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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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18 JACK I am afraid I really don’t know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, I said I had lost my parents. It would be nearer the truth to say that my parents seem to have lost me.... I don’t actually know who I am by birth. I was well, I was found. LADY BRA Found! JACK The late Mr. Thomas Cardew, an old gentleman of a very charitable and kindly disposition, found me, and gave me the name of Worthing, because he happened to have a first-class ticket for Worthing in his pocket at the time. Worthing is a place in Sussex. It is a seaside resort. LADY BRA Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first- class ticket for this seaside resort find you? JACK [Gravely.] In a hand-bag. LADY BRA A hand-bag? JACK [Very seriously.] Yes, Lady Bracknell. I was in a hand-bag-a somewhat large, black leather hand-bag, with handles to it-an ordinary hand-bag, in fact. LADY BRA In what locality did this Mr. James, or Thomas, Cardew come across this ordinary hand-bag? JACK In the cloak- room at Victoria Station. It was given to him in mistake for his own. LADY BRA The cloak-room at Victoria Station? JACK Yes. The Brighton line. LADY BRA The line is immaterial. Mr. Worthing, I confess I feel somewhat bewildered by what you have just told me. To be born, or at any rate, bred in a hand-bag, whether it had handles or not, seems to me to display a contempt for the ordinary decencies of family life that remind one of the worst excesses of the French Revolution. And I presume you know what that unfortunate movement led to? As for the particular locality in which the handbag was found, a cloakroom at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion-has probably, indeed, been used for that purpose before nowbut it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognized position in good society. JACK May I ask you then what you would advise me to do? I need hardly say I would do anything in the world to ensure Gwendolen’s happiness. |
