An Ideal Husband

mask! You sold yourself for money. Oh! a common thief were better. You put yourself up to sale to the highest bidder! You were bought in the market. You lied to the whole world. And yet you will not lie to me. Sir Robert Chiltern Rushing towards her. Gertrude! Gertrude! Lady Chiltern Thrusting him back with outstretched hands. No, don’t speak! Say nothing! Your voice wakes terrible memories⁠—memories of things that made me love you⁠—memories of words that made me love you⁠—memories that now are horrible to me. And how I worshipped you! You were to me something apart from common life, a thing pure, noble, honest, without stain. The world seemed to me finer because you were in it, and goodness more real because you lived. And now⁠—oh, when I think that I made of a man like you my ideal! the ideal of my life! Sir Robert Chiltern There was your mistake. There was your error. The error all women commit. Why can’t you women love us, faults and all? Why do you place us on monstrous pedestals? We have all feet of clay, women as well as men; but when we men love women, we love them knowing their weaknesses, their follies, their imperfections, love them all the more, it may be, for that reason. It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love. It is when we are wounded by our own hands, or by the hands of others, that love should come to cure us⁠—else what use is love at all? All sins, except a sin against itself, Love should forgive. All lives, save loveless lives, true Love should pardon. A man’s love is like that. It is wider, larger, more human than a woman’s. Women think that they are making ideals of men. What they are making of us are false idols merely. You made your false idol of me, and I had not the courage to come down, show you my wounds, tell you my weaknesses. I was afraid that I might lose your love, as I have lost it now. And so, last night you ruined my life for me⁠—yes, ruined it! What this woman asked of me was nothing compared to what she offered to me. She offered security, peace, stability. The sin of my youth, that I had thought was buried, rose up in front of me, hideous, horrible, with its hands at my throat. I could have killed it forever, sent it back into its tomb, destroyed its record, burned the one witness against me. You prevented me. No one but you, you know it. And now what is there before me but public disgrace, ruin, terrible shame, the mockery of the world, a lonely dishonoured life, a lonely dishonoured death, it may be, some day? Let women make no more ideals of men! let them not put them on alters and bow before them, or they may ruin other lives as completely as you⁠—you whom I have so wildly loved⁠—have ruined mine! He passes from the room. Lady Chiltern rushes towards him, but the door is closed when she reaches it. Pale with anguish, bewildered, helpless, she sways like a plant in the water. Her hands, outstretched, seem to tremble in the air like blossoms in the mind. Then she flings herself down beside a sofa and buries her face. Her sobs are like the sobs of a child.

Act III

The Library in Lord Goring’s house. An Adam room. On the right is the door leading into the hall. On the left, the door of the smoking room. A pair of folding doors at the back open into the drawing room. The fire is lit. Phipps, the butler, is arranging some newspapers on the writing-table. The distinction of Phipps is his impassivity. He has been termed by enthusiasts the Ideal Butler. The Sphinx is not so incommunicable. He is a mask with a manner. Of his intellectual or emotional life, history knows nothing. He represents the dominance of form.

	Enter Lord Goring in evening dress with a buttonhole. He is wearing a silk hat and Inverness cape. White-gloved, he carries a Louis Seize cane. His are all the delicate fopperies of Fashion. One sees that he stands in immediate relation to modern life, makes it indeed, and so masters it. He is the first well-dressed philosopher in the history of thought.
Lord Goring	Got my second buttonhole for me, Phipps?
Phipps	Yes, my lord. Takes his hat, cane, and cape, and presents new buttonhole on salver.
Lord Goring	Rather distinguished thing, Phipps. I am the only person of the smallest importance in London at present who wears a buttonhole.
Phipps	Yes, my lord. I have observed that,
Lord Goring	Taking out old buttonhole. You see, Phipps, Fashion is what one wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
Phipps	Yes, my lord.
Lord Goring	Just as vulgarity is simply the conduct of other people.
Phipps	Yes, my lord.
Lord Goring	Putting in a new buttonhole. And falsehoods the truths of other people.
Phipps	Yes, my lord.
Lord Goring	Other people are quite dreadful. The only possible society is oneself.
Phipps	Yes, my lord.
Lord Goring	To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance, Phipps.
Phipps	Yes, my lord.
Lord Goring	Looking at himself in the glass. Don’t think I quite like this buttonhole, Phipps. Makes me look a little too old. Makes me almost in the prime of life, eh, Phipps?
Phipps	I don’t observe any alteration in your lordship’s appearance.
Lord Goring	You don’t, Phipps?
Phipps	No, my lord.
Lord Goring	I am not quite sure. For the future a more trivial buttonhole, Phipps, on Thursday evenings.
Phipps	I will speak to the florist, my lord. She has had a loss in her family lately, which perhaps accounts for the lack of triviality your lordship complains of in the buttonhole.
Lord Goring	Extraordinary thing about the lower classes in England⁠—they are always losing their relations.
Phipps	Yes,