it was when i was a very young man indeed that i caught and succumbed to my first attack of shaw-fever. i do not remember how i caught it; something in the manchester air, no doubt, was responsible for my malady, for a handful of “intellectual” manchester people had most daringly produced a complete shaw play, and, though i had not witnessed the play, i had read it, and it was with delight that i saw the manchester guardian saying about you never can tell just the very things i had myself already thought. i found that in my suburban circle of friends i was regarded as harbouring “advanced” ideas. shaw, i was told, was “dangerous.” this bucked me up enormously, and i thereupon wrote a long essay on ibsen’s a doll’s house and, desiring further to astonish and bewilder my friends, got into communication with bernard shaw with a view to having the essay published in pamphlet form. when it was known in manchester suburbia that shaw had written to me, a boy still at school, my friends could not decide whether i was cleverer than they had hitherto supposed or mr bernard shaw more foolish than seemed possible.
i have never completely recovered from that first attack of shaw-fever; like ague, it sleeps in my bones and, from time to time, makes its presence known by little convulsions that are disturbing enough while they last, but which generally die pretty quickly.
it was in the middle of 1901 that i wrote to mr shaw about the particular brand of socialism from which at 12that time i was suffering. it must have been a very raw and crude brand, and my letter to bernard shaw must have amused him considerably. certainly his reply was most diverting. here it is:
“by all means give ‘every penny you can spare to those who are most in need of monetary help.’ if you will be kind enough to send it to the treasurer of the fabian society, 3 clement’s inn, london, w.c., you may depend upon its being wanted and well used. if you prefer relieving needy persons, i can give you the names and addresses of several fathers of families who can be depended on to absorb all your superfluous resources, however vast they may be. by making yourself poor for their sakes you will have the satisfaction of adding one more poor family to the existing mass of poverty and contributing your utmost to the ransom which perpetuates the existing social system. you will go through life consoled by an inexhaustible sense of moral superiority to bishops and other inconsistent christians. and you will never be at a loss for friends. where the carcass is there will the eagles be gathered.
“a world of beggars and almsgivers—beautiful christian ideal.
“you are not a prig—only a damned fool. a month’s experience will cure you.”
but though i think this letter amusing now, i am convinced i did not think so at the time i received it. i know not in what terms of pained surprise and hurt vanity i replied to it, but a few days later i received the following short note:—
“yes: you are an ass; and nothing will help you until you get over that.
“‘a has money, b is without. if a doesn’t share with 13b he is—well, i call him a thief.’ just what an ass would do. pray what do you call b if he accepts a’s bounty?
“i strongly recommend you to become a stockbroker. you believe that doing good means giving money; and you fancy yourself in the character of lord bountiful with a touch of st francis.
“yes, a hopeless ass. no matter; embrace your destiny and become a philanthropist. it is not a bad life for people who are built that way.”
that, i think, most effectively closed the correspondence, as, i have little doubt, it was intended to do.
during the next few months, having approached messrs greening & co., the publishers, i was commissioned by them to write a book on mr hall caine for their eminent writers of to-day series. the book being completed and published before the end of the year, i conceived the idea of writing another about mr bernard shaw, and communicated with the dramatist, informing him of my intention and asking him if he would provide me with biographical details. this he consented to do, and on 19th december 1901 wrote to me from piccard’s cottage, guildford, saying: “if you will let me know when you are coming to london, i will make an appointment with pleasure and give you what help i can.”
a few weeks later i went to guildford, but i went there with a guilty secret hidden in my breast. the secret was this. my publishers did not care about issuing a complete book devoted to bernard shaw and all his works. i gathered, much to my amazement, that they did not think him of sufficient importance. the astounding idea was then suggested that half my book should be concerned with bernard shaw and the other half with mr george moore. now, at the time of my visit to guildford, i had not imparted this information to mr shaw. i did not anticipate that he would like the suggestion and i thought 14it wiser to disclose it to him by word of mouth rather than by letter.
i came upon mr shaw taking photographs in the little front garden of piccard’s cottage. it was a winter’s day and an inch of snow lay upon the ground; yet he wore no overcoat. he insisted upon taking my photograph. he took me sitting. he took me standing. and when he had grown tired of playing with his new toy, he suggested that we should go into the house.
there a hideous surprise awaited me. lying upon the sofa of the study was an open copy of the current week’s candid friend, a most brilliant and most ruthless paper edited by mr frank harris.
“there is something there,” said shaw, nodding in the direction of the sofa, “that should interest you, i think.”
i sat down, took up the paper and looked at the open pages. to my horror i saw a most brutal, murderously clever full-page caricature of mr hall caine on one side, and on the other a long and most hostile review of my stupid little book on the famous novelist.... shaw, tall and erect, stood looking at me a little malignantly, and, on the instant, i was on my guard.
i read the review word by word and examined the caricature very closely. the article was amazingly good, but, as i read it, i did so wish it had been written about a book by somebody else. frank harris himself, i think, had written the article and frank richardson had drawn the caricature. i looked up at shaw and smiled.
