Mrs Patrick Campbell - 14275

Distinguished British stage actress, with an acid wit; born Beatrice Rose Stella Tanner Mrs Campbell shot to fame in 1893, playing the challenging title role in Arthur Wing Pinero's The Second Mrs Tanqueray, about a neurotic woman with a scandalous past. She was, however, most famous for her long platonic relationship with George Bernard Shaw – their letters were turned into a successful play, Dear Liar, by Jerome Kilty. Campbell was the inspiration for Shaw's most famous creation, Eliza Dolittle in his most famous play, Pygmalion, and was the first to play her in 1914, despite the fact that at 49 she was clearly too old for the part. The poet W.B.Yeats was also besotted by the actress. When the actress died in poverty in 1940 after emigrating to the south of France, it was Shaw who paid for her funeral (and rejected all attempts by her family to repay him.) This is a very fine vintage sepia postcard, nicely signed and inscribed ("With kind feelings, dear Phyllis Broughton, Beatrice Stella Campbell") in black ink. In very good condition. (The card, addressed by a secretary, has been sent though the post and the frank is dated 1903, when she would have been 38 years old)