Kitabı oku: «Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play», sayfa 4
GBS
30/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
Later in August 1896
I wish I could write neatly, tidily like you. Cant. Dear Gentleman I was very glad to see a letter from you to me, and I “kept it” till the last! What a muddle about this little play [The Man of Destiny]. I wish you’d just give it to him [Henry Irving] to do what he likes with it. He’ll play it quick enough, never fear, but I see what he is thinking, the silly old cautious thing. He is such a dear Donkey! Darling fellow. Stupid ass! I cant bother about him and the part I want him to play any more (As he only can play it). You ought to have come down here long ago and read Candida (Why, she’s a dancer!) [There was a Spanish dancer called Candida at this time in London.] to me. Now my holiday is just over and I’m only a ha’porth the better for it, and I might have been well, all along o’ you.
Oh, but I’ve had the happiest time. A few visitors, and my 2 grandchildren all the time with me. You see I love benefiting things, and I can benefit the babies. I’m as alert as a fox-terrier when children are on my hands. Oh, I’d love to have a baby every year. I return to town on Saturday, and must put aside all thought of babies and sich like trash, and stick at work, rehearsing every day and every evening for a whole cussed month. The part of Imogen [in Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline] is not yet well fixed in my memory, and it is so difficult to get the words. The words! Panic will possess me the first moment each morning until I know those words.
Did you sleep after Bayreuth? Last time you wrote, you were going to sleep, tired out. I wish I could sleep for a month. I’m generally worn out for want of the blessing, sleep. Why do you live in Fitzroy Square? Little Mrs Moscheles [Margaret Moscheles née Sobernheim] has been down here. You know her, dont you? I wish Cymbeline were “cut,” and I could read Candida. Drive down to Hampton Court some Saturday or Sunday and read it to me. Of course you are busy, but never mind. Let things slide and come before the fine warm days are fled. You’ll like reading me your own work and I shall like hearing it. At least I suppose I shall! Although I fear mine are very dull wits, and second times of reading are best.
A heavenly day here. I wish you were here, and everyone else I like. Lord! There’d be “a damned party in a parlour”!
Thank you for your letter. Dont think that I want to hurt Janet. I would help her (I have tried). But Candida, a Mother! Attractive to me, very. I’m good at Mothers, and Janet can do the Loveresses.
Am I successful? You say so. I heard the other day you hated successful folk. I said “Fudge”!
Oh—good-bye.
E. T.
31/ To Ellen Terry
28th August 1896
. . . Curiously—in view of “Candida”—you and Janet are the only women I ever met whose ideal of voluptuous delight was that life should be one long confinement from the cradle to the grave. If I make money out of my new play I will produce “Candida” at my own expense; and you & Janet shall play it on alternate nights. It must be a curious thing to be a mother. First the child is part of yourself; then it is your child; then it is its father’s child; then it is the child of some remote ancestor; finally it is an independent human being whom you have been the mere instrument of bringing into the world, and whom perhaps you would never have thought of caring for if anyone else had performed that accidental service. It must be an odd sensation looking on at these young people and being out of it, staring at their amazing callousness, and being tolerated and no doubt occasionally ridiculed by them before they have done anything whatsoever to justify them in presuming to the distinction of your friendship. Of the two lots, the woman’s lot of perpetual motherhood, and the man’s of perpetual babyhood, I prefer the man’s, I think.
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 shy. The Lord knows what I might or might not have done, and I think H. I. [Henry Irving]might not have seen the joke! (He thinks me crazy, but “good.” It’s t’other way on!)
Would not you like to be somebody’s (anybody’s perhaps!) pleasure for a few moments? Well, you have been my sole delight for the last six weeks, and I’m ever gratefully yours. By the way though, you dont play fair. Your “Saturday” [Review article] was perfect, all but about E. T. You scolded her in private beautifully, but you should first have printed your letter to her. You know perfectly well that in the acting of this “Womanly woman” I’m pretty bad, and you might have said so in The Saturday plain and straight.
Yes. [My son] Ed’ard Gordon Craig can act, or will act. He had best be quick for he is a big boy for 7 and that’s his age.
Ah, let him act in something of yours. Heavens! He’s better than that other acty boy. Now when I’m clear of “velvet” friends who are flocking around me, I’m going to get to know the Strange Lady and to make acquaintance with a beautiful new tricycle I have, and to—oh! do ever so many nice things, when I’m less exhausted.
