CHAPTER XVI
Bernard Shaw looks down upon contemporary life from many windows. The world is caught in the dragnet of his infinite variety: few escape. To each man, Shaw comes in a different capacity. The world at large knows little, astoundingly little, of Shaw the man. That is why, after detailing the various features of his literary and public career, I have put last the study of his personality. From the preceding chapters the reader may have constructed a more or less imaginary portrait. In this chapter is portrayed Shaw, if not as in himself he really is, certainly as one who knows him really sees him.
It may not be devoid of interest to think of Shaw at several stages of his career. During the epidemic of 1881, he caught small-pox which, as he expressed it, “left him unmarked, but an anti-vaccinationist for ever.” The next few years Shaw passed “in desperate want and despair,” as an acquaintance has expressed it. While this statement is somewhat exaggerated, certainly the clothes he wore at this period gave it colour: tawny trousers, extraordinarily, unbelievably baggy; a long, soi-disant black cut-away coat, and a tall silk hat, which had been battered down so often that it had a thousand creases in it from top to crown. “My clothes turned green,” Shaw has confessed, “and I trimmed my cuffs to the quick with a scissors, and wore my tall hat with the back part in front, so that the brim should not bend double when I took it off to an acquaintance.”
Despite the loyal protest of the Secretary of the Fabian Society, who once wrote me vehemently asserting that Shaw always wore perfectly normal and conventional clothes, it must be admitted that Shaw has been associated throughout his life with queer sartorial tastes. The notorious velvet jacket which he wore during the days of his activity as a critic of the drama, furnished the casus belli in Shaw's war with the theatre managers. Shaw refused point-blank to obey the iron-clad regulation that occupants of stalls must wear evening clothes. The irrepressible conflict was precipitated one night, according to a story which Shaw vehemently denies, when Shaw was stopped at the door of the theatre by an attendant.
“What do you object to?” asked Shaw; “the velvet jacket?”
The attendant nodded assent.
“Very well,” exclaimed Shaw, no whit abashed, “I will remove it.” And the next instant he was striding up the aisle in his shirt sleeves.
“Here, that won't do!” shouted the attendant in great alarm, hurrying after Shaw and stopping him with great difficulty.
“Won't do?” cried Shaw, with fine assumption of indignation. “Do you think I am going to take off any more?”
And with that he promptly redonned his velvet jacket and turning on his heel, left the house. Shaw finally won the battle and enjoyed his triumph in face of the objection of managers and the indignation of the fashionable and wealthy theatre-goers.
Shaw's snuff-coloured suit and flannel shirt made him a marked figure in London during the 'nineties. He wore it so long that it finally came to look, as one of his acquaintances said, as if it were made of brown wrapping paper. So much a part of his individuality had it become that, when he finally discarded it, some friends of Shaw's, seeing it depending from a nail, exclaimed—so well had it retained its shape—“Good heavens! he's done it at last!”
Of peculiar, almost unique, interest is the record of Shaw's physical proportions and qualities, taken in the Anthropometric Laboratory arranged by Francis Galton, F.R.S., at the International Health Exhibition on August 16th, 1884. This was just twenty days before Shaw joined the Fabian Society. According to this chart, numbered 3,655, Shaw's anthropometric properties were as follows:
Colour of eyes, blue-grey.
Eyesight.
Greatest distance in inches of reading “Diamond” type—Right eye, 23; left eye, 27.
Colour sense (goodness of)—Good.
Judgment of Eye.
Error per cent. in dividing a line of 15 inches—in three parts, 1-1/2; in two parts, 1/2.
Error in degrees of estimating squareness—1/4.
Hearing.
Keenness can hardly be tested here owing to the noises and echoes.
Highest audible note—Between 30,000 and 40,000 vibrations per second.
Breathing Power.
Greatest expiration in cubic inches—298.
Strength.
Of squeeze in lbs. of—right hand, 83; left hand, 80.
Of pull in lbs.—57.
Span of Arms.
From finger tips of opposite hands—5 feet 11.7 inches.
Height.
Sitting, measured from seat of chair—3 feet 1.8 inches.
Standing in shoes 6 feet 0.8 inch
Less height of heel 0.7 inch
————
Height without shoes 6 feet 0.1 inch.
Weight.
In ordinary indoor clothing in lbs.—142.
The social, physical, mental and moral measurements of the man, at different periods of his life, have been taken by a thousand hands. Not the least interesting of these is the record of a chirological expert in the Palmist and Chirological Review, July, 1895.[245] Shaw is inclined to believe in palmistry to the extent of regarding the hand to be as good an index of character as the face. He once laughingly remarked to me that the following chirological study possessed a curious interest, because it was such a remarkable mélange of acute character-analysis and hopeless, utter nonsense.
