Word: eliza
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...ancient myth Pygmalion breathes life into his statue Galatea through love. It was typical of Bernard Shaw, one of the last of the great 19th century rationalist optimists, that in his Pygmalion, Professor Henry Higgins teaches Eliza Doolittle into existence. Give Shaw an actress, a breed he regarded as intrinsically brainless, and the sage would begin playing post office, or frequently postcard. Absence definitely made Shaw's heart grow fonder, and for added emotional insurance the women were al ways married, as was he. The two most celebrated of these epistolary romances involved Mrs. Pat Campbell and Ellen Terry...
...letters show that Molly Bawn bewitched, bothered, and bewildered Shaw, but they do not wholly show why. He resisted her coquetry, but he could not resist her ignorance, the last temptation of the learned. His mind rushed in to fill that mental vacuum. That is why the Eliza Doolittles of this world are always snaring the Professor Higginses...