What Call Would a Woman with THAT Strength in Her Have to Die of INFLUENZA?

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. 

I’m sure I hope it won’t turn cold. 

There’s so much Influenza about. 

It runs right through 

our whole family regularly 

every spring.

LIZA 

[darkly] 

My Aunt Died of Influenza : 

so they said.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL 

[clicks her tongue sympathetically]!!!

LIZA 

[in the same tragic tone] 

But it’s my belief they 

done the old woman in.

MRS. HIGGINS 

[puzzled] 

Done her in?

LIZA. 

Y-e-e-e-es, Lord love you! 

Why should she die of Influenza? 

She come through diphtheria 

right enough the year before. 

I saw her with my own eyes. 

Fairly blue with it, she was. 

They all thought she was dead; 

but my father 

he kept ladling gin 

down her throat 

til she came to 

so sudden 

that she bit the bowl 

off the spoon.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL 

[startled] 

Dear me!

LIZA 

[piling up the indictment] 

What call would a woman 

with that strength in her 

have to die of Influenza? 

What become of her new straw hat 

that should have come to me? 

Somebody pinched it; 

and what I say is, 

them as pinched it 

done her in.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. 

What does ‘doing her in’ mean?

HIGGINS 

[hastily] 

Oh, that’s the new small talk. 

To do a person in 

means to kill them.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL 

[to Eliza, horrified] 

You surely don’t believe 

that Your Aunt was killed?

LIZA. 

Do I not! Them she lived with 

would have killed her for

 a hat-pin, let alone a hat.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. 

But it can’t have been right 

for your father to pour spirits 

down her throat like that. 

It might have killed her.

LIZA. 

Not her. Gin was mother’s milk to her. 

Besides, he’d poured so much down his own throat that he knew the good of it.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. 

Do you mean that he drank?

LIZA. 

Drank! My word! 

Something chronic.

MRS. EYNSFORD HILL. 

How dreadful for you!

LIZA. 

Not a bit. It never did him 

no harm what I could see.

 

But then he did not keep it up regular. 

[Cheerfully] 

On the burst, as you might say, 

from time to time. 

 

And always more agreeable 

when he had a drop in. 

 

When he was out of work, 

my mother used to give him fourpence 

and tell him to go out 

and not come back until 

he’d drunk himself cheerful 

and loving-like. 

There’s lots of women 

has to make their husbands drunk 

to make them fit to live with. 

[Now quite at her ease] 

 

You see, it’s like this. 

If A Man has a bit of A Conscience, 

it always takes him when he’s sober; 

and then it makes him low-spirited. 

A drop of booze just takes that off 

and makes him happy. 

 

[To Freddy, who is in convulsions of suppressed laughter] 

Here! what are you sniggering at?

FREDDY. 

The new small talk. 

You do it so awfully well.

LIZA. 

If I was doing it proper, 

what was you laughing at? 

[To Higgins] 

Have I said anything I oughtn’t?

MRS. HIGGINS 

[interposing] 

Not at all, Miss Doolittle.

LIZA. 

Well, that’s a mercy, anyhow. 

[Expansively] 

 

What I Always Say is —

HIGGINS 

[rising and looking at his watch] 

Ahem!

LIZA 

[looking round at him; taking the hint; and rising] 

Well: I must go. 

[They all rise.  Freddy goes to The Door]

So pleased to have met you. Good-bye. 

[She shakes hands with Mrs. Higgins].

MRS. HIGGINS. 

Good-bye.

LIZA. 

Good-bye, Colonel Pickering.

PICKERING. 

Good-bye, Miss Doolittle. 

 

[They shake hands].

LIZA

 [nodding to the others] 

Good-bye, all.

FREDDY 

[opening the door for her] 

Are you walking across The Park, 

Miss Doolittle? If so—

LIZA. 

Walk! Not bloody likely. 

[Sensation]. 

 

I am going in a taxi. 

 

[She goes out].

Pickering gasps and sits down. Freddy goes out on the balcony to catch another glimpse of Eliza.