Omitting technical details—the specific indicia of specific traits—the hands of Shaw yielded the following “results.” The author, dramatist, musician and critic is betrayed by the long conical hands—the smallness of which for so tall a man indicates that the subject will be given to jumping to conclusions on insufficient grounds in matters of opinion. The subject is very unconventional and independent, especially in thought, and adaptable to people and circumstances. His will is very strong, and he is obstinate in opinion, very argumentative, dogmatic, and unconvincible. He is not only fond of books and reading, but also has a great love of rule and power over others. His temperament is a curious compound of caution and liberality, very dependent upon moods for their expression. The dramatic power he possesses is that of the dramatist, not of the actor; he is gifted with great power in carrying out ideas and turning circumstances to his advantage, due in no small measure to his remarkable power of words, whether for speaking or writing. While not entirely tactful, he is constantly scheming and planning; but he is usually more successful in handling plots than persons. Great energy, both physical and mental, and cultivated self-control are distinguishing marks of the man; to these traits are superadded much aggressiveness and high moral courage. He is endowed with a great sense of fun, remarkable wit, immense wealth of imagination and extreme eccentricity of ideas. The subject makes his own career in the world, and tries to carry out to some extent his eccentric ideas; but as a rule, his actions are directed by his accurate knowledge of the world. In many respects, the subject is very genuine and sincere; but along with this goes an incurable tendency to pose for effect. His fame will steadily grow with the years; and it is predicted that he will accomplish fine artistic work, if he will leave the practical side of things to others, and stick to art as he should. He can make or mar his own career as he chooses; he possesses the power to turn circumstances to his own advantage. In a large sense, he is the master of his fate.
Did the analysis stop here, Mr. Shaw might almost be justified in believing it impossible to derive such accurate information solely from a superficial knowledge of his public career. Unfortunately, the palmist indulged in certain other characterizations which are doubtless included in Mr. Shaw's category of “utter nonsense.” According to the palmist, Mr. Shaw has a very good opinion of himself, due to vanity, not to self-confidence, in which he is conspicuously lacking. He is very susceptible to criticism, but harsh in his criticism of others; very apprehensive of consequences, changeable and uncertain in his moods. Quiet in temper, he is, nevertheless, very revengeful and vindictive, imbued not only with a great power of hatred, but also with utter mercilessness in carrying it out. His temperament is very hard, and, in a refined manner, cruel. He has an extreme disregard for truth, all notions and opinions being coloured by fancy until facts are completely lost sight of, thus showing the subject to be utterly wanting in practical common sense in his opinions and ideas. He is neither passionate nor benevolent; but he has a laudable tendency to idealize his friends. It is a very unlucky temperament in affairs of the heart; his nature has little if any faculty for attachment. He imagines himself in love, and the more obstacles and impossibilities in the way of his suit, the more he will delight in it; he imagines the object of his attachment perfect, and will endeavour, contrary to all rules and observances, to live in his castles in the air, and when they dissolve he will throw it all away, perfectly heedless of consequences to himself or others, and start on a new ambition, or an entirely different line. “That this has already happened once in his life,” adds the chirologist, “is shown by the bar line, now fading, from the upper Mars across to Head and Heart.” Il ne manquait que ça!
Let us now skip another eleven, or rather twelve, years, and take a look at Bernard Shaw as he is to-day. Many people seem to regard Shaw as too funny to be true—as fanciful as Pierrot, as imaginary as Harlequin, as remote as the Man in the Moon. In reality, he is the most unmistakable sort of person. The nervous, almost boyish swing of his gait, the length and lankiness of his figure, the scraggly reddish-brown beard, heavily tinged, or rather edged, with grey, the high and noble brow, the quizzical geniality of his expression, the sensitive mouth and the challenging directness of his grey-blue eyes—all proclaim the original of a Coburn print, or a Max Beerbohm cartoon. The balance between conventionality and bizarrerie, between the serious thinker and the sardonic wit, is symbolized in eyebrows and moustaches, one of each cocking humorously upward, the other gravely preserving the level of dignity. This gives him, when he is in a gay mood, the air of a genial Celtic Mephistopheles; and even when his face is in repose this hirsute peculiarity imparts a sort of quaint diablerie to his expression. The delicate texture and excessive pallor of his skin gives the note of distinction to his face; and his eyes, whether turned full upon you with level gaze or dancing with the light of irrepressible humour, are his most distinctive feature. The frame for an artist's sketch of his profile would be a vertically elongated rectangle—a curious cephalic conformation ready made to the hand of the cartoonist.
