sir George Crofts has told me thewhole business.

MRS WARREN [angrily] Silly old— [Sheswallows an epithet, and then turns white atthe 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 didnt 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 [Shesits].

[Mrs Warren, silenced for a moment, looksforlornly at Vivie, who waits, secretly hopingthat the combat is over. But the cunning ex-pression comes back into Mrs Warren’s face;and she bends across the table, sly and urgent,half whispering.]

MRS WARREN. Vivie: do you know howrich I am?

VIVIE. I have no doubt you are very rich.MRS WARREN. But you dont know all

that that means; youre too young. It meansa new dress every day; it means theatres andballs every night; it means having the pick ofall the gentlemen in Europe at your feet; itmeans a lovely house and plenty of servants;it means the choicest of eating and drinking;it means everything you like, everything youwant, everything you can think of. And whatare you here? A mere drudge, toiling andmoiling early and late for your bare livingand two cheap dresses a year. Think over it.[Soothingly] Youre shocked, I know. I can en-ter into your feelings; and I think they do youcredit; but trust me, nobody will blame you:you may take my word for that. I know whatyoung girls are; and I know youll think betterof it when youve turned it over in your mind.

VIVIE. So that’s how it is done, is it? You

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must have said all that to many a woman, tohave it so pat.

MRS WARREN [passionately] What harmam I asking you to do? [Vivie turns awaycontemptuously. Mrs Warren continues des-perately] Vivie: listen to me: you dont un-derstand: you were taught wrong on purpose:you dont know what the world is really like.

VIVIE [arrested] Taught wrong on pur-pose! What do you mean?

MRS WARREN. I mean that youre throw-ing away all your chances for nothing. Youthink that people are what they pretend tobe: that the way you were taught at schooland college to think right and proper is theway things really are. But it’s not: it’s allonly a pretence, to keep the cowardly slavishcommon run of people quiet. Do you wantto find that out, like other women, at forty,when youve thrown yourself away and lostyour chances; or wont you take it in goodtime now from your own mother, that lovesyou and swears to you that it’s truth: gospeltruth? [Urgently] Vivie: the big people, theclever people, the managing people, all knowit. They do as I do, and think what I think. Iknow plenty of them. I know them to speakto, to introduce you to, to make friends of foryou. I dont mean anything wrong: thats whatyou dont understand: your head is full of ig-


norant ideas about me. What do the peoplethat taught you know about life or about peo-ple like me? When did they ever meet me, orspeak to me, or let anyone tell them about me?the fools! Would they ever have done anythingfor you if I hadnt paid them? Havnt I told youthat I want you to be respectable? Havnt Ibrought you up to be respectable? And howcan you keep it up without my money and myinfluence and Lizzie’s friends? Cant you seethat youre cutting your own throat as well asbreaking my heart in turning your back onme?

VIVIE. I recognize the Crofts philosophy oflife, mother. I heard it all from him that dayat the Gardners’.

MRS WARREN. You think I want to forcethat played-out old sot on you! I dont, Vivie:on my oath I dont.

VIVIE. It would not matter if you did: youwould not succeed. [Mrs Warren winces,deeply hurt by the implied indifference to-wards her affectionate intention. Vivie, nei-ther understanding this nor concerning herselfabout it, goes on calmly] Mother: you dont atall know the sort of person I am. I dont ob-ject to Crofts more than to any other coarselybuilt man of his class. To tell you the truth,I rather admire him for being strongmindedenough to enjoy himself in his own way and

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make plenty of money instead of living theusual shooting, hunting, dining-out, tailoring,loafing life of his set merely because all therest do it. And I’m perfectly aware that if I’dbeen in the same circumstances as my auntLiz, I’d have done exactly what she did. I dontthink I’m more prejudiced or straitlaced thanyou: I think I’m less. I’m certain I’m less sen-timental. I know very well that fashionablemorality is all a pretence, and that if I tookyour money and devoted the rest of my life tospending it fashionably, I might be as worth-less and vicious as the silliest woman couldpossibly be without having a word said to meabout it. But I dont want to be worthless. Ishouldnt enjoy trotting about the park to ad-vertize my dressmaker and carriage builder,or being bored at the opera to shew off a shop-windowful of diamonds.

MRS WARREN [bewildered] But—VIVIE. Wait a moment: Ive not done. Tell

me why you continue your business now thatyou are independent of it. Your sister, you toldme, has left all that behind her. Why dont youdo the same?

MRS WARREN. Oh, it’s all very easy forLiz: she likes good society, and has the airof being a lady. Imagine me in a cathedraltown! Why, the very rooks in the trees wouldfind me out even if I could stand the dulness


of it. I must have work and excitement, or Ishould go melancholy mad. And what else isthere for me to do? The life suits me: I’m fitfor it and not for anything else. If I didnt doit somebody else would; so I dont do any realharm by it. And then it brings in money; andI like making money. No: it’s no use: I cantgive it up—not for anybody. But what needyou know about it? I’ll never mention it. I’llkeep Crofts away. I’ll not trouble you much:you see I have to be constantly running aboutfrom one place to another. Youll be quit of mealtogether when I die.

