Bernard Shaw - Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

Did you sleep after Bayreuth? Last time you wrote, you were going to sleep, tired out. I wish I could sleep for a month. I’m generally worn out for want of the blessing, sleep. Why do you live in Fitzroy Square? Little Mrs Moscheles [Margaret Moscheles née Sobernheim] has been down here. You know her, dont you? I wish Cymbeline were “cut,” and I could read Candida . Drive down to Hampton Court some Saturday or Sunday and read it to me. Of course you are busy, but never mind. Let things slide and come before the fine warm days are fled. You’ll like reading me your own work and I shall like hearing it. At least I suppose I shall! Although I fear mine are very dull wits, and second times of reading are best.

A heavenly day here. I wish you were here, and everyone else I like. Lord! There’d be “a damned party in a parlour”!

Thank you for your letter. Dont think that I want to hurt Janet. I would help her (I have tried). But Candida, a Mother! Attractive to me, very. I’m good at Mothers, and Janet can do the Loveresses.

Am I successful? You say so. I heard the other day you hated successful folk. I said “Fudge”!

Oh—good-bye.

E. T.

31/ To Ellen Terry

28th August 1896

. . . Curiously—in view of “Candida”—you and Janet are the only women I ever met whose ideal of voluptuous delight was that life should be one long confinement from the cradle to the grave. If I make money out of my new play I will produce “Candida” at my own expense; and you & Janet shall play it on alternate nights. It must be a curious thing to be a mother. First the child is part of yourself; then it is your child; then it is its father’s child; then it is the child of some remote ancestor; finally it is an independent human being whom you have been the mere instrument of bringing into the world, and whom perhaps you would never have thought of caring for if anyone else had performed that accidental service. It must be an odd sensation looking on at these young people and being out of it, staring at their amazing callousness, and being tolerated and no doubt occasionally ridiculed by them before they have done anything whatsoever to justify them in presuming to the distinction of your friendship. Of the two lots, the woman’s lot of perpetual motherhood, and the man’s of perpetual babyhood, I prefer the man’s, I think.

I dont hate successful people: just the contrary. But I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. Then, too, I like fighting successful people; attacking them; rousing them; trying their mettle; kicking down their sand castles so as to make them build stone ones, and so on. It develops one’s muscles. Besides, one learns from it: a man never tells you anything until you contradict him. I hate failure. Only, it must be real success: real skill, real ability, real power, not mere newspaper popularity and money, nor wicked frivolity, like Nance Oldfield. I am a magnificently successful man myself, and so are my knot of friends—the Fabian old gang—but nobody knows it except we ourselves, and even we haven’t time to attend to it. . . .

GBS

32/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

23rd September 1896

Well, it was pretty bad again to-night. Only one scene better. I went to meet my love at Milford Haven really, instead of pretending. That was good. The rest pretty awful. Well, now an end of me, sweet sir, and thank you for your forbearance.

Am I to hear or read Candida ? I think I’d rather never meet you—in the flesh. You are such a Great Dear as you are! And you are such a worker, and I work too for other people. My kids, and Henry [Irving], and my friends. And we both are always busy, and of use!

Next Sunday I go with Henry’s cousin and perhaps H. to Richmond or Hampton Court (3 is a crowd!). I must get air, or I’ll die. I’m thinking how kind you’ve been to me, and now I’ll to bed, for I’m beat.—Yours, yours,

E. T.

33/ To Ellen Terry

25th September 1896

. . . Very well, you shant meet me in flesh if you’d rather not. There is something deeply touching in that. Did you never meet a man who could bear meeting and knowing? Perhaps you’re right: Oscar Wilde said of me: “An excellent man: he has no enemies; and none of his friends like him.” And that’s quite true they dont like me; but they are my friends, and some of them love me. If you value a man’s regard, strive with him. As to liking, you like your newspaper, and despise it. I had rather you remembered one thing I said for three days than liked me (only) for 300,000,000,000,000,000 years. How would you like to be an amiable woman, with semicircular eyebrows?

Candida doesnt matter. I begin to think it an overrated play, especially in comparison to the one [ The Devil’s Disciple ] I have just begun. You simply couldnt read it: the first scene would bore you to death and you would never take it up again. Unless I read it to you, you must wait until it is produced, if it ever is. However, that can be managed without utter disillusion. You can be blindfolded, and then I can enter the room and get behind a screen and read away. This plan will have the enormous advantage that if you dont like the play you can slip out after the first speech or two, and slip back again and cough (to prove your presence) just before the end. I will promise not to utter a single word outside the play, and not to peep round the screen.

G. B. S.

34/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

26th September 1896

Oh you perfectly charming being. You are just a Duck! Your letter here for supper with my cold chicken pie, and I have not left off laughing all the while. I had been amused before I left the “workhouse” by hearing from H. I. [Henry Irving], that you were to meet to-morrow at 12.30. Then he brought me home here, but didnt come in, and then your letter, and “the [ Saturday ] Review ” to-morrow!!

Dont misunderstand my words, and call me up in your mind’s eye as a sweetly pathetic picture who “Never met a man worth meeting and knowing”! That’s not so. I’ve only ever met fine fellows and found they were all worth knowing, and have loved them all (dont misunderstand me) and I’m all tired out with caring and caring, and I never leave off (which is so absurd). But I must hear your plays. Maynt I have Candida ? Do you think I’ll run away with her?

Well—it’s just what I am . “An amiable woman.” I have been told so of many. Ugh! Good-night, you poor old dear. You’re splendid! Oh to be there to-morrow morning at 12.30, and I cant be. But I know H. will drive up here directly afterwards and tell me all about you, from his point of view! But he is such a clever old silly, and when we know people together , he sees ‘em through my eyes. Except critics!

Just read you again, and am bubbling with laughter. Thank God I’m alone here. The clock strikes one. Good-night—and good-morning.

You Pet!

[Ellen Terry]

35/ To Ellen Terry

2nd October 1896

This is a nice way to behave. You coax everything you want out of me—my notions about Imogen, my play, and a beautiful notice in the Saturday [Review], and then instantly turn on your heel and leave me there cursing the perfidy of your sex. However, it opened my eyes to the abject condition I was drifting into. I positively missed your letters—I, I, Bernard Shaw, MISSED the letters of a mere mortal woman. But I pulled myself together. I will not be the slave of a designing female. Henceforth I shall regard my morning’s mail with the most profound indifference, the coldest calm. Let me tell you, Ellen Terry, that you make a great mistake in supposing that I am that sort of man. I am not: why should I be? What difference does it make to me whether you write to me or not? You should curb this propensity to personal vanity. This well ordered bosom is insensible to your flatteries. Oh my dear blessed Ellen, let me stop talking nonsense for a moment. . . .