Bernard Shaw

“ RIDGEON. Come now, Sir Paddy, no growling. Have something more to drink.
SIR PATRICK. No, thank you.
WALPOLE. Do you see anything wrong with Dubedat, B. B.?
B. B. Oh, a charming young fellow. Besides, after all, what could be wrong with him? Look at him. What could be wrong with him?
SIR PATRICK. There are two things that can be wrong with any man. One of them is a cheque. The other is a woman. Until you know that a man’s sound on these two points, you know nothing about him.
B. B. Ah, cynic, cynic!
WALPOLE. He’s all right as to the cheque, for a while at all events. ”

“ Stay with me, Louis. Oh, dont leave me, dearest.
LOUIS. Not that I’m selfish. With all my faults I dont think Ive ever been really selfish. No artist can: Art is too large for that. You will marry again, Jennifer.
MRS DUBEDAT. Oh, how can you, Louis?
LOUIS [insisting childishly] Yes, because people who have found marriage happy always marry again. Ah, I shant be jealous. [Slyly.] But dont talk to the other fellow too much about me: he wont like it. [Almost chuckling] I shall be your lover all the time; but it will be a secret from him, poor devil!
SIR PATRICK. Come! ”

“ WALPOLE. Blood-poisoning.
RIDGEON. Blood-poisoning! Impossible.
WALPOLE. I tell you, blood-poisoning. Ninety-five per cent of the human race suffer from chronic blood-poisoning, and die of it. It’s as simple as A.B.C. Your nuciform sac is full of decaying matter—undigested food and waste products—rank ptomaines. Now you take my advice, Ridgeon. Let me cut it out for you. You’ll be another man afterwards.
SIR PATRICK. Dont you like him as he is?
WALPOLE. No I dont. I dont like any man who hasnt a healthy circulation. ”

“ RIDGEON. My mind’s made up. When the law breaks down, honest men must find a remedy for themselves. I will not lift a finger to save this reptile.
B. B. That is the word I was trying to remember. Reptile.
WALPOLE. I cant help rather liking you, Dubedat. But you certainly are a thoroughgoing specimen.
SIR PATRICK. You know our opinion of you now, at all events.
LOUIS [patiently putting down his pencil] Look here. All this is no good. You dont understand. You imagine that I’m simply an ordinary criminal.
WALPOLE. Not an ordinary one, Dubedat. Do yourself justice. ”

“ MRS DUBEDAT. No, never. You are the light and the blessing of my life. I never lived until I knew you.
LOUIS [his eyes glistening] Then you must always wear beautiful dresses and splendid magic jewels. Think of all the wonderful pictures I shall never paint.
[She wins a terrible victory over a sob] Well, you must be transfigured with all the beauty of those pictures. Men must get such dreams from seeing you as they never could get from any daubing with paints and brushes. Painters must paint you as they never painted any mortal woman before. ”

“ SIR PATRICK. All professions are conspiracies against the laity. And we cant all be geniuses like you. Every fool can get ill; but every fool cant be a good doctor: there are not enough good ones to go round. And for all you know, Bloomfield Bonington kills less people than you do.
RIDGEON. Oh, very likely. But he really ought to know the difference between a vaccine and an anti-toxin. Stimulate the phagocytes! The vaccine doesnt affect the phagocytes at all. He’s all wrong: hopelessly, dangerously wrong. To put a tube of serum into his hands is murder: simple murder. ”

“ I mean no disrespect to your generation, Sir Patrick: some of you old stagers did marvels through sheer professional intuition and clinical experience; but when I think of the average men of your day, ignorantly bleeding and cupping and purging, and scattering germs over their patients from their clothes and instruments, and contrast all that with the scientific certainty and simplicity of my treatment of the little prince the other day, I cant help being proud of my own generation: the men who were trained on the germ theory, the veterans of the great struggle over Evolution in the seventies. ”

“ Good day to you. [He edges him out at last; shuts the door on him; and returns to Sir Patrick as Ridgeon and Walpole come back from the recess, Walpole crossing the room to the hat-stand, and Ridgeon coming between Sir Ralph and Sir Patrick] . Poor fellow! Poor young fellow! How well he died! I feel a better man, really.
SIR PATRICK. When youre as old as I am, youll know that it matters very little how a man dies. What matters is, how he lives. Every fool that runs his nose against a bullet is a hero nowadays, because he dies for his country. Why dont he live for it to some purpose? ”

