Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

Bernard Shaw

Candida & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play

Edited by Vitaly Baziyan

Copyright © 2021 Vitaly Baziyan

All rights reserved

A mystery Candida, created by Bernard Shaw during 1894 and 1895, was first published on the 19th April 1898 by a small British publishing house that was founded by the writer Grant Richards simultaneously with American edition published by Herbert S. Stone and Company, Chicago and New York: Plays Pleasant, Volume II (Arms and the Man, Candida, the Man of Destiny, You Never Can Tell). This publication from a revised edition Plays: Pleasant and Unpleasant. By Bernard Shaw. The Second Volume, containing the four Pleasant Plays published by Constable and Company Ltd., London: 1920 is a handmade reproduction from the original edition, and remains as true to the original work as possible. The original edition was processed manually by means of a classic editing which ensures the quality of publications and the unrestricted enjoyment of reading.

The selected correspondence of Bernard Shaw relating to the play Candida contains 249 letters and entries written between 1889 and 1950. Sources of this collection are prior publications Collected Letters of Bernard Shaw published by Max Reinhardt; Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Siegfried Trebitsch published by Stanford University Press; Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw: a correspondence and Our Theatres in the Nineties published by Constable and Company Ltd., London; Shaw on Theatre published by Hill and Wang, New York; Bernard Shaw’s Letters to Granville Barker published by Theatre Arts Books, New York; Shaw on Language published by Philosophical Library, New York; Advice to a Young Critic published by Peter Owen Limited, London; The Diary of Beatrice Webb, Vol. III, 1905 – 1924 “The Power to Alter Things” and Vol. IV: 1924 – 1943 “The Wheel of Life” published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press; Beatrice Webb’s diaries, 1924 – 1932 published by Longmans, Green and Co Ltd, London; The Letters of Sidney and Beatrice Webb: Volume II published by Cambridge University Press;The Playwright & the Pirate. Bernard Shaw and Frank Harris: A Correspondence, Bernard Shaw: The Drama Observed, and Bernard Shaw: The Diaries, 1885 – 1897 published by Pennsylvania State University Press; To A Young Actress: the Letters of Bernard Shaw to Molly Tompkins published by Clarkson N. Potter, Inc. Publisher, New York; edition of letters published by University of Toronto Press; Bernard Shaw: A Bibliography, in Two Volumes, Band 1 published by Oxford University Press.

George Bernard Shaw won The Nobel Prize in Literature for 1925 “for his work which is marked by both idealism and humanity, its stimulating satire often being infused with a singular poetic beauty.”

George Bernard Shaw won the Oscar in 1939 for Best Screenplay and Dialogue for his role in adapting his play Pygmalion for the screen.

The book represents a significant addition to modern-day understanding of Shaw’s play Candida and reveals his thoughts on a wide variety of issues, love affairs und relationships with contemporaries. Bernard Shaw’s punctuation and spelling were mostly kept by the editor. Italics were used for plays titles, books, newspapers and unfamiliar foreign words or phrases. Christian names, surnames, positions and ranks were added in square brackets when they were omitted but are necessary for a better understanding. Cuts of a few words are indicated by three dots and longer omissions by four dots.

The ebook cover was created by the editor using the picture of Sir John Everett Millais.

The play Candida was given a copyright performance at the Theatre Royal in South Shields on the 30th March 1895. The copyright performance was staged in the United Kingdom for the purpose of securing the author’s copyright over the text. There was a fear that according to the Dramatic Literary Property Act 1833, if a play’s text was published, or a rival production staged, before its official premiere, then the author’s rights would be lost.

Characters in order of appearance:

The Reverend James Mavor Morell, a clergyman and Candida’s husband – George Young

Miss Proserpine Garnett, Morell’s secretary – Ethel Verne

The Reverend Alexander (Lexy) Mill – J. Daniels

Mr Burgess, Candida’s father – Fred Cremlin

Candida – Lilian M. Revell

Eugene Marchbanks – Albert Edwin Drinkwater

Producer – Albert Edwin Drinkwater

The play Candida was first presented in public by the Independent Theatre Company at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen on the 30th July 30 1897.

