ENGLISH INNING
Adventuring in Search of George Bernard Shaw
When I was a lad I wrote a rhyme about wanting to visit England and my desire to see the famous streets and places and the "factory chimneys pouring smoke." Later, when I began reading the Bernard Shaw plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant, and the sparkling prefaces, I added Shaw to the list of people and things that I wanted to see. Shortly before I left Jamaica for the United States, Shaw arrived in the island on a visit to the Governor, the Fabian Socialist, Sydney (Lord) Olivier, who was his friend. As my friend Mr. Jekyll was well acquainted with the Governor, I urged him to invite the Governor to bring Bernard Shaw up to Jekyll's cottage in the Blue Mountains. But Mr. Jekyll refused. He said he was opposed to the pursuit of celebrities as if they were public property, and that if Bernard Shaw was visiting Jamaica on a quiet tropical holiday, he, Jekyll, wouldn't be the first Englishman to attempt to intrude upon him. And so I had to be content with reading Shaw's one interview in the local paper, in which he said that the Governor was big and capable enough to boss the colony alone. Mr. Jekyll was amused by that and remarked that when Socialists obtained power, they would be more autocratic than capitalists.
Now that I had grown up in America and was starting off to visit England, I realized that I wasn't excited any more about the items I had named in my juvenile poem. Only the item that I had added mentally remained of lasting interest—Bernard Shaw. With the passing years he had grown vastly bigger in my eyes. I had read most of his published works and seen two of his plays in New York. And my admiration had increased. I considered Bernard Shaw the wisest and most penetrating intellectual alive.
And so it was a spontaneous reply, when Frank Harris asked me what person I would like most to meet in London, and I said "Bernard Shaw." I really never thought of anybody else. Perhaps because the purpose of my voyage was a poetical vacation and I hadn't been thinking about meeting people.