Several people took out their watches and some of them left to catch a train, or a drink! And it interrupted the attention of all of us who stayed. Of course you may think it unnecessary to mention such a trifle. I’m going to write to Janet about one or two trifling things in her acting, suggestions which she may care, or not care, to try over. She is a dear thing.
I was very happy being able to be with Edy. I know she was glad to have me there. I went for a drive with Janet and Mr Charrington (I like him) but was so ill when they came to supper in the evening I could scarce sit up. My eyes were dazed with the pain in my head. I’m well again now. It was the great excitement of seeing Candida. I was all right the night before!
Darlingest are you well? and happy enough? Where are you? When does your holiday end? Are you most of your time working? I guess you are!
I begin a drive of ten days on the first or second of September. We go 226 miles (to Aylesbury first) and amongst other wonderful places I go to Tewkesbury. I wonder I dont turn into an Angel there, I feel so nice, and as if I could fly. I’m reading now all the time of Russia.
Let me press you to a jelly now, for I must go.
Your Ellen
66/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
4th September 1897
. . . I’m glad you are still in the fresh air. This London is lovely when one drives out as I did yesterday at 9 in the morning, but about noon a pall of heavy murkiness hangs over everything and it seems to crush in one’s head. Edy came from Folkestone Sunday morning and yesterday went on to Nottingham. I would advise you to see Candida before producing it in London. If it is to be done, when is it to be done? A clever friend of mine said to me yesterday—“If Edy stays long with the Independent Theatre Company she will get dull, heavy, conceited, frowsy, trollopy, and dirty! In fact will look moth-eaten! And no one will see her act, because nobody goes to their Theatre.” That’s lively news for Edy’s Mama, who is missing her all the while, and for you who have a play there. I have a frightful cold and am stuck in bed to-day. I’ll send Peter [Laurence Irving’s play Peter the Great] in a day or so. Oh, my muddled head. I think I’m fit for nothing. Look now! You and Miss P. T. [Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend later Mrs Shaw] live in a fine house in the country and I will “keep the Lodge”! And run out wet or shine and open the gates! And then sometimes you’ll come to tea with me. I can make delicious girdle-cakes and jam, fruitfools and Hominy cakes. Send me my letter my very precious Bernie!
E. T.
67/ To Richard Mansfield
8th September 1897
My dear Mansfield
In a month or two will appear, in England and America simultaneously, a couple of volumes of my plays, including Arms & the Man, Candida, The Man of Destiny and You Never Can Tell, as well as three earlier plays, Widowers’ Houses, The Philanderer, & Mrs Warren’s Profession. My description of Bluntschli [in Arms and the Man] will beat your best efforts off the stage, and as for Candida, your reputation will not survive the discovery of your monstrous error and sin in letting it slip through your fingers. . .
It is as an organizer of the theatre that you really interest me; and here I find you paralyzed by the ridiculous condition that the drama must always be a Mansfield exhibition. I wanted Candida done. Why didnt you send for Courtenay Thorpe, who has just ‘created’ Eugene here? If you set your mind to it you could teach all the necessary tricks to the first dozen able bodied human shells you meet in the street. I dont believe a bit in your own acting; you’re too clever, too positive, and have imagination instead of what people call ‘feeling’. Why not hire a specimen of the real actor-article—the true susceptible, hysterical, temperamental, somnambulistic, drunk-on-air nothingness—and put ideas into the creature’s head, and hypnotize him with a part. He’ll act your head off, because you have to be yourself, whereas he has no self and can only materialize himself in the delusive stuff spun out of another man’s fancy. For you acting is only intentional madness, like David drabbling in his beard. Harden your heart against, and manage, manage, manage. Bless you, I know by your letters: I miss the hollowness, the brainless void full of tremulously emotional chaos waiting for a phantom shape in a play—bah! it’s no profession for you. The people come because they are curious about the interesting man, Richard Mansfield, and because you have imagination enough to strike their imaginations with stage effects; but that’s quite another thing. You may as me whether these spooks of people will ever understand my plays. I reply that I dont want them to understand. If they did theyd he dumfoundered. Besides, my plays never will be played, though they can be. I’ll write them & print them; and the right people will understand. Meanwhile play the Devil’s Disciple, and then retire & write to the papers explaining (as above) why you scorn to act any longer, except in an emergency as Marcellus or Bernardo [characters in Hamlet] and devote the rest of your life to the organization of victory all over the States—ten companies at a time—instead of to broadsword combats.
Do not shew this letter to your wife: she will blow me up for allowing the winds of heaven to visit your face too harshly.
Irving’s son [Laurence] has written a play about Peter the Great of which I hear high praise. The younger generation is knocking at the door: nephew Alf has played Osric to [Herbert Beerbohm] Tree’s Hamlet here—at least I saw him announced for the part, I did not see the performance, as I am in the country for August & September.
Any chance of seeing you over here?
yrs sincerely
G. Bernard Shaw
68/ To Ellen Terry
8th September 1897
. . . Are you going to do Peter [the Great] on the road? You should. Think of how much anxiety it will save you if you have your difficulties with the words settled before the first night in London. Mansfield produces “The Devil’s Disciple” at the 5th Avenue Theatre on the 6th Oct, after an experiment or two with it in the provinces. Ah, if you only would play a matinee of it with Forbes[-Robertson], I would actually go to see it (a compliment I haven’t paid Candida). Besides, I would teach that rapscallionly flower girl of his something. “Caesar & Cleopatra” has been driven clean out of my head by a play I want to write for them in which he shall be a west end gentleman and she [Mrs Patrick Campbell] an east end dona in an apron and three orange and red ostrich feathers [a first reference to Pygmalion written during 1912 and 1913].
I see you wont tell me anything about Prossy. It would be seething the kid in its mother’s milk, I suppose; but still I do want to know in general terms whether my style of work fits her.
It is luncheon hour, and there’s a visitor.
That letter would not have surprised anybody at the hotel. Did you ever read “Rejected Addresses” [by the brothers James and Horace Smith]? I only remember three lines from “Lady Elizabeth Mugg.”
—for who would not slavery hug,
to spend but one exquisite hour
in the arms of Elizabeth Mugg!
I should write the same about you if there were any rhyme to Ellen. I love you soulfully & bodyfully, properly and improperly, every way that a woman can be loved.
GBS
69/ To Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend later Mrs Bernard Shaw
18th October 1897
. . . This morning came an appalling letter from my Italian lady [Candida Bartolucci]—“I have seen your play [Candida]. It is beautiful. I am coming to London to congratulate you.” I must rush off to the vestry committee.
GBS
P.S. I biked to Radlett yesterday with Wallas & Ada Radford. In your absence I think I shall fall in love with Mrs Phillimore [née Lucy Fitzpatrick].
70/ To Janet Achurch