“ Well, a middle-aged doctor cultivating a grey head is much the same sort of spectacle.
RIDGEON. Good Lord! yes: I suppose so. And I thought that the days of my vanity were past. Tell me at what age does a man leave off being a fool?
SIR PATRICK. Remember the Frenchman who asked his grandmother at what age we get free from the temptations of love. The old woman said she didn’t know. [Ridgeon laughs] . Well, I make you the same answer. But the world’s growing very interesting to me now, Colly.
RIDGEON. You keep up your interest in science, do you? ”

“ There must be a great tradition of beauty, a great atmosphere of wonder and romance. That is what men must always think of when they think of me. That is the sort of immortality I want. You can make that for me, Jennifer. There are lots of things you dont understand that every woman in the street understands; but you can understand that and do it as nobody else can. Promise me that immortality. Promise me you will not make a little hell of crape and crying and undertaker’s horrors and withering flowers and all that vulgar rubbish.
MRS DUBEDAT. I promise. ”

“ SCHUTZMACHER. No. You cant improve on Nature in telling stories about gentlemen like Mr Dubedat.
BLENKINSOP. You certainly do stand by one another, you chosen people, Mr Schutzmacher.
SCHUTZMACHER. Not at all. Personally, I like Englishmen better than Jews, and always associate with them. Thats only natural, because, as I am a Jew, theres nothing interesting in a Jew to me, whereas there is always something interesting and foreign in an Englishman. But in money matters it’s quite different. You see, when an Englishman borrows, all he knows or cares is that he wants money ”

“ Ridgeon begins looking at the pictures. Presently he comes back to the table for a magnifying glass, and scrutinizes a drawing very closely. He sighs; shakes his head, as if constrained to admit the extraordinary fascination and merit of the work; then marks the Secretary’s list. Proceeding with his survey, he disappears behind the screen. Jennifer comes back with her book. A look round satisfies her that she is alone. She seats herself at the table and admires the memoir—her first printed book—to her heart’s content. Ridgeon re-appears, face to the wall, scrutinizing the drawings. ”

“ Redpenny, bewildered, vanishes.
MRS DUBEDAT [rising] Doctor: one instant only before you go—
RIDGEON. Sit down. It’s nothing.
MRS DUBEDAT. But the patient. He said he was dying.
RIDGEON. Oh, he’s dead by this time. Never mind. Sit down.
MRS DUBEDAT [sitting down and breaking down] Oh, you none of you care. You see people die every day.
RIDGEON [petting her] Nonsense! it’s nothing: I told him to come in and say that. I thought I should want to get rid of you.
MRS DUBEDAT [shocked at the falsehood] Oh!
RIDGEON [continuing] Dont look so bewildered: theres nobody dying. ”

“ RIDGEON. No. I believe it was with a pound of ripe greengages.
JENNIFER [with deep gravity] Funny!
RIDGEON. Yes. Life does not cease to be funny when people die any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh.
JENNIFER. Dr Blenkinsop said one very strange thing to me.
RIDGEON. What was that?
JENNIFER. He said that private practice in medicine ought to be put down by law. When I asked him why, he said that private doctors were ignorant licensed murderers.
RIDGEON. That is what the public doctor always thinks of the private doctor. Well, Blenkinsop ought to know. ”

“ MRS DUBEDAT. It will. My friendships end only with death.
RIDGEON. Death ends everything, doesnt it? Goodbye.
With a sigh and a look of pity at her which she does not understand, he goes.
ACT IV
The studio. The easel is pushed back to the wall. Cardinal Death, holding his scythe and hour-glass like a sceptre and globe, sits on the throne. On the hat-stand hang the hats of Sir Patrick and Bloomfield Bonington. Walpole, just come in, is hanging up his beside them. There is a knock. He opens the door and finds Ridgeon there.
WALPOLE. Hallo, Ridgeon! ”

“ SIR PATRICK. And how do you tell one from the other?
B. B. Well, obviously, if the bacillus is the genuine Loeffler, you have diphtheria; and if it’s the pseudobacillus, youre quite well. Nothing simpler. Science is always simple and always profound. It is only the half-truths that are dangerous. Ignorant faddists pick up some superficial information about germs; and they write to the papers and try to discredit science. They dupe and mislead many honest and worthy people. But science has a perfect answer to them on every point. ”

“ WALPOLE. I dont mind his disregarding the usual arrangements. Confound the usual arrangements! To a man of science theyre beneath contempt both as to money and women. What I mind is his disregarding everything except his own pocket and his own fancy. He didn’t disregard the usual arrangements when they paid him. Did he give us his pictures for nothing? Do you suppose he’d have hesitated to blackmail me if I’d compromised myself with his wife? Not he.
SIR PATRICK. Dont waste your time wrangling over him. A blackguard’s a blackguard; an honest man’s an honest man ”

