117
GB Shaw
MRS HUSHABYE
. Horses! What rubbish!
LADY UTTERWORD
. Yes: horses. Why have we never been
able to let this house? Because there are no proper stables.
Go anywhere in England where there are natural, whole-
some, contented, and really nice English people; and what
do you always find? That the stables are the real centre of the
household; and that if any visitor wants to play the piano
the whole room has to be upset before it can be opened,
there are so many things piled on it. I never lived until I
learned to ride; and I shall never ride really well because I
didn’t begin as a child. There are only two classes in good
society in England: the equestrian classes and the neurotic
classes. It isn’t mere convention: everybody can see that the
people who hunt are the right people and the people who
don’t are the wrong ones.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. There is some truth in this. My
ship made a man of me; and a ship is the horse of the sea.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Exactly how Hastings explained
your being a gentleman.
CAPTAIN SHOTOVER
. Not bad for a numskull. Bring
the man here with you next time: I must talk to him.
LADY UTTERWORD
. Why is Randall such an obvious
rotter? He is well bred; he has been at a public school and a
university; he has been in the Foreign Office; he knows the
best people and has lived all his life among them. Why is he
so unsatisfactory, so contemptible? Why can’t he get a valet
to stay with him longer than a few months? Just because he
is too lazy and pleasure-loving to hunt and shoot. He strums
the piano, and sketches, and runs after married women, and
reads literary books and poems. He actually plays the flute;
but I never let him bring it into my house. If he would only—
[
she is interrupted by the melancholy strains of a flute coming
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