Characters in order of appearance:

The Reverend James Mavor Morell, a clergyman and Candida’s husband – Charles Charrington

Miss Proserpine Garnett, Morell’s secretary – Edith Craig

The Reverend Alexander (Lexy) Mill – Robert Farquharson

Mr Burgess, Candida’s father – Lionel Belmore

Candida – Janet Achurch

Eugene Marchbanks – Courtney Thorpe

Producer – Charles Charrington

Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play Candida

1/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 14th August 1889

. . . Last day to send in article on the opera season (2500 words) to the Scottish Art Review, 294 St. Vincent St., Glasgow (James Mavor [Morell’s godfather], editor). See Monday. Last day to send in Bayreuth article to the English Illustrated Magazine. . . .

[G. Bernard Shaw]

2/ To an English dramatist Henry Arthur Jones

2nd December 1894

My dear H. A. J.

Here I am at the seaside between the finishing of one play [Candida] and the beginning of another [The Man of Destiny], just the time to send back the ball to you.

All that you say is quite true statically. Dynamically, it is of no virtue whatever. Like you, I write plays because I like it, and because I cannot remember any period in my life when I could help inventing people and scenes. I am not a storyteller: things occur to me as scenes, with action and dialogue—as moments, developing themselves out of their own vitality. I believe you will see as I go on that the conception of me as a doctrinaire, or as a sort of theatrical [Jeremiah] Joyce (of Scientific Dialogues fame), is a wrong one. On the contrary, my quarrel with the conventional drama is that it is doctrinaire to the uttermost extreme of dogmatism—that the dramatist is so strait-jacketted in theories of conduct that he cannot even state his conventional solution clearly, but leaves it to be vaguely understood, and so for the life of him cannot write a decent last act. I find that when I present a drama of pure feeling, wittily expressed, the effect when read by me to a picked audience of people in a room is excellent. But in a theatre, the mass of the people, too stupid to relish the wit, and too convention-ridden to sympathise with real as distinct from theatrical feeling, simply cannot see any drama or fun there at all; whilst the clever people feel the discrepancy between the real and theatrical feeling only as a Gilbertian satire on the latter, and, appreciating the wit well enough, are eager to shew their cleverness by proclaiming me as a monstrously clever sparkler in the cynical line. These clever people predominate in a first night audience; and, accordingly, in “Arms and The Man,” I had the curious experience of witnessing an apparently insane success, with the actors and actresses almost losing their heads with the intoxication of laugh after laugh, and of going before the curtain to tremendous applause, the only person in the theatre who knew that the whole affair was a ghastly failure. The same thing is occurring now in Boston, Philadelphia, &c—there is about as much of me in the affair as there is of Shakespere in [David] Garrick’s “Katherine and Petruchio.” Here and there, of course, I come across a person who was moved by the play, or by such portions of it as got played any better than a pantomime opening; but for the general paying public there needs a long fight, during which my plays will have to be produced in spite of all economic considerations, sometimes because the parts are too fascinating to be resisted, sometimes because [Arthur Wing] Pinero is not ready with his commissioned play, sometimes because I am willing to forgo an advance, sometimes because Nature not submit wholly to the box office.

Now here you will at once detect an enormous assumption on my part that I am a man of genius. But what can I do—on what other assumption am I to proceed if I am to write plays at all? You will detect the further assumption that the public, which will still be the public twenty years hence, will nevertheless see feeling and reality where they see nothing now but mere intellectual swordplay and satire. But that is what always happens. . . .

G. Bernard Shaw

3/ To Reginald Golding Bright, a young theatre critic at that time and later a manager of London office of an American theatrical and literary agent and producer Elizabeth Marbury

2nd December 1894

Dear Sir

The best service I can do you is to take your notice and jot down on it without ceremony the comments which occur to me. You will find first certain alterations in black ink. In them I have tried to say, as well as I can off-hand, what you were trying to say: that is, since it was evident you were dodging round some point or other, I have considered the only point that there was to make, and have made it. It came quite easy when I had altered your statement about Frenchmen at large to what you really meant—the conventional stage Frenchman. Always find out rigidly and exactly what you mean, and never strike an attitude, whether national or moral or critical or anything else. You struck a national attitude when you wrote that about the Frenchman and Enlishman; and you struck a moral attitude when you wrote “She has sunk low enough in all conscience.” Get your facts right first: that is the foundation of all style, because style is the expression of yourself; and you cannot express yourself genuinely except on a basis of precise reality.