Mr. Gilbert Chesterton's description, in his book, The Ball and the Cross, of the sane professor of psychology whose ideas are wilder than those of the lunatics under his charge, gives a rather startling picture in semi-caricature—with slight variations—of the man Shaw: “The advancing figure walked with a stoop, and yet, somehow, flung his forked and narrow beard forward. That carefully cut and pointed yellow beard was, indeed, the most emphatic thing about him. When he clasped his hands behind him, under the tails of his coat, he would wag his beard at a man like a big forefinger. It performed almost all the gestures; it was more important than the glittering eye-glasses through which he looked, or the beautiful, bleating voice in which he spoke. His face and neck were of a lusty red, but lean and stringy; he always wore his expensive gold-rim eye-glasses slightly askew upon his aquiline nose, and he always showed two gleaming foreteeth under his moustache, in a smile so perpetual as to earn the reputation of a sneer.”
G. B. S. (A Cartoon).
Reproduced from Three Living Lions.
Joseph Simpson.
Courtesy of the Artist.
The extravagant braggart and arrant poseur of the Shavian myth vanishes in the presence of the real Shaw. His playful pretence of vanity is a source of great amusement to himself and his friends. Socially, it is an admirable resource in the art of entertainment. “I have never pretended that G. B. S. was real,” said Shaw the other day: “I have over and over again taken him to pieces before the audience to show the trick of him. And even those who, in spite of that, cannot escape from the illusion, regard G. B. S. as a freak. The whole point of the creature is that he is unique, fantastic, unrepresentative, inimitable, impossible, undesirable on any large scale, utterly unlike anybody that ever existed before, hopelessly unnatural, and void of real passion. Clearly such a monster could do no harm, even were his example evil (which it never is).” “The G. B. S. you know,” he laughingly remarked to me one day, with a rapid shrug of the shoulders and a deprecatory wave of the hand, “is merely a family joke with a select circle. G. B. S. sometimes gets on my nerves; but he is a great source of amusement to a small but highly enlightened audience. Of course, there are lots of people in the world who regard me as a huge joke; and perhaps I am as much responsible for the G. B. S. legend as anybody else. But the vast majority of my readers,” he added, “are serious persons who regard me as a serious person who has something serious to impart.”
As an instance of the multiplicity of diverse impressions which Bernard Shaw succeeds in evoking, consider his letter to P. F. Collier and Son. Unknown to Shaw, his story, Aërial Football, was published during a period within which the best story submitted was to receive a prize of one thousand dollars. Shaw's letter in “acknowledgment” of Collier's cheque evoked a thousand different expressions of opinion—ranging between the opinion at one end of the scale that Shaw, as a great man of letters, was entirely justified in his indignant protest at being placed involuntarily in the position of competing for a money prize in a fiction contest, and the opinion at the other end of the scale that Shaw was playing a spectacular and sensational prank, and indulging in a rather expensive form of advertisement. Shaw's letter speaks for itself:
“Sir,—What do you mean by this unspeakable outrage? You send me a cheque for a thousand dollars, and inform me that it is a bonus offered by Messrs. P. F. Collier and Son for the best story received during the quarter in which my contribution appeared. May I ask what Messrs. P. F. Collier and Son expected my story to be?
“If it were not the best they could get for the price they were prepared to pay, they had no right to insert it at all. If it was the best, what right have they to stamp their own contributors publicly as inferior when they have taken steps to secure the result beforehand by paying a special price to a special writer?
“And what right have they to assume that I want to be paid twice over for my work, or that I am in the habit of accepting bonuses and competing for prizes?
“Waiving all these questions for a moment, I have another one to put to you. How do Messrs. P. F. Collier and Son know that my story was the best they received during the quarter? Are they posterity? Are they the verdict of history? Have they even the very doubtful qualification of being professional critics?
“I had better break this letter off lest I should be betrayed into expressing myself as strongly as I feel. I return the cheque. If you should see fit to use it for the purpose of erecting a tombstone to Messrs. P. F. Collier and Son, I shall be happy to contribute the epitaph, in which I shall do my best to do justice to their monstrous presumption.
“G. Bernard Shaw.”
In quite good humour the editor of Collier's Weekly assured Mr. Shaw that the award was a mistake. The “responsible” readers were out of town, and the sporting editor, who was a devotee of football, a vegetarian, a Socialist, a misanthrope, a misogynist—in short, a true disciple of G. B. S.—made the award. Of course, on receipt of Mr. Shaw's letter the sporting editor was summarily discharged!
A Bust of Shaw. By Auguste Rodin.
From the bronze original owned by Bernard Shaw.
A marble replica is in the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, Dublin.
Alvin Langdon Coburn.
Courtesy of the Sculptor.
