Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

G. B. S.

49/ To Ellen Terry

8th March 1897

Just time for three lines. Get anyone but me to read that play to you if you dare. What do they know about it? I dont believe all the brutal environment of that little story is real to you; but it is to me. Ted isnt brutal enough for Richard’s outbursts of savagery. Candida—a play which you’ve forgotten, but which you once read —has the part for him. The woman’s part is not so difficult where she has anything to say; but the listening to the court martial—the holding on to the horror through all the laughing—that will be the difficulty. No: I wont rewrite that last act unless you tell me exactly how: I’d rather write you another play.

Mrs Webb and Miss P. T. [Payne-Townshend] want to know whether you would really come to Woking and, if so, whom you’d like to have to meet you—a bishop or a politician or a philosopher. I can be sent up to town if necessary (I fancy I see myself going—just). They want to watch our embarrassment when we meet.

What ought I to do with that play? That is, if Forbes [Johnston Forbes-Robertson] wont have it?

Take care of your, reviving strength. I presumed on mine the other evening to ride eight or nine miles at wild speed on the bike; and next morning I was again a wreck.

Post hour—ever dearest—

G. B. S.

50/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

13th March 1897

. . . “Gentleman!” Oh that word! Some day define the term, not for me privately, but for your readers.

To me “Gentleman” has always meant the highest and best. I think it must mean differently to different people. . .

I’m back from Margate. Still not well. Isnt it maddening? And I’m longing to get my work by the throat. When do you go to Woking? Soft Woking, so sweetly smelling. I very nearly wrote and thanked those ladies for their kindness in wishing me to share the rest and quiet of the place. Then I remembered how once before I was idiot enough to simply believe you serious when you put your sad and distracted condition before me and how I so nearly ran round to Fitzroy Square, and actually did get as far as writing you a most heartshaken blithering idiot’s letter. Oh, I’ll never forgive myself nor will you ever forgive me for being so dull.

Only, only I dont in the least mind being laughed at by you! Oh, did you think I meant Ted when I said I thought T. would make a great effect in Richard? I meant [William] Terriss! He would not understand all the things he had to say (!) but (with the last act disciplined into shape) the Play and he together would be a frantic success. No, Master Bernie, I have not forgotten Candida, and you know it!

It appears to me your Haymarket Play is splendidly cast. (You told me if you remember.) That will be a great success. It must be.

Darling! I havent said that yet! And now I’ll say it again. Good-bye,

Darling!

[Ellen Terry]

51/ To an American stage actress Mrs Richard Mansfield née Beatrice Cameron

26th March 1897

My dear Mrs Mansfield

. . . As you say, I have no faith in anything or anybody. I am savage about “Candida” because it was Richard’s business to have made a good deal out of that play and out of Miss Achurch, instead of letting her make a good deal out of him, giving him nothing for it, and having grievance against him into the bargain. It was a mere matter of management, including the management of me. He should never let himself be associated with a breakdown of any kind. He should establish himself as the maker of success—other people’s success; the founder of reputations—other people’s reputations; the Bank of England of the whole profession. Then he wont have to fight his way to the centre: he will be the centre. But he doesn’t see this: he thinks that anybody can manage but that only a genius can act; whereas the truth is that anybody can act, but that only an able man can manage. . . .

yrs sincerely

G. Bernard Shaw

52/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

14th April 1897

Many thanks for your words about Edy [Edith Craig]. I fear I didnt make my meaning plain if you think I want you to “find an opening for her.” No, but I suppose you usually “cast” your own plays, and I want you only to MENTION Edith Craig as being fit for this or that ever-so-small-a-part. . . .

E.T.

53/ To Ellen Terry

16 April 1897

. . . Did I say “find an opening for Edy”? I apologize. I withdraw. I abase myself—you wretch: that was precisely what you ordered me to keep my eyes open for. She wants an opening ten times more than if she had no mother. Do you remember—or did you ever hear of—the obscurity of Mozart’s son? An amiable man, a clever musician, an excellent player; but hopelessly extinguished by his father’s reputation. How could any man do what was expected from Mozart’s son? Not Mozart himself even. Look at Siegfried Wagner. Ellen Terry’s daughter! Awful! Is Ted anything of a comedian? I want comedians.