In red ink you will find some criticisms which you may confidently take as expressing what an experienced editor would think of your sample of work.

You have not at all taken in my recommendation to you to write a book. You say you are scarcely competent to write books just yet. That is just why I recommed you to learn. If I advised you to learn to skate, you would not reply that your balance was scarcely good enough yet. A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed, he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself. You will never write a good book until you have written some bad ones. If they have sent you my Scottish article, you will see that I began by writing some abominably bad criticisms. I wrote five long books before I started again on press work. William Archer wrote a long magnum opus on the life and works of Richard Wagner, a huge novel, and a book on the drama, besides an essay on [Henry] Irving and a good deal of leader work for a Scotch paper, before he began his victorious career on The World. He also perpetrated about four plays in his early days. (By the way, you mustn’t publish this information.) You must go through the mill, too; and you can’t possibly start too soon. Write a thousand words a day for the next five years for at least nine months every year. Read all the great critics—[John] Ruskin, Richard Wagner, [Gotthold Ephraim] Lessing, [Charles] Lamb and [William] Hazlitt. Get a ticket for the British Museum reading room, and live there as much as you can. Go to all the first-rate orchestral concerts and to the opera, as well as to the theatres. Join debating societies and learn to speak in public. Haunt little Sunday evening political meetings and exercise that accomplishment. Study men and politics in this way. As long as you stay in the office, try and be the smartest hand in it: I spent four and a half years in an office before I was twenty. Be a teetotaller; don’t gamble; don’t lend; don’t borrow; don’t for your life get married; make the attainment of EFFICIENCY your sole object for the next fifteen years; and if the City can teach you nothing more, or demands more time than you can spare from your apprenticeship, tell your father that you prefer to cut loose and starve, and do it. But it will take you at least a year or two of tough work before you will be able to build up for yourself either the courage or the right to take heroic measures. Finally, since I have given you all this advice, I add this crowning precept, the most valuable of all. NEVER TAKE ANYBODY’S ADVICE.

And now, to abandon the role of your guide, philosopher and friend, which I don’t propose to revert to again until you report progress in ten years or so, let me thank you for the paragraph in The Sun, which was quite right and appropriate. I have no more news at present, except that I have nearly finished a new play [Candida], the leading part in which I hope to see played by Miss Janet Achurch, of whose genius I have always had a very high opinion. It is quite a sentimental play, which I hope to find understood by women, if not by men; and it is so straightforward that I expect to find it pronounced a miracle of perversity. This is my fifth dramatic composition. The first was “Widowers’ Houses,” of Independent Theatre fame. The second was “The Philanderer,” a topical comedy in which the New Woman figured before Mr [Sydney] Grundy discovered her. The third was “Mrs Warren’s Profession,” a play with a purpose, the purpose being much the same as that of my celebrated letter to the Pall Mall Gazette on the Empire controversy. The fourth was “Arms and the Man,” which was so completely misunderstood that it made my reputation as a playwright both here and in New York. The Independent Theatre has already announced “Mrs Warren’s Profession” for its forthcoming season. “The Philanderer” was written originally for that society; but on its completion I threw it aside and wrote another more suitable for the purposes of the society—Mrs Warren. [Charles] Wyndham asked me to do something for him on seeing “Arms and the Man”; and I tried to persuade him to play “The Philanderer”; but whilst the project was under consideration, Wyndham made such a decisive success with “[The Case of] Rebellious Susan” that he resolved to follow up the vein of comedy opened by Henry Arthur Jones to the end before venturing upon the Shavian quicksand. But this involved so long a delay that I withdrew the play, and am now looking round to see whether the world contains another actor who can philander as well as Wyndham. As I have always said that if I did not write six plays before I was forty I would never write one after, I must finish the work now in hand and another as well before the 26th July, 1896; but I hope to do much more than that, since I have managed to get through the present play within three months, during which I have had to take an active part in the Schoolboard and Vestry elections, to keep up my work in the Fabian Society, to deliver nearly two dozen lectures in London and the provinces, and to fire off various articles and criticisms. The fact is, I took a good holiday this autumn in Germany, Italy, and in Surrey; and I accumulated a stack of health which I am dissipating at a frightful rate. The Christmas holidays will come just in time to save my life.

