“'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.