The subjects which inspired Shaw's maturer genius are the same subjects which so actively, if crudely and imperfectly, struggle for expression in this early work. Much acuteness is exhibited by the young man of twenty-four in spying out the weak points in the armour of “that corporate knave, Society.” When the “high-bred” wife of the “self-made” man elopes with a “gentleman,” Society's dismay is only feigned. Like Roebuck Ramsden, Marian's relatives are quite willing to forgive, and even to thank, the cur if he will only marry her: by ousting a rank outsider like Conolly, Douglas appears to Society almost in the light of a champion of its cause. Shaw was too close an observer of life, even at twenty-four, to attempt to make out a case against matrimony by celebrating the success of an unblessed union. His point is turned against Society, less for upholding traditional morality than for making the preservation of its class distinctions its highest laws. Society is ready enough to forgive Douglas; but Marmaduke Lind, in setting up an unblessed union with Conolly's sister, Mademoiselle Lalage Virtue, of the Bijou Theatre, places himself beyond the pale. For she is socially “impossible”; and, consequently, there can be no relenting towards Marmaduke until he return, and, in the odour of sanctity and respectability, marry Lady Constance Carberry!
The Irrational Knot cannot be called novel on account of its rather commonplace thought that “a girl who lives in Belgravia ought not to marry with a man who is familiar with the Mile End Road.” But as Mr. W. L. Courtney suggestively remarks: “What is novel is the illustration, in clever and mordant fashion, of the absurd folly and wastefulness of social conditions which obstinately make intelligence subservient to aristocratic prestige. Even in our much-abused country there is, and has been for a long time, a career open for talent; but the aspiring male must not encumber himself by taking a partner out of ranks to which he does not belong. Thus, 'The Irrational Knot' is nothing more nor less than an early tract in defence of Socialism or Communism, or whatever other term should be applied to theories which seek to equalize the chances and opportunities of human beings.” In The Irrational Knot are found the marks of that individual mode of observing and reflecting life, which is popularly denominated “Shavian.” Here is the first clear testimony to that rationalistic mood in Shaw which permeates so much of his subsequent work. And yet this book contains intimations of that deeper philosophy of life which conceives of rationality merely as an instrumentality for carrying out its designs. This knot is irrational only because it is too rational. Marian shrinks from reconcilement with Conolly: she cannot breathe in the icy atmosphere of his rationalistic cocksureness. Conolly expresses Shaw's fundamental protestantism in his assertion that Marian's ill-considered flight with Douglas was the first sensible action of her whole life. It was admirable in his eyes because it was her first vigorous assertion of will, of vital purpose. The human being can and will find freedom only in overriding convention, repudiating “duty,” and solving every problem in terms of its own factors. The book, indeed, is marked less by immaturity of thought than by crudeness of execution. The characters are deficient in the flexibility and pliancy of human beings, and the book lacks suggestion of “the slow, irregular rhythm of life,” of which Henry James somewhere speaks. To Shaw, the depiction of Conolly was evidently a labour of love; and, consequently, we have an execution of force, if not always of convincing veracity. Elinor McQuinch, shrewd, sharp-tongued, acid—the familiar advocatus diaboli, and Shaw in petticoats of the later Shavian drama—is delightfully refreshing in her piquancy, and truly Ibsenic in her determination to “be herself.” The nascent dramatist often speaks out in this book—note the melodramatic Lalage Virtue—but nowhere more characteristically than in the trenchant deliverance of the justly-vexed Elinor:
Facsimile (reduced) of first and last pages of the original manuscript of Love Among the Artists.
Courtesy of Mr. D. J. Rider.
“Henceforth Uncle Reginald is welcome to my heartiest detestation. I have been waiting ever since I knew him for an excuse to hate him; and now he has given me one. He has taken part—like a true parent—against you with a self-intoxicated young fool whom he ought to have put out of the house. He has told me to mind my own business. I shall be even with him for that some day. I am as vindictive as an elephant: I hate people who are not vindictive; they are never grateful either, only incapable of any enduring sentiment.... I am thoroughly well satisfied with myself altogether; at last I have come out of a scene without having forgotten the right thing to say!”
Imagination lingers fondly, as Mr. Hubert Bland once remarked, over the spectacle of Elinor standing in the middle of the stage, three-quarters face to the audience, and firing off those acute generalizations about people who are not vindictive. Shaw's cleverness has begun thus early to betray him; a number of the characters are smart, but quite unnatural. The “Literary Great-grandfather” of the present Shaw unerringly pointed out many of the weak spots of Society; but his fundamental Socialism, impatient of class distinctions and social barriers, leads him occasionally into crude caricature. The book's greatest fault lies, perhaps, in the fact that his characters employ, not the natural, ductile speech of to-day, but the stilted diction of Dumas and Scott.
Commonplace as is the characterization, Shaw's next novel, Love Among the Artists, is a tract—less a novel than a critical essay with a purpose, in narrative form. Shaw confesses that he wrote this book for the purpose of illustrating “the difference between that enthusiasm for the fine arts which people gather from reading about them, and the genuine artistic faculty which cannot help creating, interpreting, or, at least, unaffectedly enjoying music and pictures.”
I have often wondered if it might not be possible for one who did not know Shaw personally to construct a quite credible biography by making a composite of the peculiarly Shavian types presented in his novels and plays. Without carrying the analogy to extremes, I think it mediately true that Shaw has one by one exhibited, in semi-autobiographic form, the distinguishing hall-marks of his individual and many-sided character. To what extent Owen Jack is a projection of the Shaw of this period, how graphically, if unconsciously, Shaw has revealed in this droll original his own ideals of music and his defence of a certain impudently exasperating assertiveness of manner in himself, is difficult to decide. Shaw insists that Jack is partly founded on Beethoven. And yet there is an undoubted resemblance between the real Irishman and the imagined Welshman who plays the Hyde of Jack to the Jekyll of Shaw. Like “C. di B.” and G. B. S., Jack is the first of the “privileged lunatics.” He scorns the pedantry of the schools, sneers at mechanical music of academic origin, jibes at “analytic criticism,” and fiercely denounces the antiquated views of the musical organizations of England, with their old fogeyism, their cowardice in the face of novelty, their dread of innovation, and their cringing subservience to obsolescent and outworn models. Like Shaw, Jack is always tolerant of sincerity, always sympathetic with true effort, unrestrainedly enthusiastic over any vital outpouring of the creative spirit; rebuking tyranny wherever he sees it, exposing falsehood whenever he hears it, eternally vigilant in exposing frauds and unmasking shams. And yet, with all his offensive brusqueness, fierce intolerance, and colossal self-sufficiency, gentle-hearted, compassionate, and, in the presence of beauty, deeply humble.