Arent you going to send me Candida? Only to read. I wont steal it, but I want to know her. Now there’s no need for you to write to me any more.
Oh aint it a dark day.
Good-bye
[Ellen Terry]
37/ To Ellen Terry
5th October 1896
I am at my wits’ end—telegrams every five minutes asking for articles about Morris [died on the 3rd October], and a million other worries. Last night I had to orate at Hornsey [Socialist Society]; and a young lady got up afterwards and said, “I don’t think what I have to ask belongs to the subject of the lecture; but will Mr Shaw tell us when his play will be produced at the Lyceum ?“
Happy Morris ! he is resting.
You remember the publication of [Clement] Scott’s criticisms of the Lyceum the other day. Well, I reviewed it: that was all. Not worth reading—dead and gone journalism.
When I read your remark about Peer Gynt, I fainted away stone dead. In Heaven’s name, how old is E.G.C. [Edward Gordon Craig]? What puts such audacious ideas into his infant head? If you’re serious, he must be either much too good or much too bad for me. I expect it will end in my having to teach him his alphabet.
I have just been asked to stay at Radlet from Saturday to Monday—for the 25th. What am I to do—read you “Candida”?—or did you say Radlet, or am I dreaming?
Oh, I can’t write, I can’t think, I am beaten, tired, wrecked. I should like to get away from this wretched place to some corner of heaven, and be rocked to sleep by you.
What did you say about Morris?—do you want an article about him? Look in the [Daily] Chronicle tomorrow, and ask me no more questions: my brain won’t work. I haven’t energy even to tear this letter up.
GBS
38/ To Ellen Terry
12th October 1896
. . . And now as to all my love affairs. One [Florence Farr] is just perishing under a bad attack of the Wandering Jew. Then there is my lady [Charlotte Payne-Townshend from the 1st June 1898 Mrs Bernard Shaw] with the light green eyes and the million of money, whom I have got to like so much that it would be superfluous to fall in love with her. Then there is Janet [Achurch], who, on hearing of the Irish rival, first demanded, with her husband [Charles Charrington] to witness my testimony, whether I still loved her, and then, on receiving the necessary assurance, relented and informed me that she had been faithless to me (with the said husband) to the extent of making “Candida” impossible until after next February, when she expects to become once more a mother. And then there are others whom I cannot recollect just at present, or whom you don’t know anything about. And finally there is Ellen, to whom I vow that I will try hard not to spoil my high regard, my worthy respect, my deep tenderness, by any of those philandering follies which make me so ridiculous, so troublesome, so vulgar with women. I swear it. Only, do as you have hitherto done with so wise an instinct: keep out of my reach. You see, nobody can write exactly as I write: my letters will always be a little bit original; but personally I shouldn’t be a bit original. All men are alike with a woman whom they admire. You must have been admired so much and so often—must know the symptoms so frightfully well. But now that I come to think of it, so have I. Up to the time I was 29, actually twentynine, I was too shabby for any woman to tolerate me. I stalked about in a decaying green coat, cuffs trimmed with the scissors, terrible boots, & so on. Then I got a job to do & bought a suit of clothes with the proceeds. A lady [Mrs Jane “Jenny” Patterson] immediately invited me to tea, threw her arms round me, and said she adored me. I permitted her to adore, being intensely curious on the subject. Never having regarded myself as an attractive man, I was surprised; but I kept up appearances successfully. Since that time, whenever I have been left alone in a room with a female, she has invariably thrown her arms round me and declared she adored sae. It is fate. Therefore beware. If you allow yourself to be left alone with me for a single moment, you will certainly throw your arms round me and declare you adore me; and I am not prepared to guarantee that my usual melancholy forbearance will be available in your case.
But I am really getting idiotic. All this time I have been trying to recollect something—oh, to be sure. The photographs! I return them with many thanks. The young man is excellent—good chin, good mouth, not too long upper lip, good brow, and plenty of head above his ears. . . .
If he [Ellen Terry’s son Gordon Craig] has a nimble tongue, he will make a good actor or a good anything else: perhaps he ought to be something else. There is not suffering enough in his face for the hero of “Candida”; but he might act that. Is the young lady [your daughter] Ailsa [Edith] Craig? I don’t recognise her, though I saw Ailsa in Pinero’s play [Bygones] & remember her very well. I shall finish this letter by instalments in the course of the week. By the way, what place did you say? Was it Radlett?