“awfully good, don’t you think?” i said.
he nodded, and by his manner seemed to express approval of the way in which i had come through the ordeal. he showed me some photographs he had taken—not very good photographs. one, taken by his wife, i think, showed bernard shaw with his arm round a female scarecrow; leaning slightly forward, he was leering at it with narrowed eyes.
15during lunch shaw devoured a large number of vegetarian dishes and drank water, whilst mrs shaw and i ate meat and drank wine. it was, i think, the mellowing influence of a basin of raisins that loosed his tongue and set him talking without cessation. he spoke of karl marx and granville barker, of mrs annie besant and janet achurch, of mr sidney webb and the fabian society, of morocco and ancoats, of shorthand and wagner, of the manchester guardian and h. g. wells ... in a word, of shakespeare and the musical glasses.
i rather gathered that he had “got over” karl marx years ago, and i inferred that he considered the work of this writer indispensable for young cubs to sharpen their teeth upon, but that he was by no means the last word in socialism. i think he thought that bernard shaw was the last word. for granville barker he had even then a great regard, and, speaking of him, he offered me some cider, a bottle of which barker had drunk some days previously; as he offered the cider he said that barker had “ridden over”—whence, i know not—on his bicycle and that the cider had made him half tipsy.... the thought of mrs annie besant appeared to afford him vast amusement, but he spoke in terms of high regard of janet achurch.
“but she uses her voice wrongly. it is quite the finest voice on the stage and, perhaps because she knows it is so fine, she is always trying experiments with it. for a shakespeare passage, for example, she will plan out what i may call a scheme of sound; sound that will rise and fall with the passion and decline of the words, that will intensify and grow dim as the mood waxes and wanes. but the scheme, the design—for it is a kind of design—is nearly always too elaborate, too involved. it is full of detail, and the detail is apt to become more prominent than the general outline. she will start off most magnificently, lose herself a little, recover herself, lose herself 16again, and then abruptly strike a woefully wrong note. perhaps her ear is wrong; perhaps excitement betrays her. but, with all her faults—and even her faults are more interesting than other people’s excellencies—she remains a superb actress.”
of mr sidney webb i remember nothing that he said, nor have any of the loving words he spoke of the fabian society remained in my memory. he spoke of it a great deal, both at lunch and during our subsequent walk, but somehow or other the fabian society has always seemed to me a bloodless and dull sort of institution, and while he talked about it my thoughts wandered, and i mused rather sadly over the psychology of this man whose moral earnestness was so much greater than my own.
but i pricked up my ears when the word “morocco” fell from his lips, though in the event he said very little about it. i found he had no great belief in the value of travel as a means of education, an expander of the mind. he himself had never travelled; places and countries so precisely fulfilled all your expectations that, really, what was the use of going to see them? facts, people and ideas: nothing else aroused his curiosity.
of shorthand he said ... well, you don’t particularly want to know what he said of shorthand, do you? and in the perfect wagnerite he has said all that it is necessary for him to say about wagner. last of all comes h. g. wells.
now, i have not the remotest idea what shaw thinks of wells in these days, yet i would give a good deal to know. but sixteen years ago the older man had for the younger an almost reverential admiration. at the time of my visit to shaw one of wells’ books was appearing serially in, i think, the fortnightly review. wells was busy looking into the future, and the future that he saw seemed, in some respects, so disagreeable yet so likely that shaw was dismayed at the prospect. 17“a great man, wells,” said shaw; “do you know anything about him?”
i told him the little i knew and, as we had finished lunch, i asked mrs shaw’s permission to light a cigarette.
almost immediately after, we started on our walk.
never shall i forget that terrible walk. i believed then, as i believe now, that shaw was deliberately pitting his powers of endurance against my own—the powers of endurance of a middle-aged vegetarian against those of a young meat-eater. he walked with a long, easy stride, swinging his arms, breathing deeply through his wide nostrils. his pace, which never for a moment did he attempt to accommodate to mine, was at least five miles an hour. he forgot, or he did not choose to remember, that i had that morning travelled by the slow midnight train from manchester, that i had crossed london, that i had reached guildford by a weary sunday train from waterloo, and that i had just eaten an enormous lunch. i panted and struggled half a pace behind him. i became stupendously hot. i made unexpected and unathletic sounds, like a man who is being smothered. blissfully unconscious of all this was shaw.... i wonder?... no; blissfully conscious of all this was shaw.
he talked steadily the whole time, but i was suffering from an inhibition of all my mental faculties. yet, at the back of my mind, i kept saying to myself: “you know, you have not yet told him that he is to share your book with george moore.” and each time i told myself that, i shuddered somewhat.
it was not until we had neared mr g. f. watts’ house that shaw moderated his pace a little.
“that,” said he, in a curiously low voice—the kind of voice one uses in churches—“that is where g. f. watts lives.”
and he pointed to some high chimneys that overtopped 18a belt of trees, and stopped and gazed. but i was in no mood of reverence and, though i have frequently struggled to induce a feeling of rapture when gazing upon the large canvases of watts, i have never been able to do so. so i pulled out my handkerchief and wiped my perspiring forehead.
“hot?” asked shaw grimly.
“of course i’m hot. aren’t you?”
