to say that my intention and desire in both instances
were to be faithful to the French original, and to have the
outcome a resultant moral--to the good. To put it mildly, I
do not seem to have created that impression exactly in the
minds of the public. From their verdict and yours I have
picked myself up, pulled myself together, and realized my
failure. I had thought I was taking a building from one
country and rebuilding it in another with the same stones,
but I discovered I had apparently pulled down one structure
and raised no other. Believe me, no one regretted this more
than I. But I think I have finally learned my lesson. I have
learned another thing that I can't do, and I have added it to
the list of things I sha'n't try to do. What I _am_ trying to
do is to reflect life of all kinds as I see it. To write,
first, plays that will interest and mean something; and,
after that, amuse. I would rather entertain everybody than
one body. And always and in any case with a result to the
good. I am trying especially to reflect our own life of the
present, and to get into the heart of the pictures made by
the past. To do this I do not consider any detail too small,
so long as it is not boring. Nor any method wrong which I
feel to be true. I am naturally not always believed in, and I
do not always make myself clear. Sometimes I think I am
misunderstood through laziness. To give one instance, of one
or the other: in a recent play of mine, 'The Climbers',
something which I meant to be psychologically true was taken
to be a theatrical trick. A man who was dishonest in
business, but who loved his wife with the really strong love
that such weak natures are capable of, is asked to look that
wife in the face and, before a group of angry friends and
relatives, confess the extent of his crime, his disgrace! I
felt, and I still feel, the man couldn't look into his wife's
eyes and say the whole ugly truth. And doubly he couldn't
with the to him cruel environment of the outraged circle
holding back the sympathy of his wife from him. He would feel
and cry out to her, 'Let me tell you alone, if I must tell
it, and _in the dark, in the dark_!' when he could not see
the heart-breaking shame grow upon her face, nor see his own
guilty face reflected in her eyes. The end of this sentence