[243] Compare The Philosophy of Bernard Shaw, by Archibald Henderson, in the Atlantic Monthly, February, 1909.
[244] Compare A Genealogy of Morals, translated by William A. Hausemann; Alexander Tille's introduction, pp. xvi. and xviii. For Shaw's general confession of indebtedness to others, compare the preface to Major Barbara—First Aid to Critics.
THE MAN
“Like all men, I play many parts, and none of them is more or less real than the other.... I am a soul of infinite worth. I am, in short, not only what I can make out of myself, which varies greatly from hour to hour, and emergency to emergency, but what you can see in me.”—Bernard Shaw's review of G. K. Chesterton's Bernard Shaw.
“Many people seem to imagine that I am an extraordinary sort of person. The fact of the matter is that ninety-nine per cent. of me is just like everybody else.”—Remark of Bernard Shaw to the author.
“This is the true joy in life: the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap-heap; the being a force of nature, instead of a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”—Man and Superman. Epistle Dedicatory to A. B. Walkley.
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.