The fantastic phenomenon “G. B. S.,” accredited by popular superstition, after a long campaign on Shaw's part in the interest of creating and fostering the legend, is a phenomenon that obviously never could, never did, nor ever will, exist under the heavens. Indeed, it is one of Mr. Shaw's foibles to insist that he is short of many accomplishments which are fairly common, and in some ways an obviously ignorant, stupid and unready man. Certainly it is not a little strange that with all his remarkable knowledge of modern art, music, literature, economics and politics, he speaks no language but his own, and reads no foreign language, save French, with ease. I remember hearing someone ask Rodin whether Shaw really spoke French. “Ah! no!” replied Rodin, with his genial smile and a faint twinkle of the eyes; “Monsieur Shaw does not speak French. But somehow or other, by the very violence of his manner and gesticulation, he succeeds in imposing his meaning upon you!” Shaw is fond of relating the incident which laid the foundation for his reputation as an Italian scholar. “Once I was in Milan with a party of English folk. We were dining at the railway restaurant, and our waiter spoke no language other than his own. When the moment came to pay and rush for the train, we were unable to make him understand that we wanted not one bill, but twenty-four separate ones. My friends insisted that I must know Italian, so to act as interpreter, I racked my memory for chips from the language of Dante, but in vain. All of a sudden, a line from The Huguenots flashed to my brain: 'Ognuno per se: per tutti il ciel' ('Every man for himself: and heaven for all.') I declaimed it with triumphant success. The army of waiters was doubled up with laughter, and my fame as an Italian scholar has been on the increase ever since.”
As a rule, foreign critics rate Shaw higher as a thinker and philosopher than as wit and dramatist. The painters and sculptors likewise represent him as a personality of tremendous intellectual force. The bust by Rodin—intermediate as a work of art between his busts of Puvis de Chavannes and J. P. Laurens in the Musée de Luxembourg—reveals the thoughtful student, of philosophic insight and tremendous cerebration. Rodin, who finds Shaw “charming,” recently said to Mrs. John van Vorst: “He is perhaps a 'fraud,' as you Americans put it. But the first victim of Bernard Shaw's charlatanism is Bernard Shaw himself. Susceptible to impressions as are all artists, and a philosopher at the same time, he cannot do otherwise than deceive himself. The cold reason which he could, were it unhampered, apply to the problems of this life, is modified, reduced to vapour, by his delicate temperamental sensitiveness and by his keen Irish sense of humour. It is, in fact, to his Irish blood that Bernard Shaw, as we know him, is due. With the cold Anglo-Saxon current only in his veins, he would have proved the 'bore' par excellence who tries to divert us while reforming society, to win our applause by mere idol-breaking.”[246] Also, in the Hon. Neville S. Lytton's portrait of Shaw, after the Innocent X. of Velásquez, there is portrayed the modern pope of wit and wisdom.[247] And the redoubtable logician, the philosophic satirist, is admirably bodied forth in that remarkable photograph of Shaw—the masterpiece in portraiture of Alvin Langdon Coburn.[248]
The real Bernard Shaw is one of the most genial and delightfully entertaining of men. In his London quarters, at Adelphi Terrace, or in the quiet retreat of Ayot St. Lawrence, in Hertfordshire, he is easy, hospitable and unaffectedly natural.[249] In his manner, the combination of light spontaneity with a sort of effusive shyness is peculiarly engaging. There is something strikingly transitory about his presence: one always feels that he has just managed to catch Shaw “on the fly.” While he not infrequently plays up to his reputation for gay self-puffery, in such innocent diversions, for example, as ecstatically admiring the Rodin bust or rhapsodizing over Coburn's prints of him, it is always quite obviously with the humorous consciousness that his listener is sharing in the imposture. The genius of proverbial classification writes like an angel and talks like Poor Poll; Shaw possesses the unique distinction of talking, whether in his own home or upon the public platform, as trenchantly and as brilliantly as he writes. Unlike many celebrated raconteurs, whose ability consists almost solely in pouring forth a flood of polished anecdote and personal reminiscence, Shaw talks with apparent ease and equal wit upon any and every subject that comes to hand, from Richard Wagner to Anthony Comstock, from spiritualism to bicycling, from German philosophy to women's clothes. One is amused to discover that his extreme acuteness in analyzing subjects upon which he is an authority is equalled only by his marvellous glibness in talking of things of which he can really know little or nothing. Far from taking his cue from Coleridge or Wilde and monopolizing the conversation for hours at a time, he makes an attentive and appreciative listener, instantaneously responsive to clever characterization or thoughtful analysis. A great tease and joker, he is perpetually telling upon his friends devastatingly comic stories which they vehemently deny in toto. When he is not poking fun at your views or drawing your fire by carefully directed sarcasm, he is entertaining you with some humorous episode in his own life—a tilt with Anatole France, perhaps, a bit of repartee with which he turned the tables on Gilbert Chesterton, or an illiterate person's joke on Shaw which for the time being completely floored him.
