Bernard Shaw - Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

GBS

22/ To Janet Achurch

19th April 1895

My dear Janet

. . . A paragraph has been going the rounds here stating that I not only insisted on your being engaged for Candida, but stipulated that you should have 50 pounds a month. I do not usually contradict the mistakes of the press in these matters; but as the inference here would be that the £50 [£6,723.26 in 2020 according to Bank of England’s inflation calculator] is an artificially high salary given under pressure from me, I have written to the Era pouring vitriol on the blunderer in such a way as to bring out clearly that your salary is a matter of your market value, and that I should no more dream of meddling about it than you presumably would interfere in the matter of my royalties. I also wrote privately to the Weekly Sun man asking him to take some opportunity of contradicting the report. He telegraphs begging for more information. The Era letter will no doubt be in tomorrow’s issue.

Yesterday a cablegram came from Richard as follows:—“Since you insist (which I didn’t: I positively forbade) will produce Candida now cable [Elisabeth] Marbury deliver manuscript.” To which I replied, “Withdrawal final.” This morning another telegram came, this time from Miss Marbury:—“Will you authorise me to place Candida with good actress Minnie Seligman on terms named Lux) advance 5 per cent first £600 7 per cent next £400 ten above weekly gross reply by wire immediately.” Which I did, as follows :—“Paralogize palmitic without Achurch,” which, being translated through Lowe’s cable code (which you had perhaps better get, as it is useful for American messages, and cannot be confused with the Unicode Latin words) means “Offer declined nothing can be done at present without Achurch.” This caused me a heart pang, not because of the hundred pounds, but because of the brutality of calling you Achurch instead of my darling Janet.

By the way, have you added anything to the private code we arranged? I have nothing in mine after VERETRUM.

Now as to the letters from Richard and Felix. It was just as well that Felix wrote; for his letter was written with the sweetest consideration for my feelings towards you, and I was therefore able to read it to Charrington, whereas Richard’s, the existence of which I concealed from C. C. [Charles Charrington] in order to avert his rushing out by the next Cunarder and having Richard’s blood, was childishly indiscreet in its allusions to you. He accuses you of being fuzzy haired, of purring, of being businesslike, of smoking, of sitting on the floor, of combing your tawny locks with your fingers, of clawing your neck and scratching the air with your chin, and of being unfallable-in-love-with on all these accounts. On the subject of your acting, he maintains an eloquent silence. This, by the way, is much the most sensible part of his letter, which I wish I had time to quote more extensively. The play is not a play—it is all talk—it is lacking in all essential qualities—the stage is not for sermons—the American public would not stand it—and so forth, the whole being intersentenced with the most pathetic expressions of eternal friendship and admiration: for example, “Go on, Shaw: [my wife] Beatrice and I are with you: you will always be welcome as a brother. We want a great work from you.” Felix pleads nobly for his brother, and writes a really respectable letter, with four postscripts, as follows, 1. Beatrice was charmed with your letter. 2. Beatrice says you have just hit Dick’s position at home to a T (I had said that he was an abject domestic slave). 3. Beatrice says she must have a play. 4. Beatrice says “Come over.” 5. Beatrice sends love. My reply to Richard, which goes by this mail, is as follows, “My dear Mansfield, Your letter has arrived at last. I confess that I waited for it with somewhat fell intentions as to my reply; but now that the hour of vengeance has come, I find myself in perfect goodhumor, and can do nothing but laugh. I have not the slightest respect left for you; and your acquaintance with my future plays will be acquired in the course of visits to other people’s theatres; but my personal liking for you remains where it was.” I wrote kindly to Felix, but gave him a remorseless analysis of the whole case. Do not shew this to anyone. I am getting jealous of [dramatic critic of the Evening Sun ] Acton Davies; and so is C [Charrington].

GBS

23/ To a renowned English actress and actor-manager Ellen Terry

28th November 1895

My dear Miss Terry

Very well: here is the Strange Lady [ The Man of Destiny ] for you, by book post. It is of no use now that it is written, because nobody can act it. Mind you bring it safely back to me; for if you leave it behind you in the train or in your dressing room, somebody will give a surreptitious performance of it: and then bang goes my copyright. If the responsibility of protecting it is irksome, tear it up. I have a vague recollection of curl papers in Nance Oldfield [by Charles Reade] for which it might be useful. I have other copies.

This is not one of my great plays, you must know: it is only a display of my knowledge of stage tricks—a commercial traveller’s sample. You would like my Candida much better; but I never let people read that: I always read it to them. They can be heard sobbing three streets off.

By the way—I forget whether I asked you this before —if that villain Mansfield plays Arms and the Man anywhere within your reach, will you go and see it and tell me whether they murder it or not? And your petitioner will ever pray &c. &c.

G. Bernard Shaw

24/ To Janet Achurch

23rd December 1895

My dear Janet

. . . Does it ever occur to you that if you became the leading English actress you would have to represent your art with dignity among Stanleys [after Rosalind Frances Howard née Stanley] and other such people, and that you would be severely handicapped if they remembered how you had called in Aunt Mary’s brougham [after Lady Mary Henrietta Howard, a person who belongs to the aristocracy] and told them fibs and tried to get money out of them. However, it is useless to remonstrate. You will appreciate the magnanimity of soul which I recommend; but you won’t practise it. Therefore I must act myself—I, who haven’t a wife and child, and have not the means of excusing myself. If the I.T. [Independent Theatre] can get the money to do “Candida” properly, it shall have “Candida” (unless I hit on a better way). But if the least farthing of the money has to be touted for—that’s the hideous right word—touted for by you—if any shareholder is seduced into subscribing by the sight of as much as a lock of your hair or a cast off glove of yours—if there is to be any gift in the matter except our gift of our work, then I swear by the keen cold of this northern wind on my face and the glowing fire of it in my bones, there shall be no “Candida” at the I.T. You may contribute to its success as much as you like by making people love you, or fear you, or admire you, or be interested, fascinated, tantalised, or what not by you. But if you coin the love, fear, interest, admiration or fascination into drachmas, then I cannot have any part in the bargain. If Rothschild or the Prince of Wales want boxes, they know where they can be bought, just as they know where the Saturday Review can be bought. It is inconceivable that such measures should be congenial to you when your mind is properly strung; and you will get better all the faster if you put them behind you. . .

It is a curious thing to me that you should express such remorse about trifles and follies that everybody commits in some form or other, and that strong people laugh at, whilst you are all the time doing things that are physically ruinous and planning things that you ought to hang yourself sooner than stoop to. There is only one physical crime that can destroy you—brandy: only one moral one—Aunt Mary’s brougham.