If any of this stuff is of use to you for paragraphing purposes—and remember that the world will not stand too much Bernard Shaw—you are welcome to work it up by all means when it suits you. Only, don’t quote it as having been said by me. That is an easy way out which I bar. I find that you have got an atrociously long letter out of me. I have been blazing away on the platform this evening for an hour and a half, and ought to be in bed instead of clattering at this machine.

Yours, half asleep,

G. Bernard Shaw

4/ To an English stage actress and actor-manager Janet Achurch

22nd December 1894

Here I am, taking the sea air with Wallas. The sea air travels at the rate to of 120 miles an hour and goes through clothes, flesh, bone, spirit tut and all, so that one walks against it like a naked soul, exhilarated, but teeming at the nose. We are in an immense hotel, with 180 rooms and few guests, who have nothing to do, and are miserable exceedingly having come down expressly to be happy. I shall begin a new play presently. The last having been so happily inspired by you, I look about Folkestone for some new inspiratrice, but in vain: every woman in the place either strikes me cheerfully prosaic at a glance, or else makes me boil with ten-philander-power cynicism. Everybody is quoting [Robert Louis] Stevenson’s dictum about the height of happiness being attained when you live in the open air with the woman you love. Convinced as I am that love is hopelessly vulgar and happiness insufferably tedious to those who have once gained the heights, I nevertheless find that these material heights—these windswept cliffs—make me robustly vulgar, greedy and ambitious. If you by any chance tumble off the heights yourself ever, you will understand how vigorously despicable I am under these circumstances. The ozone offers an immense opportunity to any thoroughly abandoned female who would like to become the heroine of a play as black as “Candida” is white. . . .

I am, as you will observe, in an entirely worthless humour. That is the result of health, fresh air, plenty of food, early rising, long walk and the rest of the bracing delusions.

GBS

5/ To an Scottish writer, theatre critic, critic, playwright, Henrik Ibsen’s translator and early friend William Archer

28th December 1894

I return to town tomorrow afternoon to take up the duties, fairly forced on me by [Frank] Harris, of dramatic critic to the Saturday Review; so do not send on any more proofs to Folkestone. It is questionable whether it is quite decent for a dramatic author to be also a dramatic critic; but my extreme reluctance to make myself dependent for my bread and butter on the acceptance of my plays by managers tempts me to hold to the position that my real profession is that by which I can earn my bread in security. Anyhow, I am prepared to do anything which will enable me to keep my plays for twenty years with perfect tranquillity if it takes that time to educate the public into wanting them.

I read ‘Candida’ to [George] Alexander before I came down here. He instantly perceived that it was Marchbank’s & Candida’s (that is, [Henry] Esmond’s & Janet’s) play and not his. He said he would produce it if he could get down to the poet’s age; but he would not play Morell. He had acted that sort of part, he said, until people were declaring that he could not act. By so doing he has made money enough to make him independent of playing anything but parts which will give him, as he put it, a property in himself as well as in his theatre. This, being intelligent, delighted me, and I took off ‘Candida’ in high spirits. However, as he said he wanted to act a clever man, I suggested The Philanderer, who is an extremely clever man. He asked me to let him read it. I sent it to him & have not heard from him since. He said he wanted a play, because neither [Henry Arthur] Jones nor [Arthur Wing] Pinero was ready. He meant ready to step in on the failure of Henry James’s play; but naturally he did not say so. I am desperately floored by your confounded proofs. A year or two ago, when there was some question of republishing my World articles, I looked through a few of them, and found them, apart from the context of time and place for which they were originally designed, quite impossibly dull, stale and ineffective. I will not go so far as to say that your articles are so afflicting; but they are sufficiently damnable. Who now cares for a discussion of the probability of the plot of ‘A Bunch of Violets’ [by Sydney Grundy]? What further use to Carte [‘s Savoy Theatre] is your attempt to make yourself agreeable, kindly & tolerant over such a ghastly and foredoomed insanity as Mirette [a comic opera by Michel Carré and André Messager]? Is it tolerable to have [Henrik Johan] Ibsen and [Eleonora] Duse, not to mention myself, cut into strips by twothousandword lengths of mere regurgitation of the year’s refuse, which is sufficiently chronicled elsewhere in the Dramatic Year [Book] & the files of the [British weekly paper] Era? I am in utter despair: I dont know what to write by way of preface. If your laziness had led you to follow my example & leave the articles buried, I could not have complained; but I am now more than ever convinced that you should either let your year’s work alone or else rearrange it all as an annual article having the same excellence as its parts originally had as weekly articles. You tell me that the experiment of last year was not a financial success. I tear my hair and desperately ask you, why should it? I declare before high Heaven that [Walter] Scott is a fool, and you a shirk, to publish a book that is no book. If it paid you, you would have some excuse; but it doesnt. . . .

