Widowers' Houses & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

There is a curious idea in the minds of some of my critics that I have given away my case by representing the poor man, Lickcheese, as behaving exactly as the rich man does when he gets the chance. These gentle-men believe that, according to me, what is wrong with society is that the rich, who are all wicked, oppress the poor, who are all virtuous. I will not waste the space of The Star by dealing with such a misconception further than to curtly but goodhumoredly inform those who entertain it that they are fools. I administer the remark, not as an insult, but as a tonic.

Most of the criticisms of my heroine, Blanche Sartorius, are summed up in the remark of the servant whom she throttles: “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Miss Blanche, so you ought.” I admit that she ought not to have vented her rage on the servant; but it must be remembered in extenuation that she had no sister. On another point in her conduct one critic makes an objection which, I confess, amazed me. Sartorius, as the son of a very poor woman, knows that the poor are human beings exactly like himself. But his daughter, brought up as a lady, conceives them as a different and inferior species. “I hate the poor” she says. “At least, I hate those dirty, drunken, disreputable people who live like pigs.” The critic in question, whose bias towards myself is altogether friendly, cannot conceive that a young lady would avow such inhuman sentiments: hypocrisy, he contends, would prevent her if her heart did not. I can only refer him, if he has really never heard such sentiments boasted of by ladies, to the comments of The Times and the St James’s Gazette (to name no other papers written by gentlemen for gentlemen) on the unemployed, on the starving Irish peasants whose rents have since been reduced wholesale in the Irish land courts, or on the most heavily sweated classes of workers whose miserable plight has been exposed before the Housing of the Poor and Sweating Commissions, to prove that the thinkers and writers of Blanche Sartorius’s party vie with each other in unconscious—nay, conscientious—brutality, callousness, and class prejudice when they speak of the proletariat. Hypocrisy with them takes the shape of dissembling sympathy with the working class when they really feel it, not of affecting it when they do not feel it. My friend and critic must remember the savage caricatures of William Morris, John [Elliot] Burns, Miss Helen Taylor, Mrs [Annie] Besant, &c., in which [a British weekly magazine of humour and satire] Punch once indulged, as well as the outrageous calumnies which were heaped on the late Mr [Charles] Bralaugh during his struggle to enter Parliament, and the remonstrance of The Saturday Review with the Government for not hanging myself, Mr Sidney Webb, and other London reformers in 1885-7, not to mention the cases of unsocial conduct by county gentlemen and magistrates that are exposed every week in the “Pillory” columns of Truth. Am I to be told that the young ladies who read these papers in our suburban villas are less narrow and better able to see across the frontiers of their own class than the writers whom they support? The fact is that Blanche’s class prejudices, like those of the other characters in the play, are watered down instead of exaggerated. The whole truth is too monstrous to be told otherwise than by degrees.

Now comes the question, How far does all this touch the merits of the play as a work of art? Obviously not at all; but it has most decidedly touched the value of the opinions of my critics on that point. The evidence of the notices (I have sheaves of them before me) is irresistible. With hardly an exception the men who find my sociology wrong are also the men who find my dramatic workmanship bad; and vice versa. Even the criticism of the acting is biased in the same way. The effect on me, of course, is to reassure me completely as to my own competence as a playwright. The very success with which I have brought all the Philistines and sentimental idealists down on me proves the velocity and penetration with which my realism got across the footlights. I am well accustomed to judge the execution I have done by the cries of the wounded.

On one point, however, I heartily thank my critics for their unanimous forbearance. Not one of them has betrayed the absurdities and impossibilities which abound in the political and commercial details of the play. They have even declared that here I am on my own ground, and that here consequently I rise, competent and entertaining, above criticism. Considering that I have made a resident in Surbiton eligible as a St Giles vestry-man; that I have made the London County Council contemporary with the House of Lords Commission on the Housing of the Working Class; that I have represented an experienced man of business as paying seven percent on a first mortgage; that I have finished up with an unprecedented and farfetched mortgage transaction which will not stand criticism by any expert from the City: considering, in short, that I have recklessly sacrificed realism to dramatic effect in the machinery of the play, I feel, as may be well imagined, deeply moved by the compliments which have been paid me on my perfect knowledge of economics and business. Thanks, brothers, thanks.

