I dont hate successful people: just the contrary. But I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind. Then, too, I like fighting successful people; attacking them; rousing them; trying their mettle; kicking down their sand castles so as to make them build stone ones, and so on. It develops one’s muscles. Besides, one learns from it: a man never tells you anything until you contradict him. I hate failure. Only, it must be real success: real skill, real ability, real power, not mere newspaper popularity and money, nor wicked frivolity, like Nance Oldfield. I am a magnificently successful man myself, and so are my knot of friends—the Fabian old gang—but nobody knows it except we ourselves, and even we haven’t time to attend to it. . . .
GBS
32/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
23rd September 1896
Well, it was pretty bad again to-night. Only one scene better. I went to meet my love at Milford Haven really, instead of pretending. That was good. The rest pretty awful. Well, now an end of me, sweet sir, and thank you for your forbearance.
Am I to hear or read Candida? I think I’d rather never meet you—in the flesh. You are such a Great Dear as you are! And you are such a worker, and I work too for other people. My kids, and Henry [Irving], and my friends. And we both are always busy, and of use!
Next 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