Widowers' Houses & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play. Bernard Shaw

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СКАЧАТЬ of a certain sensation which I can only describe as a hollowness and vibratoriness about the heart which suggested to me, not for the first time, that I should be careful not to overexert it.

      On the 25th October, in the evening, I began to shiver, and had a bad feverish night. This was another of my new sort of colds. The chill seems to have replaced the influenza with me. It left a cough hanging about me for some time; and on the 3rd November my throat got so ticklesome after a walk in the rain that I could hardly lecture in the evening.

      Found myself with a slight cold in the head on waking on the morning of the 9th December. It lasted four days, but was not at all as bad as my ordinary influenza.

      12/ Bernard Shaw’s diary

      Preliminary Notes 1890

      INTRODUCTIONS

      Professor Stuart, by H.W. [Henry William] Massingham, at Nat. Lib. Club. 6th. Feb-y.

      B.F.C. [Benjamin Francis Conn] Costelloe, by H.W. Massingham, at Nat. Lib. Club. 6th. Feb-y.

      Digby Besant, by Wm. Besant, at 19 Avenue Road. 14 April.

      G. [Lady] Colin Campbell [née Gertrude Elizabeth Blood], by herself, at New Gallery. 29th. April.

      Algernon Swinburne, by Theodore Watts, at The Pines. Putney. 22nd. May.

      Albert Thillot, by [Ernest Belfort] Bax’s card, at 29 Fitzroy sq. 15th. July.

      Beatrice Potter [later Mrs Webb], by Sidney Webb, at Fabian. 18th July.

      Leon Little, by Stanley Little, at Rudgwick. 23rd Aug-t. Marshall-Hall, by Jno. F. Runciman, at Covent Garden Opera. 6th. Nov-r.

      Victor Maurel, by Lady Colin Campbell, at 67 Carlisle Mansions. 27th. Nov-r.

      F. Gilbert Webb, by Edgar Jacques, at 58 Torrington Sq. 31st. Dec-r.

      13/ Bernard Shaw’s diary

      Preliminary Notes 1891

      INTRODUCTIONS

      Van Dyck (Belgian diplomat) at Fitzroy Square by Karl Armbruster. 17th May.

      HEALTH

      On the 7th June I caught the influenza. For a few days before I had noticed that my voice had lost its tone; but I was not ill. On this day I got a headache and what I thought was an attack of indigestion, to which, however, I am not subject. I had a very bad night—feverish and delirious. Next day I was weak and ill as if sickening from the fever—headache, pains in the back, weakness, nausea, etc. I did my day’s work and forced myself to eat as usual. In the evening I got the inflammation in the eye. That night I slept well; and next day I was strong again, though the pain in the eye remained, with sore throat and local pain. Next day my head was stuffy and uneasy and I was the least bit in the world feverish, as if the affair were a cold in the head. Although it merely lasted for four days, yet it left a headache behind it which at last grew so unpleasant that on the 19th I went down for a couple of days to Broadstairs and baked myself on the sands there. This got rid of it, though it returned for a while the evening I came up to town. I suspect it had much to do with the following.

      On the 25th July my right calf, in which there has been for a long time a slight tendency to varicoses, developed this tendency rather emphatically. After a few days it passed away. I took some of Mattei’s anti-angiotico. On the 22nd August on coming up from Oxted, where I had been staying a few days with the Salts’, I had an attack of looseness of the bowels, not bad enough to be called diarrhea, but still bad enough to disturb me once in the night. Next day as I had to deliver three addresses in the open air, I took out with me a tube of Mattei’s antiscrofoloso giappone, and took it whenever I felt troubled. It kept it off; and I was well next day.

      On the 9th September I caught what I thought was a slight cold; but next day it became a pretty bad cold in the head, and lasted until the 16th, though bad only for three days. On the evening of the 11th November I caught—or became conscious of having caught—a cold. It was, I thought, a fairly bad one; but on the night of the 13th, when I thought it was mending, it became very troublesome, so that I could not sleep, but lay reading for the great part of the night. I slept well on the following night, after which matters began to mend. I got rid of it very slowly and incompletely. On the evening of the 9th December, having been working late at nights and having no change or relaxation for a longish time, I got a bad attack, slept feverishly, and could do nothing next day; when, however, I mended in the evening.

      14/ Bernard Shaw’s diary

      Preliminary Notes 1892

      INTRODUCTIONS

      Auguste Couvreur and “Tasma,” his wife, at 88 St. James’s St. by R. W. Reynolds.

      Fred H. Wilson. The Savoy Theatre, by Edward Rose.

      H. Reece, 123 Dalling Rd. Mrs Emery [née Florence Beatrice Farr].

      HEALTH

      Caught a cold on the 10th March. It was not very bad, but it was a well defined one and went through the easiest stages.

      On the 13th July I caught a headache in the afternoon of the concert; and in the evening, at the opera, I suffered so much from nausea that I had to leave before the end. I was violently sick when I got home; and did not quite recover for the few days after, though I got much better next day. My knee joint (the right) also began to give way in its old fashion. There is evidently some loose cartilage in it. It bothered me a good deal all through the autumn months. At last the left knee showed the same symptoms in the lighter degree.

      On the 15th September I watched the sunset on Barnes Common, staring at the blinding light for nearly quarter of an hour. In the evening I found myself with a bad headache; and next day the headache continued all day. On the 8th November I got another bad headache after going without any day off work for some time. Also the trouble in my knees was felt again. It is evident that I have been overtaxing myself by working continually for the last few years without having a day of rest every week, and taking no real holiday except for a fortnight at a time when I have gone abroad. All the autumn I vowed repeatedly to make a “Sunday” for myself—that is, a day set aside every week for rest; but I find I cannot carry it out. Circumstances are too strong for me. Also I want bodily exercise badly. I am, however, more than ever convinced of the value to me of my vegetarianism and my abstinence from tea, coffee and alcoholic stimulants. Although I was much more seriously overstrained this summer than ever before by the very active part which I took in the general election, which came in the busiest weeks of the musical season, and though I was disappointed in being prevented by the cholera from going to Italy, yet I found that I recuperated remarkably even without a change, by taking walks and dropping my musical work altogether.

      MEMORANDA OF REFERENCE, &C.

      Thomson & Sons. Woodhouse Mills, Huddersfield.

      Mrs Thornton Smith. 28 Townshend Road, St John’s Wood N.W.

      15/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 29th July 1892

      Began to set papers in order, and came across the comedy [named the Rhinegold later Widowers’ Houses] which I began in 1885 and left aside after finishing two acts. In the evening JP [Mrs Jane Patterson] was here; and she urged СКАЧАТЬ