[Ellen Terry]
40/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
18th October 1896
. . . I’m just going to read your Candida. I knew you’d send it me if I were ill. Women get everything if they’re sick enough! I cannot pretend to be ill (except just say it on paper) and so I never get anything. Truly at present I’m not fit to be out of bed (where I’ve been for the last 3 days) and here am I going to a big stupid dinner to-night. What a fool I am! By the way, why do you keep on calling yourself an “ass” to me? That’s different.
Now for your play.
Yours—yours
[Ellen Terry]
41/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
19th October 1896
I’ve cried my poor eyes out over your horrid play, your heavenly play. My dear, and now! How can I go out to dinner tonight? I must keep my blue glasses on all the while for my eyes are puffed up and burning. But I can scarce keep from reading it all over again. Henry [Irving] would not care for that play, I think. I know he would laugh. And that sort of thing makes me hate him sometimes. He would not understand it, the dear, clever silly. I cant understand what he understands.
Janet would look, and be, that Candida beautifully, but I could help her I know, to a lot of bottom in it. I could do some of it much better than she. She could do most of it better than I. Oh dear me, I love you more every minute. I cant help it, and I guessed it would be like that! And so we wont meet. But write more plays, my Dear, and let me read them. It has touched me more than I could tell of.
Yours E. T.
42/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
24th October 1896
Your Mrs Webb is a dear (as well as all the other I good things) I should say, but Candida “a sentimental prostitute”! Well! “Some said it thundered. Others that an Angel spake.” You may wear your rue with a difference! So your new play is “grim, gloomy, horrible, sordid” etc. etc. You have to do that I know. Yes: you have to do everything you will, if you dont waste yourself on trifles like me (All trifles are not as kind as I am). Anyway you are all dear, all very precious. You say “your tiredness and illness are my opportunity.” I do not quite understand that.
Now I’m going to read Candida once more, and again Mrs Webb’s explosion of opinion sets me a’thinking, and wondering whether—but there, you certainly will not benefit by knowing what I think. How much I do wish I could be invisible and see you at work.
Farewell E. T.
[PS] I passed your house yesterday on my way to see a poor little servant of mine of years ago. She’s dying. She liked to see me. I’ll never forget her look.
43/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
Later in October 1896
Mr Stanley Weyman. Yes, I think crowds of novelists now-a-days fancy they are the dear Musketeers all over again! I’ve just commenced reading The Seats of The Mighty [by Gilbert Parker] and feel certain it will be the same song over again.
My dear Sally Fairchild will meet you—this evening I imagine. A very sweet girl is Sally (Satty we call her in America), but it is detestable that she should be at Radlett on Sunday with you, and then come on Monday (and all the other days), from you to me. I told her I had a wilful hopeless passion for you, and had tendered you as a remembrance a snuff-box which you scorned and refused. Now I have given it to her. She’ll show it to you.
I am dying to read Candida to Teddy, to Satty Fairchild and Edy, and promise you I wont until you tell me I may. I will send you back the 3 precious acts by next Saturday, if I may keep them until then.
[Henry Vernon] Esmond could look Marjoribanks to perfection, and act it well, but Teddy would appear to be Marjoribanks. Do send me more to read.
E. T.
44/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
26th October 1896
Darling, I’ve not read your letter, but I must tell you I dislike folk who are not reserved, and will tell me of your Janets and things and make me mad, when I only want to know whether they think you would, if we met, have a horrible dislike of me when you found me such an old thing, and so different to the Ellen you’ve seen on the stage. I’m so pale when I’m off the stage, and rouge becomes me, and I know I shall have to take to it if I consent to let you see me. And it would be so pathetic, for not even the rouge would make you admire me away from the stage. Oh what a curse it is to be an actress!
Couldnt wait, and I’m half-way through your (horrid typewritten) letter. Idiot, do you suppose that Janet is the only “she” who’d love to get your play bit by bit? Why that is the charmingest of all ways to know a play.
Isnt Satty a sweet? If you read to Satty and Edy on Saturday evening I shall be thinking of it all the while I’m acting, I know.
I passed your house again to-day (on purpose, I confess it). I was going from St Pancras to Kensington and took a turn round your Square. I’d like to go when you are there! But no, all’s of no use. I cant compete ‘cos I’m not pretty. Edy, I do assure you, is nicest, cleverest, best of all. She never tried to compete for anyone, and so probably she’ll go to the wall unappreciated. She’d be a handful, but oh wouldnt I just be glad to get her back again if a man she chose wanted to get rid of her. I’d adore her to the scaffold.—Yours, you blessed thing,
Ellen
45/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
28th October 1896
. . . Off to Paris? Oh! With Janet [Achurch]? Or no incommoding females? Why dont you give yourself over to a play where there’s no smile round the corner, nor a teeny-weeny smile at all, at all? With heat, and with pain and with tears unable to come out, and the pen tearing along at a grand pace. I wonder what you would write then? You are as cold as ice and quizical (cant spell it) when you make girls invite boys to sit on hearth-rugs and “amuse” them. Of course I like that play too, but—. . .
So Janet really “loves” you! What do I do? Goodbye. Dont get a cold crossing the silly bit of water. I wish I were coming.
Yours very truly,
sweet sir, E.
46/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
29th October 1896
Just back home from your doorstep (from the young painter’s—Nellie Heath’s—doorstep). I couldnt help going there, and when I got there I could not go in. Felt such a fool, and felt so very ill. Went up the third flight of steps, got shy, and ran back to my shay. I had Candida with me, so sent up one act of her by a rum little boy who stood staring at me and longing to earn pennies.
Oh I’m ill. I’ll just go back to bed, and if you ever dare write me another unkind letter I promise you it shall not draw me out again into the cold and the hateful fog. I generally go and see Burne-Jones when there’s a fog. He looks so angelic, painting away there by candlelight. I’m studying Richard III. Whilst they are slaving at the Lyceum [Theatre] at that, I’m going to (will you come too?) to, to—of all places in the world, Monte Carlo! I never was there. Edy would like the fun, and I may chance to, or loathe it.
I’ve ghastly aches all over me, a cold in every inch of my body, and oh, I’m acting so badly. The Americans call you Mr Shore. Goodbye.
[Ellen Terry]
47/ To Ellen Terry
30th November 1896
. . . I am the centre of a boiling whirlpool of furious enquiries from insulted