Suppose this “You Never Can Tell” succeeds sufficiently to make it practically certain that a dozen matinees of a new cheap play by me would pay their way. Well, get somebody to finance a dozen matinees of “Candida” for Janet on condition that Ted [Edward Craig] plays Eugene and Edy Prossy—I told the Independent Theatre people that I’d let them do it if they could bank £1000. Or let them buy a fit-up and play “Arms & The Man” & “You Never Can Tell” in the provinces. (I have all the British rights of “Arms” & all but eleven No. 1 towns for “You Never Can Tell.”) Or let H. B. Irving & Ted, Dorothea Baird & Edy start a “Next Generation” theatre & play Othello & Iago, Emilia & Desdemona, on alternate nights. Or let them make up a nice little repertory & go round the world with it—that’s the way to get trained now.

It’s no use: I have nothing sensible to suggest. Teddy, though hypersenti- hypersensitized (got it that time!) and petulated by more luxury than was good for him in the way of a mammy seems highly and nervously intelligent. He wants ten years of stern adversity—not domestic squabble—to solidify him. Pity he’s married: why should he be a breeder of sinners?

What a Good Friday we’re having! Rain, wind, cold, skating on all the ponds, icicles hanging from the eaves and George Bernard the shepherd blowing his nail.

When are you coming into this neighborhood? I can bike over to Thames Ditton—if only I dare. Don’t let us break the spell—do let us break the spell—don’t, do, don’t, do, don’t, do, don’t—I resolved to let the end of the line decide it like Gretchen’s flower, and it has decided nothing. . . .

GBS

P.S. They’re going to elect me to the St Pancras Vestry (more public work); and I’m spending Easter on a Fabian Tract—“Employer’s Liability.” That’s why I’m so prosaic.

54/ To Reginald Golding Bright

7th May 1897

Dear Bright

. . . Things you may mention.—Work it up as news in your own way, not as communicated by me to the paper in the first person—you will know how to manage it.

1. I have been elected a member of the St Pancras Vestry. At the first general election of Vestries under the Local Government Act of 1894, it was urged that public-spirited men of some standing should come forward and offer to serve. I condescended to do this and was ignominiously defeated, my sympathy with Labour being considered disreputable by the workmen of St Pancras. Now the Conservatives and Unionists and Moderates and other respectables of the parish have returned me unopposed in spite of my vehement protests that I have no time for such work. I recognise, however, that there is better work to be done in the Vestry than in the theatre, and have submitted to take my turn.

2. I have resolved to accept an offer made me by Mr Grant Richards for the publication of my plays. I am not a disappointed dramatist, as the curiosity and interest shewn in my plays by managers, and their friendliness & accessibility for me, have exceeded anything I had any right to expect. But in the present condition of the theatre it is evident that a dramatist like [Henrik] Ibsen, who absolutely disregards the conditions which managers are subject to, and throws himself on the reading public, is taking the only course in which any serious advance a possible, expecially if his dramas demand much technical skill from the actors. So I have made up my mind to put my plays into print and trouble the theatre no further with them. The present proposal is to issue two volumes entitled “Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant.” Vol I, “Unpleasant” will contain “The Philanderer” and the appalling “Mrs Warren’s Profession” with perhaps a reprint of “Widowers’ Houses.” Vol II, “Pleasant,” will contain “Arms & The Man,” “Candida,” and “You Never Can Tell.” Possibly also “The Devil’s Disciple” and “The Man of Destiny.”

I decline to say anything more at present about Sir Henry Irving and “The Man of Destiny” except that the story, when I tell it—and I shall probably tell it very soon—will be quite as amusing as a Lyceum performance of the play would have been. None of the paragraphs in circulation convey the remotest approximation to the truth; and the statement that Sir Henry has returned the MS [manuscript] “with a handsome compliment and a present” is a particularly audacious invention. This is enough for one week, I think.

In haste,

yrs ever

G. Bernard Shaw

55/ To Ellen Terry

29th May 1897

Oh stupidest of created women, how can I answer such letters! I ask myself how I have ever consented to know a moral void—a vacuum. I am cured of arrogance: I no longer pretend to have written either “Candida” or the Wild Duck article [about Henrik Ibsen’s play Wild Duck in the Saturday Review]: I admit that you wrote them both. But mark the result of my humility. If “Candida” is ever done, it shall not be done by subscriptions collected for the performance of a play by Ibsen. Oh, stupid, stupid, stupid, STUPID woman: can you see nothing when the footlights are in your eyes? . . .