I remember hearing him say that Anatole France and he, among others, were once dining together in Paris, and with great brilliance France spoke uninterruptedly for a long time about the strange type of men called geniuses. At the conclusion, Shaw said: “Yes, I know all about them, for I myself am a genius.” France, who knew virtually nothing of Shaw, was taken aback for only a moment. “Mais oui, monsieur,” he replied, “et une courtisane se nomme une marchande de plaisir!”
Simplicity and unostentation are the keynotes of Shaw's home life. The ornate, the gaudy, the useless are banished from his scheme of things. In his wife, a gracious person of great sweetness, he has both a charming companion and an enthusiastic supporter in all his multifarious activities. Mr. Shaw's retirement from the journalistic lists was signalized by his marriage to Miss Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, who nursed him back to health and strength—and matrimony—after a serious accident. “I was very ill when I was married,” Mr. Shaw once wrote, “altogether a wreck on crutches and in an old jacket which the crutches had worn to rags. I had asked my friends, Mr. Graham Wallas, of the London School Board, and Mr. Henry Salt, the biographer of Shelley and De Quincey, to act as witnesses, and, of course, in honour of the occasion they were dressed in their best clothes. The registrar never imagined I could possibly be the bridegroom; he took me for the inevitable beggar who completes all wedding processions. Wallas, who is considerably over six feet high, seemed to him to be the hero of the occasion, and he was proceeding to marry him calmly to my betrothed, when Wallas, thinking the formula rather strong for a mere witness, hesitated at the last moment and left the prize to me.”
Shaw is the quintessence of vital energy. He rushes hither and thither, from one task to another, with a feverish, almost frenzied activity. “Bernard Shaw reminds me of a locomotive of the most modern type,” said one of his intimate friends, “perfectly adjusted and running with lightning speed—an engine of tremendous power and efficiency.” One is liable to receive a first impression that Shaw is a delicate and anæmic sort of person—an impression fostered by the mackintosh and gloves he habitually wears and the umbrella he is fond of carrying. Once you have seen the man in action, and realized his abundant vitality and apparently inexhaustible store of nervous energy, you are not surprised to note, in Coburn's nude portrait of Shaw, in the casually affected pose of Rodin's Le Penseur, very massive shoulders and strong muscular development in arms and back. “Mr. Bernard Shaw is New York incarnate,” once wrote Miss Florence Farr. “Both of them are feverish devotees at the altar of work. Empty Mr. Shaw and New York of work and hurry, the man has a headache and closes his eyes in pain; he feels no reason for existence; and the city is a desolation. To Mr. Shaw, as to New York,” she pointedly added: “'doing nothing' is hell and damnation.”[250]
As a conversationist, Mr. Shaw is the most witty and delightful person imaginable. “Shaw is just a great big boy,” one of his intimate friends said to me, “who enjoys life and the world and himself to the fullest extent.” His enjoyment of his own anecdotes, witticisms, and strokes of repartee is irresistibly contagious; you howl with merriment, even when the joke is on you—and untrue to boot, as it often is. Brevity is the soul of his wit; and yet his stories pour forth in a perfect flood, and the coming of the “point” is duly heralded. The bubbling, chuckling note in his voice, the hands rubbed together with lightning-like rapidity, his body convulsively rocking back and forth in his chair—then the “point” with a rush, followed by his mirthfully expressive: “Well, you know——!”; he fairly doubles up, his head is thrown back, his body shakes from head to foot, and his eyes dance and glitter like the sea when struck full by the rays of the sun. His habit is to turn his light batteries of genial sarcasm, satire and irony upon those things which he perceives to be the especial objects of your respect, admiration, or veneration; he invariably depreciates and even ridicules those works of his own which you express an especial liking for. In private conversation, as well as on the platform, he is frequently engaged in drawing your fire and “putting you to your trumps”; and he once laughingly remarked to me that nothing delighted him more than to create around him a miniature reign of terror.[251] Less strongly opinionated persons than himself, when challenged in this way, are occasionally frightened into concealing or belying their real views. I once heard one of Shaw's acquaintances say with much harshness: “The astuteness and acumen of Bernard Shaw is little short of miraculous. His power of making people say precisely what he wants to hear, and at the same time what they don't necessarily believe, is truly phenomenal, almost diabolic.” He always keeps his temper and seldom goes beyond sharp, but good-humoured banter; but when attacked upon some fundamental point in which his convictions are profoundly engaged or the meaning of his life fundamentally misinterpreted, he becomes a dangerous dialectic antagonist who unmasks upon his opponent all the batteries of his keen satire, cutting logic and mordant wit.[252]
“A Prophet, the Press, and Some People.”
Reproduced from the original water-colour.
Jessie Holliday.
Courtesy of the Artist.