“warm. just nicely warm.”
presently we came to a tall tower of terra-cotta bricks which, shaw told me, had been erected by the villagers under the direction and at the instigation of watts himself. we stopped in front of this and, as it was one of the “sights” of the district, i felt that i was expected to say something wise or, at all events, something complimentary about it. i could say neither.
“which do people imagine it to be—useful or ornamental?” i asked.
“i wonder,” said he.
“for it is neither,” i ventured.
but his thoughts were otherwhere, for he began a long, technical exposition on the art of making bricks and tiles. his talk became art-and-crafty. i was carried back to my childhood days, my kindergarten days. i heard the name of william morris and i sighed most profoundly.
shaw won that walk by a neck. having reached piccard’s cottage, he put me in a kind of conservatory, gave me a blanket and a deck chair and told me to go to sleep. but already i was asleep....
when i awoke it was quite dark, and, feeling rather miserable, i groped my way back to the house. there i found mr and mrs shaw in the study, she frowning at her desk, he standing on the hearthrug and looking at her most quizzically.
“well, how much is it?” she asked. “four times into two hundred. the cheque must go by to-night’s 19post. i’ve done the sum three times, and on each occasion i’ve got a different answer.”
“is it two hundred pence or two hundred pounds?”
“don’t be absurd, george. even you know that you can’t get a furnished house like this for two hundred pence a year.”
“four times into two hundred—let me see—fifty. yes, fifty. you can safely write down fifty pounds.”
that little incident safely over, we turned to tea.
i induced shaw to talk about his own work, and i quickly discovered that, unlike most authors, he had no feeling of bitterness that he had had to spend years in hard work before he won public recognition.
“a writer of originality must expect to have to wait. if a writer is acclaimed immediately—i mean a writer on social and artistic subjects—he may be pretty sure that he is saying things that have been said before. he may be saying them better than anybody else; nevertheless, they are the same things. my own success has been gained, and is very largely maintained, by the force of my personality and by the tradition about myself that has gradually grown up in the mind of the public. for example, if i were to write an article and give it to you to copy out and offer to editors in your own name, you being the professional author, i doubt very much if a single editor would look at it twice. a good deal, you see, is in a name.”
it was when mrs shaw, having sipped her tea, had left the room, that i broached the subject of my book.
“publishers are curious people,” i remarked meditatively.
he sat silent.
“my own publishers in particular. they are now fighting shy of a book solely about you.”
i paused and glanced at him. but he was gazing at me with eyes of a mild malice and he was very silent.
20“yes,” i continued. “to put it bluntly, they think that a book solely about you would not be a success. so that they propose the first half of the book should be concerned with you and the second half with george moore.”
“and the title?” he asked gently.
“why? what do you mean?”
“well, don’t you think the two mad irishmen would go rather well?”
i floundered. if he was going to be witty or sarcastic, or anything horrid of that kind, i should be nowhere at all. to cover my confusion—and, as it chanced, to make that confusion worse—i began to talk very rapidly.
“i know their suggestion is awfully stupid, but then publishers do make stupid suggestions. that, i suppose, is why they are so successful. of course, george moore and yourself——”
“oh, george has worked awfully hard,” said shaw reasonably. “i don’t suppose there is a more conscientious artist living. he has dug out of himself everything there was to be got. no one could have tried more. as a worker, george is magnificent. but, really, when you suggest a book——”
“no! no! i don’t suggest it for one moment,” i interrupted.
“then what are we discussing?”
“well, in the first instance, my publishers suggested——”
“ha! ‘in the first instance!’ no; it really cannot be done. if you wish to write the book nobody, of course, can stop you, but if you do you must not expect me to countenance it. i shall wash my hands of the whole business.”
and, in spite of some further conversation, that remained his unshakable attitude.
an hour later he walked with me down to the station, 21i resolving all the way that i would persuade my publisher to accept two books. shaw droned on about sidney webb and the fabian society.... so many people have talked to me of sidney webb. i wonder why. i have heard sidney webb speak; he knows all about figures and dates and money and wages, and so on.... but of human nature he knows nothing; he knows less than a child, for a child has at least intuition. figures don’t go very far, do they? of course, by manipulation, you can make them go all the way....
but, as i was saying, shaw talked about fabianism and webbism all the way to the station.
he was good enough to wait till the train started, and the last i saw of him as i leant through the window was a long, lean figure standing under a lamp. the figure wore no overcoat, but i noticed, even when a hundred yards separated us, a pair of thick, home-knitted woollen gloves....
. . . . . . . .
p.s.—the book was never written, for my publishers could not be persuaded to take g.b.s. at his own or my estimate.
mr george moore, on being approached, wrote me from dublin, saying, inconsequently enough, that he had never asked anybody to write about him nor had he ever asked anybody to refrain from doing so. on the whole, he thought it better that if a (myself) wished to write about b (mr george moore), it would be an excellent arrangement, provided that:
(1) a was an intimate friend of b’s, or
(2) a was a complete stranger to b.
i was left, most courteously, to infer that i (a), being a complete stranger, had better remain so.
i did.
i have done.
