Bernard Shaw - Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

Here I am, taking the sea air with Wallas. The sea air travels at the rate to of 120 miles an hour and goes through clothes, flesh, bone, spirit tut and all, so that one walks against it like a naked soul, exhilarated, but teeming at the nose. We are in an immense hotel, with 180 rooms and few guests, who have nothing to do, and are miserable exceedingly having come down expressly to be happy. I shall begin a new play presently. The last having been so happily inspired by you, I look about Folkestone for some new inspiratrice, but in vain: every woman in the place either strikes me cheerfully prosaic at a glance, or else makes me boil with ten-philander-power cynicism. Everybody is quoting [Robert Louis] Stevenson’s dictum about the height of happiness being attained when you live in the open air with the woman you love. Convinced as I am that love is hopelessly vulgar and happiness insufferably tedious to those who have once gained the heights, I nevertheless find that these material heights—these windswept cliffs—make me robustly vulgar, greedy and ambitious. If you by any chance tumble off the heights yourself ever, you will understand how vigorously despicable I am under these circumstances. The ozone offers an immense opportunity to any thoroughly abandoned female who would like to become the heroine of a play as black as “Candida” is white. . . .

I am, as you will observe, in an entirely worthless humour. That is the result of health, fresh air, plenty of food, early rising, long walk and the rest of the bracing delusions.

GBS

5/ To an Scottish writer, theatre critic, critic, playwright, Henrik Ibsen’s translator and early friend William Archer

28th December 1894

I return to town tomorrow afternoon to take up the duties, fairly forced on me by [Frank] Harris, of dramatic critic to the Saturday Review ; so do not send on any more proofs to Folkestone. It is questionable whether it is quite decent for a dramatic author to be also a dramatic critic; but my extreme reluctance to make myself dependent for my bread and butter on the acceptance of my plays by managers tempts me to hold to the position that my real profession is that by which I can earn my bread in security. Anyhow, I am prepared to do anything which will enable me to keep my plays for twenty years with perfect tranquillity if it takes that time to educate the public into wanting them.

I read ‘Candida’ to [George] Alexander before I came down here. He instantly perceived that it was Marchbank’s & Candida’s (that is, [Henry] Esmond’s & Janet’s) play and not his. He said he would produce it if he could get down to the poet’s age; but he would not play Morell. He had acted that sort of part, he said, until people were declaring that he could not act. By so doing he has made money enough to make him independent of playing anything but parts which will give him, as he put it, a property in himself as well as in his theatre. This, being intelligent, delighted me, and I took off ‘Candida’ in high spirits. However, as he said he wanted to act a clever man, I suggested The Philanderer, who is an extremely clever man. He asked me to let him read it. I sent it to him & have not heard from him since. He said he wanted a play, because neither [Henry Arthur] Jones nor [Arthur Wing] Pinero was ready. He meant ready to step in on the failure of Henry James’s play; but naturally he did not say so. I am desperately floored by your confounded proofs. A year or two ago, when there was some question of republishing my World articles, I looked through a few of them, and found them, apart from the context of time and place for which they were originally designed, quite impossibly dull, stale and ineffective. I will not go so far as to say that your articles are so afflicting; but they are sufficiently damnable. Who now cares for a discussion of the probability of the plot of ‘A Bunch of Violets’ [by Sydney Grundy]? What further use to Carte [‘s Savoy Theatre] is your attempt to make yourself agreeable, kindly & tolerant over such a ghastly and foredoomed insanity as Mirette [a comic opera by Michel Carré and André Messager]? Is it tolerable to have [Henrik Johan] Ibsen and [Eleonora] Duse, not to mention myself, cut into strips by twothousandword lengths of mere regurgitation of the year’s refuse, which is sufficiently chronicled elsewhere in the Dramatic Year [Book] & the files of the [British weekly paper] Era? I am in utter despair: I dont know what to write by way of preface. If your laziness had led you to follow my example & leave the articles buried, I could not have complained; but I am now more than ever convinced that you should either let your year’s work alone or else rearrange it all as an annual article having the same excellence as its parts originally had as weekly articles. You tell me that the experiment of last year was not a financial success. I tear my hair and desperately ask you, why should it? I declare before high Heaven that [Walter] Scott is a fool, and you a shirk, to publish a book that is no book. If it paid you, you would have some excuse; but it doesnt. . . .

GBS

6/ To Janet Achurch

25th January 1895

I have made an appointment with [a popular London actor Lewis] Waller to read “ Candida ”; but I shall read Eugene for all he is worth, as to sacrifice him would be to sacrifice the play. The only chance is in the fact that Waller is at an earlier phase of actor-management than [George] Alexander, and may play for a managerial and financial success at the cost of playing Morell. But I am not sanguine. If he refuses, I shall try him with the Philanderer ([Charles] Hawtrey in the title part) sooner than leave that stone unturned; and if he sees money in that, Miss [Julia] Neilson is clearly out of the question for Julia, a part which I still think you could do yourself good by playing, as it would put you to the height of your cleverness and technical skill to play it; and these are the qualities for which you most need to gain credit. Nobody has seen you play a really keen comedy part, finished up to the finger nails. Clever Alice [in Clever Alice – Walter Brandon Thomas’ adaptation of Adolf von Wilbrandt’s Die Maler ] & Becky Sharp [in Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray] were only tomfooleries. Besides, with Paula Tanqueray [in The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero] in everyone’s head as a great acting part, the public & the critics will have their cue for Julia. If you could pull off that part well, you would have no more trouble with Pinero: I know exactly what he thinks about you at present. What he thinks is all wrong; but you must do a piece of fine filagree work to convert him.

I am not surprised about Mrs Daintry [in Mrs Warren’s Profession]. Waller’s perfectly right; the ending is not the sort of thing for his audience. Besides, it is not really good drama: it is only good acting. After the revelation about the daughter, the play, dramatically speaking, stops as completely as “Candida” stops after the Erklarung in the third act. . . .

GBS

7/ To an English actor-manager Richard Mansfield

22nd February 1895

My dear Mansfield

. . . Now let me ask you whether you can play a boy of eighteen—a strange creature—a poet—a bundle of nerves—a genius—and a rattling good part. The actor-managers here can’t get down to the age. The play, which is called Candida, is the most fascinating work in the world—my latest—in three acts, one cheap scene, and with six characters. The woman’s part divides the interest and the necessary genius with the poet’s. There are only two people in the world possible for it: Janet Achurch, for whom it was written, and Mrs [Madge] Kendal. If Janet creates it here, will you pay her fare out and back and give her 300 dollars a week or so for the sake of covering yourself with new and strange fascinations as the poet? By the way, there’s probably money in the piece; but it’s a charming work of art; and the money would fly somehow. . . .