JACK: I have a country house with some land, of course, attached to it, about fifteen hundred acres, I believe; but I don't depend on that for my real income. In fact, as far as I can make out, the poachers are the only people who make anything out of it.
LADY BRACKNELL: A country house! How many bedrooms? Well, that point can be cleared up afterwards. You have a town house, I hope? A girl with a simple, unspoiled nature, like Gwendolen, could hardly be expected to reside in the country.
JACK: Well, I own a house in Belgrave Square, but it is let by the year to Lady Bloxham. Of course, I can get it back whenever I like, at six months' notice.
LADY BRACKNELL: Lady Bloxham? I don't know her.
JACK: Oh, she goes about very little. She is a lady considerably advanced in years.
LADY BRACKNELL: Ah, nowadays that is no guarantee of respectability of character. What number in Belgrave Square?
JACK: 149
LADY BRACKNELL (shaking her head): The unfashionable side. I thought there was something. However, that could easily be altered.
JACK: Do you mean the fashion, or the side?
LADY BRACKNELL (sternly): Both, if necessary, I presume. What are your politics?
JACK: Well, I am afraid I really have none. I am a Liberal Unionist.
LADY BRACKNELL: Oh, they count as Torries. They dine with us. Or come in the evening at any rate. You have, of course, no sympathy of any kind with the Radical Party?
JACK: Oh! I don't want to put the asses against the classes, if that is what you mean, Lady Bracknell.
LADY BRACKNELL: That is exactly what I do mean...ahem! ...Are your parents living?
JACK: I have lost both my parents.
LADY BRACKNELL: Both? ...To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune...to lose both seems like carelessness. Who was your father? He was evidently a man of some wealth. Was he born in what the Radical papers call the purple of commerce, or did he rise from the ranks of the aristocracy?
JACK: I am afraid I really don't know. The fact is, Lady Bracknell, that my parents seemed to have lost me...I don't actually know who I am by birth. I was...well, I was found.
LADY BRACKNELL: 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 BRACKNELL: Where did the charitable gentleman who had a first-class ticket for this seaside resort find you?
JACK: In a hand-bag.
LADY BRACKNELL: A hand-bag?
JACK: 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 BRACKNELL: 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 BRACKNELL: The cloak-room at Victoria Station?
JACK: Yes. The Brighton line.
LADY BRACKNELL: 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 reminds 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 hand-bag was found, a cloak-room at a railway station might serve to conceal a social indiscretion - has probably indeed, been used for that purpose before now - but it could hardly be regarded as an assured basis for a recognized position in good society.