Bernard Shaw - Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

GBS

39/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

Some time in October 1896

. . . Well I wont write to-day, but shall take it out in thinking, and I shall talk to you to-night, when I come home from the theatre and have a quiet time with you. It’s quite pathetic, your last card, saying you want to finish your work, and not write “nonsensical letters,” and I suppose as long as I go on writing them, you’ll reply so as not to make me feel “left.” Well I wont post this until the end of the week so you will get some rest. You are very gentle and sweet to me. Sorry, though, you wont have the snuff-box with my picture in it.

But I’ve nothing you could ever “want and could get from no-one else,” and I want nothing from you, dear fellow—nothing more I mean. I’m in your debt and dont mind that in the least since I love you. I want to tell you that I very nearly trotted round to you after the play the other night (the first night), but I stuck to my post like a heroine and I helped Henry [Irving] with all the people, and oh, all the time I was just dying to go away to some quiet place—to you, or to hear some music from Nan Finch-Hatton, but you most of all, or something really nice. Glad I didnt now because of something you said in one of your blessed letters.

Wont you send me Candida one day next week? I’m dull and sick, very, and want an entertainment. Send it to me, like a good boy, as a reward for not letting you hear from me until the end of a week, and for not coming to Fitzroy Square [where Shaw lived at that time], and—well just because I want it. There! I am wanting something “only you can give me”! For just entertainment, no other purpose. Not for Teddy [Edward Craig], sir! I want to read you.

My curses of children have discovered your hand-writing now, and Mistress Edy [Edith Craig] is exceedingly pert to her aged mother. She has drawn your picture which she says is a speaking likeness, and requests me to wear it inside my bodice. I send it to you.

A splendid idea! I wish you’d marry her! Nobody else will. (The ninnies are frightened at her!) Then you’d belong to me, and I’d have her back if you didnt like her! E. (No answer needed.). . . .

[Ellen Terry]

40/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

18th October 1896

. . . I’m just going to read your Candida. I knew you’d send it me if I were ill. Women get everything if they’re sick enough! I cannot pretend to be ill (except just say it on paper) and so I never get anything. Truly at present I’m not fit to be out of bed (where I’ve been for the last 3 days) and here am I going to a big stupid dinner to-night. What a fool I am! By the way, why do you keep on calling yourself an “ass” to me? That’s different.

Now for your play.

Yours—yours

[Ellen Terry]

41/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

19th October 1896

I’ve cried my poor eyes out over your horrid play, your heavenly play. My dear, and now! How can I go out to dinner tonight? I must keep my blue glasses on all the while for my eyes are puffed up and burning. But I can scarce keep from reading it all over again. Henry [Irving] would not care for that play, I think. I know he would laugh. And that sort of thing makes me hate him sometimes. He would not understand it, the dear, clever silly. I cant understand what he understands.

Janet would look, and be, that Candida beautifully, but I could help her I know, to a lot of bottom in it. I could do some of it much better than she. She could do most of it better than I. Oh dear me, I love you more every minute. I cant help it, and I guessed it would be like that! And so we wont meet. But write more plays, my Dear, and let me read them. It has touched me more than I could tell of.

Yours E. T.

42/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

24th October 1896

Your Mrs Webb is a dear (as well as all the other I good things) I should say, but Candida “a sentimental prostitute”! Well! “Some said it thundered. Others that an Angel spake.” You may wear your rue with a difference! So your new play is “grim, gloomy, horrible, sordid” etc. etc. You have to do that I know. Yes: you have to do everything you will, if you dont waste yourself on trifles like me (All trifles are not as kind as I am). Anyway you are all dear, all very precious. You say “your tiredness and illness are my opportunity.” I do not quite understand that.

Now I’m going to read Candida once more, and again Mrs Webb’s explosion of opinion sets me a’thinking, and wondering whether—but there, you certainly will not benefit by knowing what I think. How much I do wish I could be invisible and see you at work.

Farewell E. T.

[PS] I passed your house yesterday on my way to see a poor little servant of mine of years ago. She’s dying. She liked to see me. I’ll never forget her look.

43/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

Later in October 1896

Mr Stanley Weyman. Yes, I think crowds of novelists now-a-days fancy they are the dear Musketeers all over again! I’ve just commenced reading The Seats of The Mighty [by Gilbert Parker] and feel certain it will be the same song over again.

My dear Sally Fairchild will meet you—this evening I imagine. A very sweet girl is Sally (Satty we call her in America), but it is detestable that she should be at Radlett on Sunday with you, and then come on Monday (and all the other days), from you to me. I told her I had a wilful hopeless passion for you, and had tendered you as a remembrance a snuff-box which you scorned and refused. Now I have given it to her. She’ll show it to you.

I am dying to read Candida to Teddy, to Satty Fairchild and Edy, and promise you I wont until you tell me I may. I will send you back the 3 precious acts by next Saturday, if I may keep them until then.

[Henry Vernon] Esmond could look Marjoribanks to perfection, and act it well, but Teddy would appear to be Marjoribanks. Do send me more to read.

E. T.

44/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

26th October 1896

Darling, I’ve not read your letter, but I must tell you I dislike folk who are not reserved, and will tell me of your Janets and things and make me mad, when I only want to know whether they think you would, if we met, have a horrible dislike of me when you found me such an old thing, and so different to the Ellen you’ve seen on the stage. I’m so pale when I’m off the stage, and rouge becomes me, and I know I shall have to take to it if I consent to let you see me. And it would be so pathetic, for not even the rouge would make you admire me away from the stage. Oh what a curse it is to be an actress!

Couldnt wait, and I’m half-way through your (horrid typewritten) letter. Idiot, do you suppose that Janet is the only “she” who’d love to get your play bit by bit? Why that is the charmingest of all ways to know a play.

Isnt Satty a sweet? If you read to Satty and Edy on Saturday evening I shall be thinking of it all the while I’m acting, I know.

I passed your house again to-day (on purpose, I confess it). I was going from St Pancras to Kensington and took a turn round your Square. I’d like to go when you are there! But no, all’s of no use. I cant compete ‘cos I’m not pretty. Edy, I do assure you, is nicest, cleverest, best of all. She never tried to compete for anyone, and so probably she’ll go to the wall unappreciated. She’d be a handful, but oh wouldnt I just be glad to get her back again if a man she chose wanted to get rid of her. I’d adore her to the scaffold.—Yours, you blessed thing,

Ellen

45/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

28th October 1896

. . . Off to Paris? Oh! With Janet [Achurch]? Or no incommoding females? Why dont you give yourself over to a play where there’s no smile round the corner, nor a teeny-weeny smile at all, at all? With heat, and with pain and with tears unable to come out, and the pen tearing along at a grand pace. I wonder what you would write then? You are as cold as ice and quizical (cant spell it) when you make girls invite boys to sit on hearth-rugs and “amuse” them. Of course I like that play too, but—. . .