VIVIE. No: I am my mother’s daughter.I am like you: I must have work, and mustmake more money than I spend. But my workis not your work, and my way is not your way.We must part. It will not make much differ-ence to us: instead of meeting one anotherfor perhaps a few months in twenty years, weshall never meet: thats all.

MRS WARREN [her voice stifled in tears]Vivie: I meant to have been more with you: Idid indeed.

VIVIE. It’s no use, mother: I am not to bechanged by a few cheap tears and entreatiesany more than you are, I daresay.

MRS WARREN [wildly] Oh, you call amother’s tears cheap.

VIVIE. They cost you nothing; and you ask

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me to give you the peace and quietness of mywhole life in exchange for them. What usewould my company be to you if you could getit? What have we two in common that couldmake either of us happy together?

MRS WARREN [lapsing recklessly into herdialect] We’re mother and daughter. I wantmy daughter. Ive a right to you. Who is tocare for me when I’m old? Plenty of girls havetaken to me like daughters and cried at leav-ing me; but I let them all go because I had youto look forward to. I kept myself lonely for you.Youve no right to turn on me now and refuseto do your duty as a daughter.

VIVIE [jarred and antagonized by the echoof the slums in her mother’s voice] My duty asa daughter! I thought we should come to thatpresently. Now once for all, mother, you wanta daughter and Frank wants a wife. I dontwant a mother; and I dont want a husband. Ihave spared neither Frank nor myself in send-ing him about his business. Do you think Iwill spare you?

MRS WARREN [violently] Oh, I know thesort you are: no mercy for yourself or anyoneelse. I know. My experience has done that forme anyhow: I can tell the pious, canting, hard,selfish woman when I meet her. Well, keepyourself to yourself: I dont want you. But lis-ten to this. Do you know what I would do with


you if you were a baby again? aye, as sure asthere’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 youare now, with your pride and your prejudicesand the college education you stole from me:yes, stole: deny it if you can: what was it butstealing? I’d bring you up in my own house, Iwould.

VIVIE [quietly] In one of your own houses.MRS WARREN [screaming] Listen to her!

listen to how she spits on her mother’s greyhairs! Oh, may you live to have your owndaughter tear and trample on you as you havetrampled on me. And you will: you will. Nowoman ever had luck with a mother’s curseon her.

VIVIE. I wish you wouldnt rant, mother.It only hardens me. Come: I suppose I am theonly young woman you ever had in your powerthat you did good to. Dont spoil it all now.

MRS WARREN. Yes, Heaven forgive me,it’s true; and you are the only one that everturned on me. Oh, the injustice of it! theinjustice! the injustice! I always wanted tobe a good woman. I tried honest work; andI was slave-driven until I cursed the day Iever heard of honest work. I was a goodmother; and because I made my daughter a

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good woman she turns me out as if I werea leper. Oh, if I only had my life to liveover again! I’d talk to that lying clergymanin the school. From this time forth, so helpme Heaven in my last hour, I’ll do wrong andnothing but wrong. And I’ll prosper on it.

VIVIE. Yes: it’s better to choose your lineand go through with it. If I had been you,mother, I might have done as you did; butI should not have lived one life and believedin another. You are a conventional woman atheart. That is why I am bidding you goodbyenow. I am right, am I not?

MRS WARREN [taken aback] Right tothrow away all my money!

VIVIE. No: right to get rid of you? I shouldbe a fool not to. Isnt that so?

MRS WARREN [sulkily] Oh well, yes, ifyou come to that, I suppose you are. But Lordhelp the world if everybody took to doing theright thing! And now I’d better go than staywhere I’m not wanted. [She turns to the door].

VIVIE [kindly] Wont you shake hands?MRS WARREN [after looking at her

fiercely for a moment with a savage impulseto strike her] No, thank you. Goodbye.

VIVIE [matter-of-factly] Goodbye. [MrsWarren goes out, slamming the door behindher. The strain on Vivie’s face relaxes; hergrave expression breaks up into one of joyous


content; her breath goes out in a half sob, halflaugh of intense relief. She goes buoyantly toher place at the writing table; pushes the elec-tric lamp out of the way; pulls over a greatsheaf of papers; and is in the act of dipping herpen in the ink when she finds Frank’s note. Sheopens it unconcernedly and reads it quickly,giving a little laugh at some quaint turn ofexpression in it]. And goodbye, Frank. [Shetears the note up and tosses the pieces into thewastepaper basket without a second thought.Then she goes at her work with a plunge, andsoon becomes absorbed in its figures].

Documents

MRS. WARREN'S PROFESSION