In conclusion, let me say that whilst I shall not affect to attribute the difference between myself and most of my critics to anything else but the pretty plain fact that I know my subject much better than they do, I claim no much more for the play than that it has served its turn: better, perhaps, than a better play. My point of view is being reached by larger and larger masses of the people; and when it has become quite common, everybody will see a good many more faults in Widowers’ Houses than have been yet discovered by anyone except yours truly

G. Bernard Shaw

35/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 22nd December 1892

(at Kelmscott [House])

Set to work making an album of all the press notices of the play [Widowers’ Houses]. Cold weather, very muddy underfoot. [Henry Halliday] Sparling and I went for a walk before dinner. The routine here is that Sparling and I work all day in the green room, the others visiting us occasionally, but using the tapestry room. Breakfast at 9; dinner at 13; afternoon tea at about 17; and supper at 19. Then we all go up to the tapestry room and play at “20 Questions.” All except Morris and myself go to bed at about 22 or 23. We sit up and jaw a bit longer. Tonight [William] Morris talked a lot about Iceland. This evening we had the mummers in.

36/ To the head of the publishing firm of David Nutt Ltd. Alfred Trübner Nutt

27th December 1892

Dear Sir

I have only succeeded in getting together one complete MS of the play [Widowers’ Houses], which I am correcting, fitting with a preface &c. I must hold on to it until the job is finished. Meanwhile I have had a couple of offers for its publication—three, in fact. One of them is from a firm in which Mr [Jacob Thomas] Grein, of the Independent Theatre, is interested. They propose to try a half crown edition, with a sixpenny royalty; and I am rather inclined, on Grein’s account, to accept this if I can satisfy myself that the firm in question has the requisite circulating machinery. Do you think you could do better for me than this? The reason I ask you to bid for a pig in a poke is that the quality of the bacon is hardly in question this time. Three months ago the play would certainly not have been worth publishing. Today a heap of articles and notices (my own collection of press cuttings runs over 130, and is far from complete) has presumably created some curiosity about the work; and it is the value of the curiosity that is now in the market. It is on this basis, and not on that of the literary value of the MS (as to which I have my own unalterable opinion) that I want an offer.

yrs faithfully

G. Bernard Shaw

P.S. I return to town on Wednesday; so that my address is still 29 Fitzroy Square. W.

37/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 27th December 1892

The Birchalls [the Reverend Oswald Birchall and his wife Katherine Mary Birchall] came to dinner. In the morning May [Morris], [Henry Halliday] Sparling and I took a walk down the river and back. I worked at copying bits out of press notices for quotation in the preface to Widowers’ Houses. Wrote a letter to The Speaker in reply to an article on the play.

38/ Bernard Shaw’s letter to the editor of The Speaker “Unconscious villainy and Widowers’ Houses”