GBS
39/ Ellen Terry to Bernard Shaw
Some time in October 1896
. . . Well I wont write to-day, but shall take it out in thinking, and I shall talk to you to-night, when I come home from the theatre and have a quiet time with you. It’s quite pathetic, your last card, saying you want to finish your work, and not write “nonsensical letters,” and I suppose as long as I go on writing them, you’ll reply so as not to make me feel “left.” Well I wont post this until the end of the week so you will get some rest. You are very gentle and sweet to me. Sorry, though, you wont have the snuff-box with my picture in it.
But I’ve nothing you could ever “want and could get from no-one else,” and I want nothing from you, dear fellow—nothing more I mean. I’m in your debt and dont mind that in the least since I love you. I want to tell you that I very nearly trotted round to you after the play the other night (the first night), but I stuck to my post like a heroine and I helped Henry [Irving] with all the people, and oh, all the time I was just dying to go away to some quiet place—to you, or to hear some music from Nan Finch-Hatton, but you most of all, or something really nice. Glad I didnt now because of something you said in one of your blessed letters.
Wont you send me Candida one day next week? I’m dull and sick, very, and want an entertainment. Send it to me, like a good boy, as a reward for not letting you hear from me until the end of a week, and for not coming to Fitzroy Square [where Shaw lived at that time], and—well just because I want it. There! I am wanting something “only you can give me”! For just entertainment, no other purpose. Not for Teddy [Edward Craig], sir! I want to read you.
My curses of children have discovered your hand-writing now, and Mistress Edy [Edith Craig] is exceedingly pert to her aged mother. She has drawn your picture which she says is a speaking likeness, and requests me to wear it inside my bodice. I send it to you.
A splendid idea! I wish you’d marry her! Nobody else will. (The ninnies are frightened at her!) Then you’d belong to me, and I’d have her back if you didnt like her! E. (No answer needed.). . . .
[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 editors, indignant secretaries of public bodies (wanting orations) all over the country, the management of the Haymarket [Theatre], & innumerable private persons, who have written me letters upon letters, enclosing stamped envelopes, reply paid telegram forms, and every other engine for extracting instant replies in desperate emergencies. For months I haven’t answered one of them. Why? Because I could write to no one but Ellen, Ellen, Ellen: all other correspondence was intolerable when I could write to her instead. And what is the result? Why, that I am not killed with lecturing and with the writing of magazine articles. (What the pecuniary result will be presently I decline to think; but now that the play [The Devil’s Disciple] is finished (in the rough) I shall try to earn a little supplemental money—not that I really want it; but I have always been so poor as to coin that nothing can persuade me now that I am not on the verge of bankruptcy.) I am saved these last inches of fatigue which kept me chronically overworked for ten years. The Socialist papers denounce me bitterly—my very devotees call me aristocrat, Tory, capitalist scribe & so on; but it is really all Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, Ellen, the happiness, the rest, the peace, the refuge, the consolation of loving (oh, dearest Ellen, add “and being loved by”—a lie costs so little) my great treasure Ellen.
What did I want so particularly to say?—oh yes: it was this. I have written to [William] Terriss to tell him that I have kept my promise to him & have “a strong drama” with a part for him; but I want your opinion; for I have never tried melodrama before; and this thing, with its heroic sacrifice, its impossible court martial, its execution (imagine W. T. hanged before the eyes of the Adelphi!), its sobbings & speeches & declamations, may possibly be the most monstrous piece of farcical absurdity that ever made an audience shriek with laughter. And yet I have honestly tried for dramatic effect. I think you could give me a really dry opinion on it; for it will not tickle you, like “Arms & The Man” & “You Never Can Tell,” nor get at your sympathetic side, like Candida (the heroine is not the hero of the piece this time); and you will have to drudge conscientiously through it like a stage carpenter & tell me whether it is a burlesque or not. . . .
GBS
48/ To Ellen Terry
7th March 1897
. . . Does H. I. [Henry Irving] really say that you are in love with me? For that be all his sins forgiven him! I will go to the Lyceum again and write an article proving him to be the greatest Richard [III] ever dreamed of. I am also touched by his refusing to believe that we have never met. No man of feeling could believe such heartlessness. . . .