GBS

56/ To Ellen Terry

14th July 1897

. . . Charrington is taking out a Doll’s House tour; and he’s going to try “Candida” on the provincial dog. He wants somebody who can play Prossy (a character in “Candida” which you forget, probably) and Mrs Linden in the Ibsen play. I suggested Edy. Would she go, do you think?

It will be a pretty miserable tour—start at Aberdeen after 12 hours travelling; but she might pick up something from Charrington; and Janet would keep her in gossip for a twelve-month to come. . . .

GBS

57/ To Ellen Terry

20th July 1897

Edy is going to have a very difficult job of it with Mrs Linden, because Janet is so loathingly sick of rehearsing it with new Lindens that she wants Edy to get through with only one rehearsal. And the effort of swallowing all those words will be bad for Prossy. However, we must make the best of it.

The only difficulty about Prossy will be the usual difficulty—want of muscle in the enunciation of the words. When people intend to play the piano in public, they play scales for several hours a day for years. A pupil of [Theodor] Leschetitsky (Paderewski’s master) comes before the public with steel fingers, which give a quite peculiar quality and penetration even to pianissimo notes. An actress should practise her alphabet in just the same way, and come before the public able to drive a nail up to the head with one touch of a consonant. For want of this athleticism, people get driven to slow intonings, and woolly execution. Now for Prossy I want extreme snap in the execution: every consonant should have a ten pound gun hammer spring in it, also great rapidity & certainty of articulation. Of course Edy has not got all that yet; but I shall get more of it out of her than she dreams of troubling herself for at present. Young people don’t realize what a tremendous deal of work it takes to make a very small effect. But she starts with a good deal in hand that one looks in vain for elsewhere. Her expression is, if anything, too expressive normally, like Forbes Robertson’s. Her voice is quite her own. But she needs to work & use her head a good deal; for she is like a boy in her youth & virginity, and cannot fall back on “emotional” effects which are really only the incontinences of a hysterical and sexually abandoned woman, but which pull a great many worthless & stupid actresses through leading parts in vulgar drama. So she will—fortunately for herself—get nothing cheap. I have told her that if I can do anything for her in the way of going over the part with her I will make time to do it. . .

How are you?

In haste, ever dearest Ellen,

your

GBS

58/ To Janet Achurch

23rd July 1897

Wretch!—to drag me all the way to Islington for such an inconceivably bad performance. I declare before outraged Heaven that acting is to you and Charrington not an honest night’s work, but a form of reckless self-indulgence. You’d much better have got me to rehearse “A Doll’s House” than “Candida”: it’s all gone to the deepest devil. Rank is literally on his last legs: it is time for C.C. to change to Krogstad, and I strongly advise you to take a turn at Ellen. You have driven a red hot harrow over my heart & soul: I will never enter a theatre again.

GBS

59/ To Ellen Terry

27th July 1897

The “Candida” people are off to Aberdeen at last; and I have struck Saturday work for a month or two; so now I have nothing to do but get my seven plays through the press; write the prefaces to the two volumes; read the proof sheets of the Webbs’ great book “Problems of Democracy” (doesn’t it sound succulent?); answer two years’ arrears of letters; and write a play & a few articles & Fabian tracts or so before October. Holiday times, dearest Ellen, holiday times!

Johnston F.R. [Forbes-Robertson] is in tribulation over his “Hamlet.” He turned up here the other day beating his breast, and wanting to know whether I couldn’t write a nicer third act for “The Devil’s Disciple,” since Cleopatra was not ready for Campbell-patra [Mrs Patrick Campbell]. I wrote him out a lovely cast for “Hamlet,” including [your son] Teddy as Osric (if Edward [Gordon] Craig Esquire will so far condescend). Will you, however, give Ted this hint. Courtenay Thorpe lately played the Ghost, and made a hit in it. I put him down for it in my suggested cast; but I sincerely hope that F.R. won’t take the suggestion, because it is (or may be) important to me to have Thorpe free for “Candida.” In that case, Ted, with his pathetic voice, might play the Ghost himself, if Thorpe has broken the tradition sufficiently to make the notion acceptable. At all events, put it into Ted’s head that it is a possible thing; so that if he gets chatting with F. R. or anyone else in the affair, he may say that his three parts are Hamlet (of course), the Ghost & Osric.