As a platform speaker and mob orator, Bernard Shaw is unique alike in his incisive, metallic utterance and in the mystifying directness of his paradoxes. It is genuinely amusing to watch him—the head and front of Fabianism—at a meeting of the Fabian Society. Here he is truly Sir Oracle: his opinion controls the policy of the society, as it has done for many years. While the speaker is addressing the society, Mr. Shaw is usually seated to the front and at the right of the platform, his eye-glasses depending from the hook upon the breast of his coat, his head bowed slightly forward, the fingers of his right hand lightly resting across his lips. This striking figure, with face of deadly pallor, eyes of steel blue, and general appearance of patient, amused tolerance, is here the chief justice of the court, the critic of highest authority. When he does not agree with the speaker, he shakes his head with all the naïve assumption of infallibility; and when some point is made which supports or clinches some well-known argument of his own, he gravely nods with equal sang-froid—the air of the sage encouraging promising youth. When he rises to speak, he dabbles with no graceful preliminaries, but plunges at once in medias res, and, with long forefinger upraised, sharply and mercilessly drives home his paradoxical point with all the deadly accuracy of the practised duellist. Whilst Shaw uses the rapier of cold logic in debate, and is merciless in penetrating the joints in his opponents' armour, he is scrupulously fair and just. His audiences, even at the Fabian meetings, seldom fully endorse, or even seem to understand thoroughly, the full significance and implication of his position; the applause at the close of one of his speeches is, not infrequently, less vigorous and unanimous than at the beginning. And after the meeting is over, one may observe groups of excited Fabians, scattered here and there, vehemently debating as to what Bernard Shaw really meant, and as to whether, after all, what he said was to be taken au grand sérieux!
It is a strange and inexplicable mystery that, whenever a man makes a genuine effort to disencumber himself of all traditional sentiment and contemporary prejudice, and to express himself with perfect naïveté and impartiality, the British public immediately concludes that he is a frivolous jester. Mr. William Archer, however, is of opinion that Shaw is far less free from sentiment than he appears. “I suspect Bernard Shaw of being constitutionally an arrant sentimentalist, whose abhorrence of sentiment is as the shrinking of the dipsomaniac from the single drop of alcohol which he knows will make his craving ungovernable!” If this humorous conjecture be correct, the mania is assuredly a furtive one. On occasion Bernard Shaw enjoys to the full playing with his public and flaunting a red rag at the British Bull, named John; when he chooses he airily plays to perfection the parts of jongleur and matador rolled into one. “It is an astounding thing that people so thoroughly fail to understand me,” Mr. Shaw remarked to me one day. “All that is necessary is discrimination, a strong sense of humour, and ability to occupy my point of view for the time being. Of course, I get no end of fun out of fluttering the dove-cotes. I love to leave fire and desolation in my path—to create the impression that I am a terrible fellow to deal with. The great difficulty with most people is to distinguish between my moods—when I am joking, and when I am serious; they can't see how anyone can joke about serious things. I am continually being asked all sorts of silly questions, and I am human enough”—this with a twinkle in the grey-blue eyes and an expressive wave of the hand—“to enjoy mystifying people who labour under the misfortune of being born without a sense of humour. Why, only the other day some innocent had the temerity to ask me if I were really serious in all that I said, wrote and did.
“'My dear sir,' I replied, with the air of all earnestness and conviction, 'if you really believe me to be serious, it is unnecessary for me to assure you of the fact. If you do not believe me to be serious, it is equally unnecessary to assure you of something you would not believe.'”
It is related that on one occasion a student just beginning his studies as a naturalist, walked into a bookstore and ignorantly asked: “Have you any books by the great Buffoon (meaning Buffon, of course)?” Whereupon the clerk, without the slightest hesitation, presented the applicant with the latest work of Bernard Shaw!
I have been interested to discover, through acquaintance with Bernard Shaw and the late Mark Twain, that their views as to the fundamental nature of man are in many respects identical. Their thoroughly human, wise views of man, his failings and limitations, might easily be regarded as cynical by thoughtless persons; in reality, their “cynicism” is nothing more nor less than a profound knowledge of human nature. Shaw, who has the very highest admiration for Mark Twain, both as sociologist and humorist, once said: “Of course, he is in very much the same position as myself. He has to put matters in such a way as to make people who would otherwise hang him believe he is joking.” Shaw was once asked why he was always so cynical; to which he replied, without hesitation or embarrassment, that he could not account for his cynicism—that it must be accepted as the primary and original product of his own genius. “I am not a cynic at all,” Mr. Shaw once told me, leaning forward in his chair and speaking with convincing earnestness, “if by cynic is meant one who disbelieves in the inherent goodness of man. Nor am I a pessimist, if by pessimist is meant one who despairs of human virtue or the worth of living. But all this babble about the search for happiness does not impose on me in the slightest degree. Remember the incident of Napoleon:
“'Could I be what I am, little one, cared I only for happiness?'