31st December 1892

I now, as an experienced critic, approach the question which is really the most interesting from the critical point of view. Is it possible to treat the artistic quality of a play altogether independently of its scientific quality? For example, is it possible for a critic to be perfectly appreciative and perfectly incredulous and half insensible at the same time? I do not believe it for a moment. No point in a drama can produce any effect at all unless the spectator perceives it and accepts it as a real point; and this primary condition being satisfied, the force of the effect will depend on the extent to which the point interests the spectator: that is, seems momentous to him. The spectacle of Hamlet fencing with an opponent whose foil is “unbated” and poisoned produces its effect because the audience knows the danger; but there are risks just as thrilling to those who know them, risks of cutting arteries in certain surgical operations, risks of losing large sums by a momentary loss of nerve in the money market, risks of destroying one’s whole character by an apparently trifling step, perils of all sorts which may give the most terrible intensity to a scene in the eyes of those who have the requisite technical knowledge or experience of life to understand the full significance of what they are witnessing, but which would produce as little effect on others as the wheeling forward of a machine gun on a hostile tribe of savages unacquainted with “the resources of civilization.” One can imagine the A.B.W. [Arthur Bingham Walkley, an English public servant and drama critic] of the tribe saying, before the explosion, “This may be artillery—whatever artillery means—but it is not fighting,” just as our own A.B.W., whom it is my glory to have floored and driven into mere evasion, says of my play “This may be the New Economics, which I do not profess to understand, but it is not drama.” All I can say is that I find drama enough in it, and that the play has not fallen flat enough to countenance A.B.W.’s assumption that his anaesthesia is my fault instead of his own. It has long been clear to me that nothing will ever be done for the theatre until the most able dramatists refuse to write down to the level of that imaginary monster, the British Public. We want a theatre for people who have lived, thought, and felt, and who have some real sense that women are human beings just like men, only worse brought up, and consequently worse behaved. In such a theatre the mere literary man who has read and written instead of living until he has come to feel fiction as experience and to resent experience as fiction, would be as much out of place as the ideal B.P. itself. Well, let him sit out his first mistaken visit quietly and not come again; for it is quite clear that it is only by holding the mirror up to literature that the dramatist pleases him, whereas it is only by holding it up to nature that good work is produced. In such a theatre Widowers’ Houses would rank as a trumpery farcical comedy; whereas, in the theatre of today, it is excitedly discussed as a daringly original sermon, political essay, satire, Drapier’s Letters [by Jonathan Swift], or what not, even by those who will not accept it as a play on any terms. And all because my hero did not, when he heard that his income came from slum property, at once relinquish it (i.e. make it a present to Sartorius without benefiting the tenants) and go to the goldfields to dig out nuggets with his strong right arm so that he might return to wed his Blanche after a shipwreck (witnessed by her in a vision), just in time to rescue her from beggary, brought upon her by the discovery that Lickcheese was the rightful heir to the property of Sartorius, who had dispossessed and enslaved him by a series of forgeries unmasked by the faithful Cokane. (If this is not satisfactory I can reel off half a dozen alternative “dramatic” plots within ten minutes’ thought, and yet I am told I have no dramatic capacity.) I wonder whether it was lack of capacity, or superabundance of it, that led me to forgo all this “drama” by making my hero do exactly what he would have done in real life: that is, apologize like a gentleman (in the favorable sense) for accusing another man of his own unconscious rascality, and admit his inability to change a world which would not take the trouble to change itself? A.B.W., panting for the renunciation, the goldfields, and the nuggets, protests that I struck “a blow in the air.” That is precisely what I wanted to do, being tired of blows struck in the vacuum of stageland. And the way in which the blow, trifling as it was, has sent the whole critical squadron reeling, and for the moment knocked all the breath out of the body of the New Criticism itself, shews how absurdly artificial the atmosphere of the stalls had become. The critics who have kept their heads, counting hostile and favorable ones together, do not make five percent of the whole body.

G. Bernard Shaw

39/ Bernard Shaw’s diary

Preliminary Notes 1893

BOOKS FOR REVIEW

Title & Author Paper [Received] [Posted] [Published]

Wagner’s Prose Works The Daily Chronicle 9/1/– 15/2/– 18/2/-

Vol. I, W. Ashton Ellis (translator)

Mediztval Lore, Bartholo-

mew Anglicus, ed. by

Robert Steele; pref.

by William Morris 20/1/– 1/2/– 13/2/-

Land Nationalisation,

Harold Cox 28/1/– 2/2/– 4/4/–

Essays on Vegetarianism,

A. J. Hills 3/2/–?

Form & Design in Music.

H. Heathcote Statham. 10/5/– 31/5/–

The Beethoven—Cramer Studies,

J. S. Shedlock, ed. The World 27/2/–?

Voice Training Primer,

Mrs Behuke & D.C.W. Pearce. 3/6/–

INTRODUCTIONS

To Miss [Nellie] Erichsen by Bertha Newcombe at Joubert’s Studio. 24th April.

To [Henry Jackson Wells] Dam by Ernest Parke, Express Dairy, Fleet St. 3 June.

Mrs Francis Adams, by the Salts [Henry Stephens Salt and Mrs Salt née Catherine Kate Joynes], Hygeian Restaurant. 20th September.

HEALTH

On the 21st January I got a headache in the afternoon that was almost a sick headache. Had the remains of it in the morning; but it passed off.

On the 23rd April had a slight headache in the evening.

During the week ending the 14th May I had a cold of a tolerably pronounced sort. It left me with a nervous cough; but when I spoke in the open air on the Sunday evening I thought I was rid of it. On the night of Monday the 15th, however, I was very feverish and the next night was almost as bad. I interpreted my condition as due to the return of the influenza.

On the 5th June I felt very much out of sorts, as if I had caught cold in my inside. For the first time in my life I found although I could pass urine without any difficulty, yet at the end of the operation came a severe pang. This frightened and disconcerted me a good deal. Evidently a cystitis. It lasted about a fortnight. All through this period I was extremely weak physically, well as far as appearance went, but very easily fatigued and not very far above prostration point. I attributed all this to the fact of the influenza. About the last week of June I began to recover a good deal.