GBS

6/ To Janet Achurch

25th January 1895

I have made an appointment with [a popular London actor Lewis] Waller to read “Candida”; but I shall read Eugene for all he is worth, as to sacrifice him would be to sacrifice the play. The only chance is in the fact that Waller is at an earlier phase of actor-management than [George] Alexander, and may play for a managerial and financial success at the cost of playing Morell. But I am not sanguine. If he refuses, I shall try him with the Philanderer ([Charles] Hawtrey in the title part) sooner than leave that stone unturned; and if he sees money in that, Miss [Julia] Neilson is clearly out of the question for Julia, a part which I still think you could do yourself good by playing, as it would put you to the height of your cleverness and technical skill to play it; and these are the qualities for which you most need to gain credit. Nobody has seen you play a really keen comedy part, finished up to the finger nails. Clever Alice [in Clever Alice – Walter Brandon Thomas’ adaptation of Adolf von Wilbrandt’s Die Maler] & Becky Sharp [in Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray] were only tomfooleries. Besides, with Paula Tanqueray [in The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Arthur Wing Pinero] in everyone’s head as a great acting part, the public & the critics will have their cue for Julia. If you could pull off that part well, you would have no more trouble with Pinero: I know exactly what he thinks about you at present. What he thinks is all wrong; but you must do a piece of fine filagree work to convert him.

I am not surprised about Mrs Daintry [in Mrs Warren’s Profession]. Waller’s perfectly right; the ending is not the sort of thing for his audience. Besides, it is not really good drama: it is only good acting. After the revelation about the daughter, the play, dramatically speaking, stops as completely as “Candida” stops after the Erklarung in the third act. . . .

GBS

7/ To an English actor-manager Richard Mansfield

22nd February 1895

My dear Mansfield

. . . Now let me ask you whether you can play a boy of eighteen—a strange creature—a poet—a bundle of nerves—a genius—and a rattling good part. The actor-managers here can’t get down to the age. The play, which is called Candida, is the most fascinating work in the world—my latest—in three acts, one cheap scene, and with six characters. The woman’s part divides the interest and the necessary genius with the poet’s. There are only two people in the world possible for it: Janet Achurch, for whom it was written, and Mrs [Madge] Kendal. If Janet creates it here, will you pay her fare out and back and give her 300 dollars a week or so for the sake of covering yourself with new and strange fascinations as the poet? By the way, there’s probably money in the piece; but it’s a charming work of art; and the money would fly somehow. . . .