“Life is worth living for its own sake, and for the sake of the general welfare of humanity. It is a common error to mistake a penetrating critic for a confirmed cynic. I owe my success as a critic, not to any quality of cynicism, but to a searching power of analysis.”
Strangely enough, this advocate of life for its own sake is charged in many quarters, and notably by Mr. Gilbert Chesterton, with being feelingless, rationalistic and a Puritan of the Puritans. It is quite true that in matters of food, drink, dress and sanitation, Shaw is scientifically hygienic and Puritanical—if Puritanical be the just word for this attitude of mind. In his views concerning the relations of the sexes, there is no evidence to show that he is one whit more Puritanical than George Meredith, who advocated marriages limited to a specified time. Mr. Shaw one day told me a good story about an argument he had with Mr. Gilbert Chesterton. “Chesterton would insist upon calling me, the author of Mrs. Warren's Profession and Man and Superman, a Puritan,” explained Shaw. “'Of course, Shaw, I admire your hard and frigid Puritanism,' said Chesterton, 'but, for Heaven's sake, indulge in a little frivolity now and then. Fling away, if only for the moment, your terrible burden of duty.' 'My dear Chesterton,' I replied, 'you cannot deceive me by declaring me to be a Puritan. You pretend to be attacking Puritanism when you say that, despite my splendid love of truth, my deficiency in fully comprehending truth springs from a neglect of the great gaieties out of which Romance is born. What you call an attack on Puritanism is nothing but a veiled defence of excess.'” “And do you know,” added Shaw—clearly exhibiting the irreconcilability of the two philosophies of life—“Chesterton—Chesterton, our English Rabelais—actually admitted it!”
Most persistent of all these accusations made against Shaw is that he is a case of intellect almost pure, without feelings and without heart. Were it fitting, I could cite many instances of Mr. Shaw's generosity, benevolence and philanthropy—true stories which have come to me without my seeking and without Mr. Shaw's knowledge. I happen to know that Shaw has the utmost abhorrence for “those abominable bastard Utopias of genteel charity, in which the poor are first robbed and then pauperized by way of compensation, in order that the rich man may combine the idle luxury of the protected thief with the unctuous self-satisfaction of the pious philanthropist.” Shaw is continually engaged in assisting people in various ways—frequently without their knowledge and always in such a way as to avoid the radical error of permitting them to suffer in self-respect. Shaw believes in helping other people to help themselves. He will take any amount of trouble for a friend, and he has materially assisted innumerable people who had not one iota of claim upon his time or his services. His courtesy is of the truest sort, without affectation or pretence; and one of his acquaintances recently said: “My memory of the cheerful and easy grace of Bernard Shaw's instant considerateness and simple courtesy, when he believed himself to be unobserved and unrecognized, remains with me as among the most delightful impressions I have ever collected of a large mind taking pleasant and friendly cognizance of the importance of the little everyday acts of good-fellowship which make this world a less irksome place to sojourn in than it would otherwise be.” If Shaw has deeply angered many people by his unrestrained outspokenness, he has also given many people both pleasure and happiness, by his generosity, his brilliant wit, and his sanity of spirit. Recall one of the finest of his maxims: “We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than we have to consume wealth without producing it.”
I once asked Mr. Shaw what answer he had to make to the statement that he was a bloodless, passionless, intellectual machine. His answer made upon me a more profound impression than anything that has ever occurred in my association with him.
“Look here,” he replied, the utmost earnestness moulding his expression, “real feeling is the most difficult thing in the world to recognize. A parable will serve. Two men are walking down the crowded Strand, gazing at the vast throng of people as they hurry along with a thousand different aims. To one, the spectacle signifies nothing more than the ordinary metropolitan aspect of the greatest city in the world. The other sees in the spectacle a company of men and angels ascending and descending an endless ladder which reaches from earth to heaven. The one passes a starving child whose face is pinched with the cold; he shudders with discomfort, draws his greatcoat tighter around him, and, after giving the child a penny, passes on, thanking God that he is not as other men are. The other man regards the little waif with infinite compassion, his heart goes out in profoundest sympathy, and his whole being protests against the social system which makes such things possible. And he devotes his life, not to giving pennies to individual sufferers, but to exposing the conditions which produce such horrors and to agitating for such reforms as will mitigate these horrors, and eventually render them impossible.”