In August and September I got some change and holiday at Zurich and with the Webbs [Sidney and Beatrice Webb] in the Valley of the Wye. I came home to town in rougher and coarser health than I have enjoyed for a long time. But on the 28th September I caught cold by sitting in FE [Florence Emery]’s rooms with no fire and the window open at the top behind me, producing the sort of draught which always gives me colds.

40/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 4th January 1893

Be at Downey’s the photographers, Ebury St., at 12 to sit for portrait for Cassell’s Cabinet Portrait Gallery. Put off to Saturday by the fog. Call on Sidney Webb in the afternoon and bring him MS of Fortnightly article. Arnold Dolmetsch’s lecture on Viol and Lute music, with concert, at the Midland Grand Hotel. 15.

When I got into town I found a fog there. It was impossible for Downey to photograph me; so I arranged to go again on Saturday. I walked home and got my letters. Wrote a couple of letters, especially one to [Pakenham Thomas] Beatty. At the Webbs’ I met a man named [Sidney] Ball. [Henry William] Massingham was there also. I came back by the 19.22 train and called on FE, returning her volume of Browning. Then back to the Terrace where I had something to eat and immediately started off to the skating ground, which I did not reach until 21.50. I skated until 22, having the lake to myself most of the time. When I got back I wrote a few postcards and pasted a notice or two into the Widowers’ Houses scrapbook, besides writing up this diary.

Train Ravenscourt Pk to Victoria 6d Star d Dinner at the café opposite Portland Rd 1/8 Train Kings + to Finchley Rd 7d Finchley Rd to Hammersmith (L. & N. W.) 8d Skating, Grove Park, 6d

41/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 5th January 1893

Stayed at Hammersmith all day working at the appendix to Widowers’ Houses. Got the draft finished at about 16 in the afternoon. Went up to the workroom and played for an hour and a half or so; and then went off and had tea with FE, who brought me to the skating ground at Grove Park—not the one I have hitherto gone to. She left me after five minutes walk of it and turned back to go to the theatre. I skated from 20 to 22 and came back here. Wrote up this diary and read over the appendix.

Skating—Tappington’s pond 6d

42/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 10th January 1893

Finished the revision of the play [Widowers’ Houses]. Quite forgot to dine in the middle of the day. [Graham] Wallas called in the afternoon. Went into the City to buy some woolen things and to arrange about exchanging my typewriter for a new one. Went back for a while to the Square and wrote to Henry and Co. about the terms of agreement for the play [Widowers’ Houses]. Then went to FE and stayed there until near midnight. Came back to Hammersmith Terrace to sleep. Began reading [Robert] Buchanan’s Wandering Jew, a copy of which arrived from him in the evening.

Telegram to Lincoln 6d Train to Moorgate (return not used) 5d Paid Barlock Co for new typewriter to exchange against my old one £8/17/6 Shirt & pants at Lutz’s 13/4 Train Mansion House to Charing + 22d Dinner at Orange Grove 2/– Star d Pick Me Up 1d Train Portland Rd to Shepherds Bush 6d

43/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 19th January 1893

London Symphony Concert. St. James’s Hall. 20. Lyric Theatre, first night of The Magic Opal [a libretto by Arthur Law, composed by Senor Albeniz].

Began World article and made a large hole in it. After dinner went to the Stores to make some further purchases. Just after coming out met Archer and turned back with him to Waterloo, where he was going to catch the 17.25 train. I walked back and corrected and sent off the Fortnightly proof, besides writing to Frank Harris about it. Sent off MS of Widowers’ Houses to Henry and Co. Got to the theatre rather late. After the first act I went over to St. James’s Hall and heard Brahms’s Symphony in F and Mrs [Katherine] Fiske’s solo. Then returned to the theatre. Wrote up this diary on my return, and wrote a couple of postcards, but did not go out to post them.

Star d Dinner at Hygeian 1/8 12 inch rule 5d Condy’s Fluid 1/6 Postage of MS to Henry & Co 3d Registration 2d

44/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 23rd January 1893

Fabian Central Group Meeting. 32 Great Ormond St. R.W. Reynolds on “Rousseau’s Ghost in Modern Politics.” 20. Meeting at 276 Strand between 7 Fabian delegates and the “Olive Branch” Committee of the Hammersmith Socialist Society, to discuss possibility of a Socialist Alliance. Tobias Matthay’s pianoforte recital (his own compositions). Royal Academy of Music. 20.

Suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to correct the World proof; so started for town early, but called on FE on the way and so did not get here until 13. Corrected proof and sent it off by express postal messenger. After dinner met [Eduard] Bernstein in Oxford St. and walked about Bloomsbury with him for a long time arguing about [August] Bebel and [Paul] Singer’s treatment of the Fabian, and about [Karl] Marx. Walter [Gurly] called a little after I got home but did not stay long. I worked at the postscript to Widowers’ Houses until 19, when I went off to the Fabian.

Papers 1d Train Shepherds Bush to Portland Rd 6d Express postal messenger for World proof 6d

Dinner at Hygeian 1/– Telegram to Bertha Newcombe 6d

45/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 24th January 1893

Arnold Dolmetsch’s Viol concert. Barnard’s Inn. 20. First of the [Theodor] Plowitz concerts. Prince’s Hall. 20. Call on Bertha Newcombe in the afternoon.

Began preface for Widowers’ Houses and worked at it until 15. Met [James Mackey] Glover on my way to dinner. He asked me to go to see his ballet and I promised to do so tomorrow. I sat with Bertha Newcombe until near 19 when [Bertha’s mother] Mrs Newcombe joined us. Parted from them outside the studio. Went to Baker St. by mistake thinking that the concert was at Steinway Hall instead of in Piccadilly.

Star d Dinner at Orange Grove 1/2 Train St James’s Park to Sloane Sq 1 d Cocoa, eggs &c in Aerated Bread Shop in Kings Rd 10d Train Sloane Sq to Baker St 6d

46/ To a postal worker, Fabian fellow and socialist lecturer Amy Lawrence

27th January 1893

[Dear Amy Lawrence]

Widowers’ Houses is in the printer’s hands; but when it will be out of them is more than I can say.

What on earth do people mean by ‘types’? I suppose you and I are types of the people who are just like us; but that seems hardly worth saying. There was no intention to make anybody in the play more of a type than that. When you read it you will find Blanche natural enough. Owing to difficulties which the public knew nothing about & which were the fault of circumstances alone, the representation was not quite successful in bringing out the provocation under which the young lady acted.

GBS

47/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 30th January 1893

Go up to Philip Webb in the evening and bring him back [Alexander] Emonds’ essays.

Felt good for nothing. Set to work pasting up the scrap book containing notices etc. of Widowers’ Houses. Wrote to Johnson of Manchester and to Lady Colin Campbell. Did not go out to dinner, but played and sang a bit and dawdled irresolutely. Went out at about 17 and took a meal at the Wheatsheaf, after which I called on [William] Archer. Went on after that to [Philip] Webb, with whom I spent the rest of the evening very pleasantly. Talking about art, as usual, and about the proposed Socialist Alliance. Was much disturbed at night by noises in the Square. Could not get to sleep for a long time.

Soup & eggs at Wheatsheaf 1/2

48/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 13th February 1893

Monday Pop. Joachim. Fabian Central Group Meeting. 32 Great Ormond St. J. F. [Joseph Francis] Oakeshott on “Why Do We Want Socialism?” 20. Changed to 15 Museum Mansion, Russell Square, through [Graham] Wallas’s illness. St. Pancras Vestry Hall. Meeting on behalf of the Unemployed. 20.

Spent all the working part of the day drafting agreement for the publication of Widowers’ Houses, and sent it off to Henry and Co. Wrote to [John] Burns and [Sidney] Webb about the Trade Union clause in it. Took a nap before tea. Then discovered that I had not posted the World proof on Saturday night. Rushed off with it to New Street Square—too late to be of any use. Walked back and wrote several letters, especially one to Miss [Isobel E.] Priestley about her friend who wants to go on the stage.

Dinner 10d Star d Justice 1d Train to Farringdon 2d

49/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 21st February 1893

George Moore’s Strike at Arlingford at the Opera Comique. 20. Independent Theatre Society.

