1917
Leatherhead, Surrey,
England.
Dear Mr. Delightfulest-Manager-in-the-World,—
I am sending you this play printed instead of type-written because I think you will find it much easier to slip into your pocket and read, and also because I don’t know your address, and printed books have a way of finding people without being addressed which typescripts have not yet learnt. So instead of sending my play round, in what people tell me is the usual way, to lots and lots of managers in typescript and wasting ever so much valuable time while they don’t read it, I am sending it to you direct, and hope you will like it. When you read it you will find that there is still another reason why I am glad to see it in print.
First let me have just one word in your ear, please: don’t look to see how many pages long it is, and (reckoning “a page a minute”) say it is too short to fill an evening, for I ought to tell you it is a full-length play but the printer is war-economising and has printed it all on fewer pages than he would have done in the days of Paper, Peace and Plenty long ago.
While I was writing the leading part I pictured one of our finest actresses in it, and she has read it and says the play is “simply splendid”: if you want her to take the part I will tell you her name and address, but she is such an angel she will forgive you if some one you love better seems to you to be the heroine.
Yours sincerely,
Marie C. Stopes.