Widowers' Houses & Selected Correspondence Relating to the Play. Bernard Shaw
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of the last two years or so about women.
HEALTH: Bad feverish cold caught on the evening of the 13th January, bad on 15th, 16th, and 17th on the mend. Lost my voice completely from lecturing on the 16th—could hardly speak for 3 days and had to lecture very carefully on the 23rd. A slight but nasty little cold on the 26th-28th March. Got a slight cold which took the form of a touch of neuralgia on the night of the 25th April, but it passed off in a day or two. However, on the 2nd May, in the following week, I got a sore heel, as if the tendon of Achilles were strained. I first felt it at tea on the 2nd, and was very lame next day. Began to feel the rancour produced by the hot weather on the 2nd July.
Slight looseness of the bowels on August 16th and for a few days after, due perhaps to eating a melon at Mrs Besant’s on the evening of the 15th. Violent cold in the head developed itself during the afternoon of the 19th August. By the 20th still pretty bad, but beginning to mend on the 21st, but as I had to speak in the open air in the evening I lost my voice. Slept soundly. 22nd still on the mend. Voice began to come back on the 24th. Had a slight attack of giddiness and nausea, which rather alarmed me, as there was an epidemic of scarlet fever at the time. 20th September. Catarrh from the wretched cold and fog on the 17th November lasted until the weather got better.
5/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 3rd September 1887
Barton. First night of Pleasure [by Paul Meritt and Augustus Harris] at [The Theatre Royal] Drury Lane. Tea with Archer.
Still at the Interest article. [Robert William] Lowe and his wife at Archer’s. Copy a little of the play [named the Rhinegold later Widowers’ Houses] I began in 1884 at Archer’s suggestion.
Dinner 1/2 PMG 1d Programme at Drury Lane 6d Lent [Henry Chance] Newton 1/-
6/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 1st October 1887
Soirée of the Photographic Society. 5 Pall Mall East. (Old Water Colours [Society]). 20. Private View. 12 to 17. Mrs Besant’s in the forenoon. No. Put off.
Called at E.[mery] Walker’s at Clifford’s Inn. Arranged that he should come on to the Photographic Society. Dined at the Palgrave. Went to Photographic Society. Was introduced to [Henry Trueman] Wood of the Society of Artists by [Thomas] Bolas and we all went to the Camera Club and had coffee and conversation. Got my hair shampooed in Great Russell St. and went to Archer’s. Found he had gone to Liverpool, but had a talk with Mrs Archer [née Frances Elizabeth Trickett] about his trying his luck with the drama [named the Rhinegold later Widowers’ Houses] in collaboration with me. Came home and read during evening.
Dinner 1/—
7/ Bernard Shaw’s diary entry for 4th October 1887
Fitzgerald Molloy’s in the evening.
[James Leigh] Joynes, back from Durham, was at the Wheatsheaf. Continued review of musical books. Went to the Stores and left the French edition of [Karl] Marx’s Capital to be bound. Went on to the City to buy a diary for next year, but they were not published yet. Bought [Benjamin] Franklin’s biography in shorthand at Pitman’s. Met W. [Walter H.] Coffin at Holborn Viaduct. Finished copying the play [the Rheingold later Widowers’ Houses] and left the MS. at Archer’s on my way to [Joseph Fitzgerald] Molloy’s. Archer was not at home. Robbie Carl was here when I went out, also Dot Wilkinson. Phene Spiers, Oscar Wilde, Capt. Sargent and others at Molloy’s. Fotune telling etc. Spiers walked part of the way home with me. Not in until past 1. Mathers was the name of the man who read my character from my hand at Molloy’s in the evening.
Dinner 1/2 Bus Bedford St. to St. Paul’s 1d Franklin’s Autobiography in shorthand 1/6 Train Farringdon Rd. to Portland Rd. 2d
8/ To a Scottish writer, theatre critic, playwright, Henrik Ibsen’s translator and early friend William Archer
4th October 1887
I have left the first two acts of the Rheingold at John St, in longhand. They are not supposed to be complete; but they present a series of consecutive dialogues in which your idea is prepared and developed. The central notion is quite perfect; but the hallucinations with which you surrounded it are absent: you will have to put them in yourself. The bathing place is impossible; and I dont see how the long lost old woman is to be introduced without destroying the realism and freshness of the play: she would simply turn the thing into a plot, and ruin it. I think the story would bear four acts; but I have no idea of how it is to proceed. The peculiarity so far is that there is only one female character; and her social isolation is essential to the situation. Will you proceed either to chuck in the remaining acts, or provide me with a skeleton for them? You will perceive that my genius has brought the romantic notion, which possessed you, into vivid contact with real life.
I should prefer the St James’s Theatre, with Mrs Kendal [Madge Kendal née Margaret Shafto Robertson] as Blanche, [John Hare] as Sartorius, [William] Mackintosh as Lickcheese, Arthur Cecil as Cokane, and [William Hunter] Kendal as Trench. Or Ellen Terry as Blanche, Wilson Barrett as Sartorius, George Barrett as Lickcheese, [Henry] Irving as Cokane, and [Edward W.] Gardiner as Trench. Harry Nicholls or Edward [O’Connor] Terry might understudy Cokane; and Alma Murray might in extremity be allowed to play Blanche. What is your opinion? I think, by the bye, that the title Rheingold ought to be saved for a romantic play. This is realism.
GBS
PS Never mind clerical errors: I have not read it over. And the details as to the hotel garden, the time &c, are all at sixes and sevens.
9/ Bernard Shaw’s diary
Preliminary Notes 1888
HEALTH
Slight cold (catarrh only) during the first week in January caused by the break up of the frost and the return of damp, warm weather. Moderate cold caught on the break up of the cold weather on the 21st April, hanging about me during the following week. Got completely wet in the rain on the 17th and again on the 22nd July. After the 22nd I got slight cold in the head and bellyache—a new affliction, or at least one which I had not had since my childhood. On the 26th this suddenly developed into one of my regular bad colds, the first I have had this year. I had attributed my immunity for so long to my having taken early in the year to the habit of wearing gloves for the first time in my life. On the 28th it was mending so fast as to be bearable and on the 29th, although the rate of mending, as usual, slackened disappointingly, it was nothing to complain of. But I lost my voice by talking all that day and could not speak above a whisper next day. The remains of it wore out slowly during the following week. On the evening of the 20th October I went to the opening of the Shaftesbury Theatre after calling for a moment on Mrs Archer and rallying her about the sore throat which prevented her from going and which I pretended not to believe in. At the end of the second act of the play I found that my own throat was sore, and I passed an uneasy, half-delirious sort of night. Next day I was out of sorts, and the affliction hovering about me a little until the 23rd, when I was practically well. Found my throat ticklish on the 3rd December and almost lost my voice after my lecture on the 4th. Still very bad on the 5th when I spoke at the Dialectical Society. The cold which caused this did not come to anything; but it hung about me for some time. On the night of the 20th December I got a very slight attack in my left lower jaw, and the 21st I was exceedingly depressed and out of sorts. The attack persisted through the night, though it was not severe enough to keep me quite awake; but towards morning I got fast asleep and when I woke, the gum had swelled and the ache was quite gone—I had also quite recovered my spirits. However, except for a day or two after my walk with [Sydney] Olivier on Christmas Eve, I remained in low health and spirits almost until the return of the sunlight in the spring of 1889, q.v.
10/ To an English actress Alma Murray, the wife of the poet Alfred William Forman
24th February 1888
Dear Mrs Forman
I shall blight the Bedford as gently as possible. Somehow, competent people never