P.S. Since “Candida” is such a cheap and simple play, why not fly over here in the thick of the season; take a theatre for half a dozen matinées; play the poet to Janet’s Candida; set all London talking & wondering; & disappear in a flash of blue fire? That would be immensely in character.

yours sincerely

G. Bernard Shaw

8/ To Richard Mansfield

9th March 1895

My dear Mansfield

. . . I am working away as hard as I can at the stage business of Candida. I will get the parts copied out here if there is time as well as the script; so that there may not be a moment’s delay in getting to work at the other side. Meanwhile I had better tell you what you will want for the play. There are six parts only. One of them is an old man, vulgar, like Eccles in Caste [a comedy drama by Thomas William Robertson], only not a drunken waster, but a comfortably well off vestryman who has made money in trade. He must be a genuinely funny low comedian, able to talk vulgar English—drop his Hs and so forth. And he must be really a middleaged or elderly man and not a young man made up old, which is one of the most depressing things known to the stage. Then there is a young woman of the standing of a female clerk, rather a little spitfire, a bit common, but with some comic force and a touch of feeling when needed. She must not be slowtongued: the part requires smart, pert utterance. If you know any pair who could play Eccles and Polly Eccles thoroughly well, you may engage them straight off for Candida. Then there is a curate. Any solemn young walking gentleman who can speak well will do for him. The other three parts are, yourself, Janet, and your leading man, who must be equal to a very strong part which would be the star part if there were not the other part to relegate it to important utility. The character is a strong, genial clergyman (Candida’s husband) with much weight and popular force of style. I have not seen the Scandinavian [Albert Gran] whom Felix [Mansfield] is bringing out; so cannot say whether he looks likely to suit the part.

I must break off: it is post hour. There will be plenty of time to arrange the dresses and the one scene, which presents no difficulty. The Philanderer must now wait: it would be madness to produce it before Candida. I will keep Candida for you in London, and am quite disposed to hold over other plays for you if you can arrange to conquer the two worlds within a reasonable time. More of that afterwards.

G.B.S.

9/ To Richard Mansfield

16th March 1895

My dear Mansfield

. . . [Your brother] Felix, in addition to my blessing, which is probably not copyrightable in America, has the full score of Candida and the band parts (all except the first violin, which Janet took to study on the way, and which she will no doubt lose), conscientiously read through and corrected by me—a labor which will leave its marks on my constitution until the last trumpet. It has been impossible for me to send out the contract with them: it must wait until next week. Terms, practically the same as before, except for a stipulation about the cast to secure to Janet the vested interest in the part which I promised her during its gestation. The understanding is that if it succeeds in New York, I am to hold the London rights for you for, say, a year, on the New York terms. However, I shall make fresh demands for London as to the cast. Unless you manage to get a very unlikely supply of talent for the New York production, it will be better for us all to cast the piece here strongly from the London point of view: that is, with some well known leading man ([Herbert] Waring, for instance) as Morell, Kate Phillips as Prossy (unless Mrs Bancroft [Marie Wilton] would like to try it), and a popular low comedian as Burgess. I saw [Albert] Gran this morning at the station, and was very favorably impressed by him; but he is too young, and not English enough, to play Morell here. The question of age is quite exceptionally important in this instance. You may, by sheer skill, succeed in making yourself appear a boy of eighteen in contrast to a man of your own real age; but beside a man of half your age made up for double that figure, the artificiality would be terrible. Gran has the pleasant frank style, and something of the physique for the part; and if he can hide his accent, his foreignness would not matter in New York, where the Church of England parson is an unknown quantity; so that I should not at all demur if you thought, after reckoning him up, that he would do Morell for you at the 5th Avenue [Theatre] as well as the best other man available; but for this country Morell must be ultra-home made.

If you find at rehearsal that any of the lines cannot be made to go, sack the whole company at once and get in others. I have tested every line of it in my readings of the play; and there is a way of making every bit of it worth doing. There are no points: the entire work is one sustained point from beginning to end.

In some respects I want my stage management and business stuck to with tolerable closeness. For instance, in the second act there are certain places where you must efface yourself whilst Burgess and Morell are spreading themselves. This is essential to the effect of your breaking in again. I have put you on a chair with your back to the audience during the first of these intervals; and I urge you not to alter this, as I have very slender faith in your powers of self suppression (I don’t question your goodwill) if the audience can see what in my present shattered condition you will perhaps excuse me for calling your mug. Later on, though you have hardly anything to say except the flash “That’s brave: that’s beautiful,” it is important that your face should be seen. The passage where you put your hand on your heart with a sympathetic sense of the stab Morell has suffered is cribbed from Wagner’s Parsifal.