[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!”
APPENDIX
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Genealogical Chart of the Shaw Family
of Counties Tipperary, Kilkenny and Dublin,
together with other Lineal Ancestors of GEORGE BERNARD SHAW.