I am certain I could make “Hamlet” a success by having it played as Shakspere meant it. H. I. [Henry Irving] makes it a sentimental affair of his own; and this generation has consequently never seen the real thing. However, I am afraid F. R. will do the usual dreary business in the old way, & play the bass clarinet for four hours on end, with disastrous results. Lord! how I would make that play jump along at the Lyceum [Theatre] if I were manager. I’d make short work of that everlasting “room in the castle.” You should have the most beautiful old English garden to go mad in, with the flowers to pluck fresh from the bushes, and a trout stream of the streamiest and ripplingest to drown yourself in. I’d make such a scene of “How all occasions do inform against me! “—Hamlet in his travelling furs on a heath like a polar desert, and Fortinbras and his men “going to their graves like beds”—as should never be forgotten. I’d make lightning & thunder (comedy & tragedy) of the second & third acts: the people should say they had never seen such a play before. I’d—but no matter.

I was at the opera last night: “Tristan [and Isolde].” O Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, think of it! [Jean] De Reszke, at 48, playing his second season of Tristan, to a perfectly crazy house, and cursing himself in his old age for not doing what I told him years ago when I cannonaded the Opera and himself just as I now cannonade the Lyceum & Henry. And now Henry capitulates and orders a play from the musical critic of The World (my successor [Robert] Hichens) and [Henry Duff] Traill. In a year or two or three, you and he will be doing what I have told you, and saying, like De Reszke, “Why, oh why didn’t we realize the godlike wisdom of this extraordinary man before!” . . .

GBS

60/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

28th July 1897

. . . I wonder what you are doing? I am wondering something about you two. How I do think and think of it. I am inane. To be obsessed by a thought is the way of so many women, and I’ve always noted it and guarded against it for it is ruin.

You couldnt be dull, could you? So strange many clever people dont see the sun shines in the sky.

Have you been down to see Candida yet? I had no idea it was to be done yet awhile and was surprised to get a newspaper telling of it. (Thanks by the way for the newscutting you sent me.) Is Johnston Forbes-Robertson going to do the Devil[’s Disciple]? Are you going to alter the last act?

I’m told you are going to Leamington. True? Edy is dying to do the Housekeeper in Rosmersholm [by Henrik Ibsen] when it is played. She tells me, “Miss Achurch has been very nice to me about my parts.” Edy with children is at her best, unselfish and devoted, so I’m delighted that little Nora (Charrington’s and Janet’s daughter) is about with her a good deal. I’m hoping they will all come near here, either Eastbourne or Brighton, for then I shall go there. Edy won’t write to me of Candida but says she will tell me when we meet.

I’m going to sleep! (in the hammock—just where I am!) although it is 12—noon—

Cant keep my eyes open! (Generally cant keep ‘em shut!)

Farewell, dearly beloved.

E. T.

61/ William Archer to Bernard Shaw

31st July 1897

‘For the performance of an unpleasant duty,’ says Mrs Porcher, in [Arthur Wing Pinero’s] The Hobby Horse, ‘no time can be inappropriate.’ Therefore, my dear G. B. S., I take this somewhat belated opportunity of informing you that I didn’t like your Man of Destiny a bit, and begging you not to make ducks-and-drakes of your dramatic talent in this wanton fashion. For you have dramatic talent, if only you would condescend to use, in place of abusing, it. You have falsified my prophecy of many years ago that you would never write a play. You have written one play, at least, and possible more. The one play I mean is neither Widower’s Houses, nor Arms and the Man. Were these and The Man of Destiny all your dramatic works, I should say you had fulfilled my prophecy, not falsified it. But you have written Candida—and the fact that it is known only by rumour to the playgoing public shows that there is something very rotten in the state of the theatre. Well, we are to see it in print in the autumn, along with other Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, which as yet I do not know. This is well, since no better may be: but you really do not give the managers a chance to discover the error of their ways when you put your name to nondescript eccentricities like this Man of Destiny.

