This morning Etiquetteer realized it was May 20 and almost instantly felt a song coming on:
“Next week on the 20th of May,
I proclaim ‘Liza Doolittle Day!
All of England shall celebrate the glory of you,
And whatever you wish and want I gladly will do.”
Because if the internet can give us holidays like Pi Day (March 14, or 3.14) and Star Wars Day (May the Fourth), who’s to prevent us celebrating one from the World of Musical Theatre?
And why might this be important to Etiquetteer? Although Eliza Doolittle’s mission was to get ahead through better speech, along the way she also discovered Perfect Propriety. That was something Henry Higgins couldn’t have taught her. Just look at him, showing up at Ascot in tweeds! He probably had to tell the gatekeepers “You must let me in! I’m part of the plot!”
(We really miss what a behavioral scofflaw Professor Higgins is in My Fair Lady. In George Bernard Shaw’s original Pygmalion it’s quite clear that Higgins cares for no one but himself. Mrs. Pearce gives it back to him though, which you should see at the 25:06 mark in the full-length film below. He has no table manners and no consideration for others.)
What’s the Perfect Propriety Eliza picked up on her journey? Not just proper speech, but Perfectly Proper subject matter. We all know the impression she made when describing her aunt’s sickbed. Her even more startling advocacy of alcoholism in marriage (which didn’t make it from the play to the musical) underlines even more how little she knew about Polite Society - even more powerfully than her yelling at the horses in the musical.
Eliza also learned dancing and, even more important, deportment. When we think of the latter at all now, we tend to think of posture. The simple act of Standing Up Straight and Not Slouching makes a powerful improvement not only in how we are perceived, but in how we perceive ourselves. But the idea of deportment encompasses also how we conduct ourselves, as the dictionary says “to cause (oneself) to act or behave in a particular and especially in a controlled manner.” For Etiquetteer, Eliza’s final examination is less attending the embassy ball than it is serving tea to Professor Higgins the next afternoon. The former would be nerve-wracking enough, but in the latter she has to set out contentious new terms of interaction with her mentor while also administering the tea table. Throughout she manages with complete self-possession, complete Perfect Propriety.*
So, how shall we celebrate? Viewings of Pygmalion with Leslie Howard and Wendy Hiller (see above) and My Fair Lady with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison are certainly in order. We might also sit up straight at a proper afternoon tea table tea and enjoy tea and cakes while talking about “the weather and everybody’s health.” Fans of George Bernard Shaw may enjoy a vegetarian dinner. And at any time we might lift a glass of champagne and toast Shaw, Howard, Hiller, Harrison, Hepburn, Julie Andrews (of course!), and Lerner and Loewe for having given us this delightful story of transformation.
*Etiquetteer remembers a startling anecdote from the book Inventing Champagne about a performance of My Fair Lady when Rex Harrison broke wind on stage - unobtrusively, he thought. As soon as he came to the line “My manners are just as good as Colonel Pickering’s!” the audience burst out laughing; this line usually didn’t prompt any reaction at all. Julie Andrews simply continued with the scene, but Etiquetteer has always imagined that, if she had turned slowly to the audience with a deadpan stare, that the laughter could have continued another five minutes. But while that might have been good improvisational comedy, it would not have been Perfectly Proper.