Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play. Bernard Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. . . .

      You cannot read “Candida”: you know very well that you have been strictly ordered not to read until your eyes are better. Wild horses shall not tear that script from me, especially after your atrocious conduct in being at the Lyceum [Theatre] that Saturday and not coming in. There was no danger of your kissing me: no woman, however audacious & abandoned, would dare take such a liberty with a man of my majestic presence. I liked Henry [Irving], though he is without exception absolutely the stupidest man I ever met—simply no brains—nothing but character & temperament. Curious, how little use mere brains are: I have a very fine set; and yet I learnt more from the first stupid woman who fell in love with me than ever they taught me.

      I won’t WONT, WONT, WONT, WONT, WONT, WON’T let you read “Candida.” I must read it to you, if I have to do it through the keyhole. But I, too, fear to break the spell: remorses, presentiments, all sorts of tendernesses wring my heart at the thought of materialising this beautiful friendship of ours by a meeting. You were quite right not to come in on Saturday: all would have been lost. In some lonely place, by starlight—stop: I am getting idiotic. Miss Terry: your servant!

      GBS

      36/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

      2nd October 1896

       . . . I couldnt come in. All of a sudden it came to me that under the funny circumstances I should not be responsible for my impulses. When I saw you, I might have thrown my arms round your neck and hugged you! I might have been struck shy. The Lord knows what I might or might not have done, and I think H. I. [Henry Irving]might not have seen the joke! (He thinks me crazy, but “good.” It’s t’other way on!)

      Would not you like to be somebody’s (anybody’s perhaps!) pleasure for a few moments? Well, you have been my sole delight for the last six weeks, and I’m ever gratefully yours. By the way though, you dont play fair. Your “Saturday” [Review article] was perfect, all but about E. T. You scolded her in private beautifully, but you should first have printed your letter to her. You know perfectly well that in the acting of this “Womanly woman” I’m pretty bad, and you might have said so in The Saturday plain and straight.

      Yes. [My son] Ed’ard Gordon Craig can act, or will act. He had best be quick for he is a big boy for 7 and that’s his age.

      Ah, let him act in something of yours. Heavens! He’s better than that other acty boy. Now when I’m clear of “velvet” friends who are flocking around me, I’m going to get to know the Strange Lady and to make acquaintance with a beautiful new tricycle I have, and to—oh! do ever so many nice things, when I’m less exhausted.

      Arent you going to send me Candida? Only to read. I wont steal it, but I want to know her. Now there’s no need for you to write to me any more.

      Oh aint it a dark day.

      Good-bye

      [Ellen Terry]

      37/ To Ellen Terry

      5th October 1896

      I am at my wits’ СКАЧАТЬ