The close and searching student of Bernard Shaw's work and personality cannot fail to detect, beneath the surface, the profound and passionate sentiment which runs through his entire life. In his fierce reaction against the puerile sentimentalities, the fraudulent romance, the loathsome eroticism of modern art and life, one can detect the spur of real sentiment and passion. The pure love of man and woman, physically congruent and temperamentally compatible, he regards as the ideal condition for the progressive evolution of the race. And he once assured me of his conviction that such marriages, eventuating in children sound in mind and body, were best from every possible standpoint; but that in actual experience, marriages of this sort are in a hopeless minority. Shaw's fundamental Socialism prompts him to batter down the social barriers which set off the aristocrats from the common people—those barriers which result in the aristocracy feeding upon its own vitality, breeding and in-breeding, until the sexual product is hopelessly anæmic and degenerate. Stronger, better, saner men and women, Shaw believes, would be bred through the intermarriage of the duchess and the navvy; he strongly advocates the experiment, not simply for the sake of breaking down the social barriers, but primarily for the cause of the ultimate betterment of the race.
It is Shaw's chief distinction that, for the sake of sentiment, he would deny sentiment. “I verily believe,” a distinguished author once remarked to me, “that Mr. Shaw lives in mortal terror of the public for fear it will discover his great secret: the possession of a warm heart.” His reaction is not against the sentiment which civic virtue and personal integrity bespeak, but against the popular clap-trap, romanticized notion of sentiment which to the unilluded goes by the name of sentimentality. Bernard Shaw is a man of tremendous sentiment—social and humanitarian sentiment. Sociologic thought and social service are the ruling moral passions of his life.
“The final ideal for civic life,” he said in a public address not long ago, “is that every man and every woman should set before themselves this goal—that by the labour of their lifetime they shall pay the debt of their rearing and their education, and also contribute sufficient for a handsome maintenance during their old age. And more than that: why should not a man say: 'When I die my country shall be in my debt.' Any man who has any religious belief will have the dream that it is not only possible to die with his country in his debt but with God in his debt also.”
The germ of Shaw's philosophy of life may be found in these words:
“I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community, and as long as I live it is my privilege to do for it whatsoever I can.
“I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. I rejoice in life for its own sake. Life is no 'brief candle' for me. It is a sort of splendid torch, which I have got hold of for the moment; and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”
FOOTNOTES:
[245] The journal of the Chirological Society, edited by Mrs. K. St. Hill and Mr. Charles F. Rideal.
[246] Rodin and Bernard Shaw, by Mrs. John van Vorst; in Putnam's Monthly and the Critic, February, 1908.
[247] Unfortunately this portrait has a somewhat flouting and cynical expression, produced chiefly by the protruding under-lip. In answer to a question of mine on the subject, in which I pointed out that the feature was untrue to life, Mr. Lytton replied: “The unfortunate expression to which you refer does not represent my interpretation of Bernard Shaw's character or attitude towards the world, but is the result of my effort to accentuate the likeness of Shaw to the original of Velásquez. Personally, I am a great admirer of Bernard Shaw.”
[248] The photogravure facing page 468.
[249] One night about eleven o'clock, just after finishing the discussion of certain portions of the present work, I remember asking Mr. Shaw how he happened to take the place in Hertfordshire. “Come with me and I will show you,” he said; and we wandered across the common in the moonlight over to the old English church, redolent of mystery and sanctity. Shaw pointed to the inscription on a tomb near by: “Jane Eversley. Born, 1815. Died, 1895. Her time was short.” “I thought,” said Shaw, “that if it could be truthfully said of a woman who lived to be eighty years old that her time was short, then this was just exactly the climate for me.”
[250] Shaw suffers from periodical headaches, which come about once a month, and last a day. “Don't you ever suffer any ill effects from the terrible hardships you have to undergo in the bleak northern latitudes?” Shaw inquired one day of Fridtjof Nansen, the great Arctic explorer. “Yes,” replied Nansen, “I suffer with the most frightful headaches.” “Have you never tried to discover a cure for the headache?” asked Shaw. “Why, no!” replied Nansen. “I never thought of such a thing!” “Well, my dear fellow,” said Shaw, “that is the most astonishing thing I have ever heard. Here you have spent a lifetime trying to discover the North Pole, that nobody in the world cares tuppence about, and you have never even tried to discover a cure for the headache, which the whole world is crying for.”
[251] The delightful way in which Lady Randolph Churchill “squelched” him on the occasion of one of his terrorizing utterances is eminently worthy of quotation. In answer to her invitation to a luncheon party, Shaw wrote: “Certainly not! What have I done to provoke such an attack on my well-known habit?” To which she replied: “Know nothing of your habits; hope they are not as bad as your manners.” Shaw then wrote her a long letter of “explanation”—leaving the victory with the lady.—Reminiscences of Lady Randolph Churchill, in the Century Magazine, September, 1908.
[252] Perhaps the most interesting feature of the Adelphi Terrace quarters is the inscription cut in the enamel headboard of the mantelpiece—an inscription vitally characteristic of Shaw, the free-thinker and intransigéant—taken from the walls of Holyrood Palace:
“Thay say. Quhat say thay? Lat thame say!”