Major Barbara | Page 5

made a very good
match for Sarah. Charles Lomax will be a millionaire at 35. But that is
ten years ahead; and in the meantime his trustees cannot under the
terms of his father's will allow him more than 800 pounds a year.
STEPHEN. But the will says also that if he increases his income by his
own exertions, they may double the increase.
LADY BRITOMART. Charles Lomax's exertions are much more
likely to decrease his income than to increase it. Sarah will have to find
at least another 800 pounds a year for the next ten years; and even then
they will be as poor as church mice. And what about Barbara? I thought
Barbara was going to make the most brilliant career of all of you. And
what does she do? Joins the Salvation Army; discharges her maid; lives
on a pound a week; and walks in one evening with a professor of Greek
whom she has picked up in the street, and who pretends to be a
Salvationist, and actually plays the big drum for her in public because
he has fallen head over ears in love with her.
STEPHEN. I was certainly rather taken aback when I heard they were
engaged. Cusins is a very nice fellow, certainly: nobody would ever
guess that he was born in Australia; but--
LADY BRITOMART. Oh, Adolphus Cusins will make a very good
husband. After all, nobody can say a word against Greek: it stamps a
man at once as an educated gentleman. And my family, thank Heaven,

is not a pig-headed Tory one. We are Whigs, and believe in liberty. Let
snobbish people say what they please: Barbara shall marry, not the man
they like, but the man I like.
STEPHEN. Of course I was thinking only of his income. However, he
is not likely to be extravagant.
LADY BRITOMART. Don't be too sure of that, Stephen. I know your
quiet, simple, refined, poetic people like Adolphus--quite content with
the best of everything! They cost more than your extravagant people,
who are always as mean as they are second rate. No: Barbara will need
at least 2000 pounds a year. You see it means two additional
households. Besides, my dear, you must marry soon. I don't approve of
the present fashion of philandering bachelors and late marriages; and I
am trying to arrange something for you.
STEPHEN. It's very good of you, mother; but perhaps I had better
arrange that for myself.
LADY BRITOMART. Nonsense! you are much too young to begin
matchmaking: you would be taken in by some pretty little nobody. Of
course I don't mean that you are not to be consulted: you know that as
well as I do. [Stephen closes his lips and is silent]. Now don't sulk,
Stephen.
STEPHEN. I am not sulking, mother. What has all this got to do
with--with--with my father?
LADY BRITOMART. My dear Stephen: where is the money to come
from? It is easy enough for you and the other children to live on my
income as long as we are in the same house; but I can't keep four
families in four separate houses. You know how poor my father is: he
has barely seven thousand a year now; and really, if he were not the
Earl of Stevenage, he would have to give up society. He can do nothing
for us: he says, naturally enough, that it is absurd that he should be
asked to provide for the children of a man who is rolling in money.
You see, Stephen, your father must be fabulously wealthy, because
there is always a war going on somewhere.
STEPHEN. You need not remind me of that, mother. I have hardly ever
opened a newspaper in my life without seeing our name in it. The
Undershaft torpedo! The Undershaft quick firers! The Undershaft ten
inch! the Undershaft disappearing rampart gun! the Undershaft
submarine! and now the Undershaft aerial battleship! At Harrow they

called me the Woolwich Infant. At Cambridge it was the same. A little
brute at King's who was always trying to get up revivals, spoilt my
Bible--your first birthday present to me-- by writing under my name,
"Son and heir to Undershaft and Lazarus, Death and Destruction
Dealers: address, Christendom and Judea." But that was not so bad as
the way I was kowtowed to everywhere because my father was making
millions by selling cannons.
LADY BRITOMART. It is not only the cannons, but the war loans that
Lazarus arranges under cover of giving credit for the cannons. You
know, Stephen, it's perfectly scandalous. Those two men, Andrew
Undershaft and Lazarus, positively have Europe under their thumbs.
That is why your father is able to behave as he does. He is above the
law. Do you think Bismarck or Gladstone