Corrected and sent off [Charles] Charrington’s review to the Charringtons—or rather to Janet [Achurch, his wife], for their approval. In the afternoon went out to Morris’s to submit to him the proof of the page of Widowers’ Houses just sent by the printer. He could not suggest anything better. Janie [Mrs William Morris née Burden] was there; and [Sydney Carlyle] Cockerell; and Mrs Norman [née Ménie Muriel Dowie] called whilst I was there. After the play got a cab for Bertha Newcombe and Miss [Maud] McCarthy. Home in the rain and sent off the page to Henry and Co.

Express messenger with the interview to Janet Achurch 3d Papers 1d Train to Hammersmith 4d

Back 4d Program at IT [Independent Theatre] 6d

50/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 22nd February 1893

Annual meeting of the Hammersmith District Labour Council at The Ship, Hammersmith Bridge Rd., at 20. (C. F. Brown, 21 Alexandra Rd., West Kensington Park W.). Fabian Publishing Committee. 276 Strand. 17. [Charles] Hallé’s Concert. St. James’s Hall. 20. The Manchester Band.

Miserably wet day. Got a letter from JP [Mrs Jane (Jenny) Patterson], which I burnt at the first glance. Wrote to tell her so, feeling the uselessness of doing anything else. Wrote a scrap of further preface for Widowers’ Houses; but soon gave it up, feeling out of sorts. My impression is that I am getting out of health for want of exercise. I dined here on my macaroni and then put on my mackintosh and walked up to Hampstead to Sidney Webb to consult him about Sophie Bryant’s complaints of the Technical Education Committee. But he was not there, nor his wife, both having gone out to dine. I forgot about the Publishing Committee. When I went down to the Hallé Concert, half an hour late in consequence of having been delayed by an inopportune call from [J. T.] Blanchard, I could not get in—at least there was only standing room; so I came away, rather out of temper at their not having sent me a seat. When I got home I wrote up this diary and wrote a few cards. Was rather interested in the papers because of the criticisms of [George Augustus] Moore’s play.

Papers 5d Train Finchley Rd to Portland Rd 4d

51/ To an Irish poet, playwright and novelist Oscar Wilde

28th February 1893

My dear Wilde

Salomé [Salomé is a one-act tragedy by Oscar Wilde.] is still wandering in her purple raiment in search of me; and I expect her to arrive a perfect outcast, branded with inky stamps, bruised by flinging from hard hands into red prison vans, stifled and contaminated by herding with review books in the World cells, perhaps outraged by some hasty literary pathologist whose haste to lift the purple robe blinded him to the private name on the hem. In short, I suspect that they have muddled it up with the other books in York St.; and I have written to them to claim my own.

I have always said that the one way of abolishing the Censor is to abolish the Monarchy of which he is an appendage. But the brute could be lamed if only the critics and authors would make real war on him. The reason they wont is that they are all Puritans at heart. And the coming powers—the proletarian voters—will back their Puritanism unless I can lure the Censor into attacking the political freedom of speech on the stage. I enclose you a red bill to shew you what I mean. That bill was designed by the active spirits of the dock district at the east end. Observe the H stuck into the middle of my plain Bernard (I wonder they did not make it Bernhardt), and the title ‘Democratic IDEALS,’ all their own ‘taste.’ There is political life and hope in the bill; but as far as Art is concerned, there is all Maida Vale, with the great Academic desert beyond, for them to pass through before they enter into the Promised Land—an ocean of sentimentality, dried up on the farther coast into a Sahara of pedantry. That is what we have to half fight down, half educate up, if we are to get rid of Censorships, official and unofficial. And when I say we, I mean [William] Morris the Welshman and Wilde and Shaw the Irishmen; for to learn from Frenchmen is a condescension impossible for an Englishman.

I hope soon to send you my play ‘Widowers’ Houses,’ which you will find tolerably amusing, considering that it is a farcical comedy. Unfortunately I have no power of producing beauty: my genius is the genius of intellect, and my farce its derisive brutality. Salomé’s purple garment would make Widowers’ Houses ridiculous; but you are precisely the man to appreciate it on that account

I saw [your] Lady Windermere’s Fan, in its early days, & have often wished to condole with you—since nobody else did—on the atrocious acting of it. I except Marion Terry, and I let off poor Lilian Hanbury, whose fault was want of skill rather than want of enlightenment; but all the rest were damnable, utterly damnable. I hope you will follow up hard on that tail; for the drama wants building up very badly, and it is clear that your work lies there. Besides, you have time and opportunity for work, which none of the rest of us have. And that reminds me of the clock; so farewell for the moment.