“ Walpole is looking. But there are doctors who are naturally cruel; and there are others who get used to cruelty and are callous about it. They blind themselves to the souls of animals; and that blinds them to the souls of men and women. You made a dreadful mistake about Louis; but you would not have made it if you had not trained yourself to make the same mistake about dogs. You saw nothing in them but dumb brutes; and so you could see nothing in him but a clever brute.
RIDGEON [with sudden resolution] I made no mistake whatever about him.
JENNIFER. Oh, doctor! ”

“ SIR PATRICK. And mine do when my inoculation catches them in the negative phase, as you call it. Eh?
RIDGEON. Precisely. To inject a vaccine into a patient without first testing his opsonin is as near murder as a respectable practitioner can get. If I wanted to kill a man I should kill him that way.
EMMY [looking in] Will you see a lady that wants her husband’s lungs cured?
RIDGEON [impatiently] No. Havnt I told you I will see nobody? [To Sir Patrick] I live in a state of siege ever since it got about that I’m a magician who can cure consumption with a drop of serum. ”

“ I think it is Shakespear who says that the good that most men do lives after them: the evil lies interred with their bones. Yes: interred with their bones. Believe me, Paddy, we are all mortal. It is the common lot, Ridgeon. Say what you will, Walpole, Nature’s debt must be paid. ”

“ SIR PATRICK. Blarney, my boy. Thank you all the same. [He sits in one of the arm-chairs near the fireplace. Ridgeon sits on the couch] . Ive come to talk to you a bit. [To Redpenny] Young man: get out.
REDPENNY. Certainly, Sir Patrick [He collects his papers and makes for the door] .
SIR PATRICK. Thank you. Thats a good lad. [Redpenny vanishes] . They all put up with me, these young chaps, because I’m an old man, a real old man, not like you. Youre only beginning to give yourself the airs of age. Did you ever see a boy cultivating a moustache? ”

“ The true remedy for all diseases is Nature’s remedy. Nature and Science are at one, Sir Patrick, believe me; though you were taught differently. Nature has provided, in the white corpuscles as you call them—in the phagocytes as we call them—a natural means of devouring and destroying all disease germs. There is at bottom only one genuinely scientific treatment for all diseases, and that is to stimulate the phagocytes. Stimulate the phagocytes. Drugs are a delusion. Find the germ of the disease; prepare from it a suitable anti-toxin ”

“ LOUIS. Now, I’m only an immoral artist; but if YOUD told me that Jennifer wasnt married, I’d have had the gentlemanly feeling and artistic instinct to say that she carried her marriage certificate in her face and in her character. But you are all moral men; and Jennifer is only an artist’s wife—probably a model; and morality consists in suspecting other people of not being legally married. Arnt you ashamed of yourselves? Can one of you look me in the face after it?
WALPOLE. Its very hard to look you in the face, Dubedat; you have such a dazzling cheek. What about Minnie Tinwell, eh? ”

“ RIDGEON. It will be a doctors’ dinner; and it was to have been a bachelors’ dinner. I’m a bachelor. Now if you will entertain for me, and bring your husband, he will meet me; and he will meet some of the most eminent men in my profession: Sir Patrick Cullen, Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington, Cutler Walpole, and others. I can put the case to them; and your husband will have to stand or fall by what we think of him. Will you come?
MRS DUBEDAT. Yes, of course I will come. Oh, thank you, thank you. And may I bring some of his drawings—the really good ones? ”

“ Oh, dont be foolishly proud, doctor. Confess to a failure, and save our friendship. Remember, Sir Ralph gave Louis your medicine; and it made him worse.
RIDGEON. I cant be your friend on false pretences. Something has got me by the throat: the truth must come out. I used that medicine myself on Blenkinsop. It did not make him worse. It is a dangerous medicine: it cured Blenkinsop: it killed Louis Dubedat. When I handle it, it cures. When another man handles it, it kills—sometimes.
JENNIFER [naively: not yet taking it all in] Then why did you let Sir Ralph give it to Louis? ”

“ A lay figure, in a cardinal’s robe and hat, with an hour-glass in one hand and a scythe slung on its back, smiles with inane malice at Louis, who, in a milkman’s smock much smudged with colors, is painting a piece of brocade which he has draped about his wife.
She is sitting on the throne, not interested in the painting, and appealing to him very anxiously about another matter.
MRS DUBEDAT. Promise.
LOUIS [putting on a touch of paint with notable skill and care and answering quite perfunctorily] I promise, my darling.
MRS DUBEDAT. When you want money, you will always come to me. ”