It was not very well acted when I saw it at Croydon [Theatre] the other afternoon. The performance was ‘the first on any stage’; the part of the Lieutenant had been taken, at short notice apparently, by a gentleman who was very shaky in his words; and his natural nervousness communicated itself to the other actors. I had intended to make this an excuse for saying nothing about it at present, and reserving my remarks until it is produced at a West End theatre. But playwrights of talent are not so plentiful on the English stage that we can afford to let one of them fritter himself away like this without a word of protest. I don’t for a moment suppose that you will listen to it, but I shall have done what I can, and, like the aforesaid Mrs Porcher, shall enjoy the reward of a good conscience. Pray forget, for the sake of argument, that you wrote The Man of Destiny. Forget that you are a playwright; remember that you are a critic. . . .

William Archer

62/ To Ellen Terry

5th August 1897

. . . Before I left town I got a letter from Charrington. He said that Edy was too sympathetic for my notion of Prossy, but that a Terry couldn’t be otherwise than sympathetic, and there was no use in trying to alter it. However, I am quite content with that account. I quite meant that the part should come out sympathetic in spite of itself, which is exactly what it seems to have done by C’s account. He is wrong about Edy: she can do a hard bit of character well enough: at least she did it in Pinero’s whatsitsname—“Bygones,” is it? He said that Janet was very good in the scenes with Morell in the second act (it was evident at rehearsal that she would be), but that in the great final speech she sat there articulating staccato, and religiously imitating my way of doing it until he could hardly hold himself back from getting up & stopping the play. Burgess, the comic father [Lionel Belmore], was the success of the evening; and the drunken scene in the third act carried Aberdeen off its feet so that every exit was followed by a minute’s uproarious applause. On the other hand, the poet was quite as misunderstood as he was in his own family, and this, Charrington says, was not Thorpe’s fault, but Aberdeen’s [theatregoers]. He says nothing about himself.

They are to play the piece at Eastbourne & Bournemouth. See it if you can, & tell me about it; probably I shant see it at all, though there is some question of my going over to Leamington with Miss P. T. [Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend later Mrs Bernard Shaw] What are you wondering about us? She is getting used to me now, I think. Down at Dorking there was a sort of earthquake, because she had been cherishing a charming project of at last making me a very generous & romantic proposal—saving it up as a sort of climax to the proofs she was giving me every day of her regard for me. When I received that golden moment with shuddering horror & wildly asked the fare to Australia, she was inexpressibly taken aback, and her pride, which is considerable, was much startled—Excuse me one moment: she is calling me from her window. Tableau.

* * * * *

Now I am all right. She threw me out two waterproof packets, looking like Army Stores. I found a hammock in each; and I have actually suspended them both from this tree, taking care to put one so high that nobody but myself will be able to get into it. And now I swinging in that hammock, with your letter to answer, and “Arm & The Man” to prepare for the printer as soon as I feel disposed to work.

The tiredness, by the way, is maladie du pays: it is wearing off; and in a day or two I shall be sublime.

Well, as I was saying, that revelation of my self centredness as a mere artistic machine was a shock; but now she says “What a curious person you are!” or “What an utter brute you are!” as the humor takes her; and we live an irreproachable life in the bosom of the Bo family [Sidney and Beatrice Webb]. By the way we have had one desertion—Graham Wallas has suddenly got engaged to a Miss [Ada] Radford. They all succumb sooner or later: I alone remain (and will die) faithful to myself and Ellen.

Just imagine this fifty pound business [Janet Achurch had loaned out £50 from Charlotte]. Can you imagine a more morally thriftless thing to do than to take advantage of a rich woman being fond of me and of a play of mine being in the repertory to extract money, knowing all the time what she must think of the transaction and what I must feel about it. We had a council of the family over it here when the fatal telegram arrived, Mrs Webb being absent (she has not come down yet). [Sidney] Webb was goodnatured & sensible—said “Yes: that’s about what it was bound to cost you if you wish to be friendly. I’d give a fiver myself under the circumstances, which is about the equivalent out of my income of £50 out of yours.” But I obstinately refused to consent not to withdraw “Candida” unless she [Charlotte] pledged herself to accept repayment from me out of my future profits (if any) as dramatic author; and I wrote to Janet to explain to her that she had sold her monopoly for £50 [£6,645.98 in 2020 according to Bank of England’s inflation calculator], as I should now have no right to allow any personal considerations to stand between that debt & its repayment, and will accept the first good offer I get for its production in London whether she is in the cast or not. On receiving this terrible intimation, Janet will weep, attempt suicide, write me an abusive letter, declare herself a wretch unworthy to live, and telegraph for £10 more to meet a pressing engagement. Is it not amazing—that histrionic character (or want of character) that appreciates every sort of heroism and nobility in the most exalted and affectionate spirit, and that cannot in its own proper person resist a five pound note any more than a cat can resist a penn’orth of fried fish.

