At this time Mr. Shaw and I frequently corresponded.  It began by my writing to ask him, as musical critic of the Saturday Review, to tell me frankly what he thought of the chances of a composer-singer friend of mine.  He answered “characteristically,” and we developed a perfect fury for writing to each other!  Sometimes the letters were on business, sometimes they were not, but always his were entertaining, and mine were, I suppose, “good copy,” as he drew the character of Lady Cecily Waynflete in “Brassbound” entirely from my letters.  He never met me until after the play was written.  In 1902 he sent me this ultimatum: 

“April 3, 1902.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw’s compliments to Miss Ellen Terry.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw has been approached by Mrs. Langtry with a view to the immediate and splendid production of ‘Captain Brassbound’s Conversion.’

“Mr. Bernard Shaw, with the last flash of a trampled-out love, has repulsed Mrs. Langtry with a petulance bordering on brutality.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw has been actuated in this ungentlemanly and unbusinesslike course by an angry desire to seize Miss Ellen Terry by the hair and make her play Lady Cicely.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw would be glad to know whether Miss Ellen Terry wishes to play Martha at the Lyceum instead.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw will go to the length of keeping a minor part open for Sir Henry Irving when ‘Faust’ fails, if Miss Ellen Terry desires it.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw lives in daily fear of Mrs. Langtry’s recovering sufficiently from her natural resentment of his ill manners to reopen the subject.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw begs Miss Ellen Terry to answer this letter.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw is looking for a new cottage or house in the country, and wants advice on the subject.

“Mr. Bernard Shaw craves for the sight of Miss Ellen Terry’s once familiar handwriting.”

The first time he came to my house I was not present, but a young American lady who had long adored him from the other side of the Atlantic took my place as hostess (I was at the theater as usual); and I took great pains to have everything looking nice!  I spent a long time putting out my best blue china, and ordered a splendid dinner, quite forgetting the honored guest generally dined off a Plasmon biscuit and a bean!

Mr. Shaw read “Arms and the Man” to my young American friend (Miss Satty Fairchild) without even going into the dining-room where the blue china was spread out to delight his eye.  My daughter Edy was present at the reading, and appeared so much absorbed in some embroidery, and paid the reader so few compliments about his play, that he expressed the opinion that she behaved as if she had been married to him for twenty years!

The first time I ever saw Mr. Shaw in the flesh—­I hope he will pardon me such an anti-vegetarian expression—­was when he took his call after the first production of “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion” by the Stage Society.  He was quite unlike what I had imagined from his letters.