[104] Compare Shaw's article, Coburn the Camerist, in the Metropolitan Magazine, May, 1906.
THE MUSIC CRITIC
“CORNO DI BASSETTO” AND “G. B. S.”
“Don't be in a hurry to contradict G. B. S., as he never commits himself on a musical subject until he knows at least six times as much about it as you do.”—Music. In the World, January 18th, 1893.
CHAPTER VIII
In 1888 a gentleman described in the World at that time as “a Chinese statesman named Tay Pay,”[105] founded the Star, claiming for it the distinction of the first and only half-penny paper, and ignoring the Echo, which early succumbed to the treatment. On the recommendation of Mr. H. W. Massingham, Shaw was placed on the editorial staff as leader writer, on the second day of the paper's existence. At that time the Fabian Society had just invented the municipal modification of Socialism called Progressivism; and the sole object of Shaw, then a “moderate and constitutional, but strenuous Socialist,” in joining the Star was to foist this new invention upon it as the latest thing in Liberalism. Here Shaw's “impossibilism” broke out worse than ever; and Mr. O'Connor, an Irishman too, and a skilled journalist in the bargain, was not to be taken in. He refused to print the articles. “Then the Fabian Society ordered all its members to write to the Star,” records Shaw, “expressing indignant surprise at the lukewarmness of its Liberalism and the reactionary and obsolete character of its views. This was more successful; the paper became Progressive, and London rose so promptly to the new programme, that the first County Council election was fought and won on it. The Liberal leaders remonstrated almost daily with T. P., being utterly bewildered by what was to them a most dangerous heresy. But the Star articles became more and more Progressive, then ultra-Progressive, then positively Jacobin; and the further they went the better London liked them. They were not, I beg to say, written by me, but by Mr. H. W. Massingham.”[106]
While the Fabians were thus engaged in “collaring the Star by this stage army stratagem,” Shaw, to the utter consternation of the Chinese statesman, was writing political leaders for which the country was not ripe by about five hundred years, according to the political computation of the eighties. Too good-natured to do his duty and put Shaw out summarily, Tay Pay, in desperation, proposed that Shaw should have a column to himself, to be headed “Music,” and to be “coloured by occasional allusions to that art.” It was with a gasp of relief that he heard Shaw's acceptance of the proposition; and so a new career opened for Shaw as “ Corno di Bassetto,”[107] a “person now forgotten, but I flatter myself, very popular for a couple of years in the Star.”
“Magnetic, he has the power to infect almost everyone with the delight that he takes in himself.” (Mr. George Bernard Shaw.)
A Cartoon. By Max Beerbohm.
By permission of the Artist and “Vanity Fair.”