Oh, I must do some work this morning. I have the proofs of “Mrs Warren” all but the last few pages. When they come I’ll send you a spare set; & you must tell me what you think of it. By the way, that stupid old “Widowers’ Houses” is not so bad as I thought: Ive made it quite presentable with a little touching up. Did you see Archer’s column of weary & disgusted vituperation of “The Man of Destiny” in “St Paul’s.” I intended to send it to you; but I find Ive left it in the pocket of a London coat. No news from Forbes [Johnston Forbes-Robertson]: he’ll never touch “The D.’s D.” unless he is driven to it by flat play-bankruptcy. Mustn’t begin another sheet—

ever—

GBS

63/ To Janet Achurch

19th August 1897

I had my doubts about the susceptibility of Leamington [Spa]; but the reason I didn’t go is that the labor of preparing the plays for the press has assumed unexpected and colossal dimensions. I have worked without intermission ever since I came here; and the result is, “Arms & The Man” and one act of “Candida” ready for the printer—not a line more, as I live by vegetables! Can you tell me roughly where the play wants mending; for I am now at work on it, and must make the alterations this month or never. I enclose you a memorandum of the changes I have made in the first act. The first one is to meet the objection that has always been made—that the children are sprung on the audience to their utter surprise in the last scene for the first time. The others speak for themselves. The rest of the work I have been doing consists in replacing the scenic specifications and stage directions by descriptions for the benefit of the general reader. For instance the beginning of the act is an elaborate description of the whole Hackney district; then a description of Victoria Park; and finally a description of the parsonage and the room. The passages of description which are meant to replace the effect of the acting will be most illuminating to theatrical posterity.

As to [Courtenay] Thorpe, there is nothing for it but to let him sow his wild oats in the part. Who else can you get? [Henry] Esmond wouldn’t go on tour with you: he will stick to London authorially and actorially. Lawrence Irving would hardly fit into your company either; and it is of the company you must think. You will find it hard to get a young leading man whose connexion with you will present so good a balance of advantage (over all the plays) for both sides. However, if you can better him, better him by all means. Only don’t throw him over for the sake of adding twopennorth to the effect of Candida; for he makes a good deal of difference in the other plays. . . .

There was a champion criticism of “Candida” in the Northern Figaro, so sincerely stupid that I have a mind to reprint it in my preface. Did you see it?

GBS

64/ To an actress, theatre director, producer and costume designer Edith Craig

20th August 1897

My dear Miss Craig

Will you send me a line to remind me of the business in the scene with Eugene at the place where you say “Pray are you flattering me or flattering yourself.” Do you go back to the typewriter at the end of that speech or at “I’ll leave the room, Mr Mb [Marchbanks]: I really will. It’s not proper.” I want to get it right for the printer.

Also, if you have accumulated any effective gags, you might let me have them for inclusion in the volume.

All the accounts I have received agree that you and Burgess saved the piece from utter ruin, and that Prossy (as [Charles] Wyndham foresaw) was the popular favorite.

Please make your mother [Ellen Terry] tell me what you thought of the performance; and then bring her to Eastbourne [to see it] so that she can tell me what she thinks herself.

yours sincerely

G.Bernard Shaw

65/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw

30th August 1897

That work of art, [Courtenay] Thorpe, haunts me! He does every part so cleverly. Helmer [in A Doll House] or Eugene, the more difficult the thing to be done the better he does it. But I cant think it right to show as clever as that. Must one show all “the tricks of the trade” to be understood by an audience?

Well, I’ve seen Candida, and it comes out on the stage even better than when one reads it. It is absorbingly interesting every second, and I long for it to be done in London. Even the audience understood it all. I dont see how anything so simple and direct could fail to be understood by the dullest. Only one thing struck me at the time as wrong. Towards quite the end of a play to say “Now let’s sit down and talk the matter over.” Several people took out their watches and some of them left to catch a train, or a drink! And it interrupted the attention of all of us who stayed. Of course you may think it unnecessary to mention such a trifle. I’m going to write to Janet about one or two trifling things in her acting, suggestions which she may care, or not care, to try over. She is a dear thing.