Very many of the following pages were written in the trenches and dug-outs of Greece and Serbia. I added a chapter or two in Port Said, Alexandria and Marseilles. That is to say, I wrote far away from books and without reference to documents, and I wrote to refresh a mind dulled by the conditions of Active Service in the Near East. A few chapters were written in London and a few in Winchester.
Here and there may be found factual inaccuracies, though if these exist I am not aware of them. But the spirit of the book is as near the truth as I can bring it.
Gerald Cumberland
Winchester
2nd June 1918
[9]
]CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I. | [11] | |
| II. | [22] | |
Mrs Annie Besant—Mr Marcus Stone—Mr LloydGeorge—Bishop Welldon—Dr Walford Davies | ||
| III. | [32] | |
| IV. | [47] | |
Madame Yvette Guilbert—Sir Victor Horsley—Mrs Pankhurst—Mr Jacob Epstein—Madame Aïno Ackté | ||
| V. | [55] | |
| VI. | [68] | |
Mr Arnold Bennett—Mr G. K. Chesterton—Mr Lascelles Abercrombie—Mr Harold Monro—Mr JohnMasefield—Mr Jerome K. Jerome—Sir Owen Seaman—Mr A. A. Milne | ||
| VII. | [79] | |
| VIII. | [88] | |
| IX. | [102] | |
| X. | [117] | |
| XI. | [128] | |
Rev. T. E. Brown—Mr A. R. Orage—Mr NormanAngell—Mr St John Ervine—Mr Charles Marriott—Mr Max Beerbohm—Mr Israel Zangwill—Mr AlphonseCourlander—Mr Ivan Heald—Mr Dixon Scott—Mr Barry Pain—Mr Cunninghame Graham | ||
| [10] ]XII. | [143] | |
| XIII. | [153] | |
| XIV. | [166] | |
| XV. | [175] | |
Mr Arthur Henderson, M.P.—Lord Derby—MissElizabeth Robins—Mr Frank Mullings—Mr HaroldBauer—Mr Emil Sauer—Mr Vladimir de Pachmann | ||
| XVI. | [187] | |
| XVII. | [199] | |
Sir Herbert Tree—Mr Gordon Craig—Mr HenryArthur Jones—Mr Temple Thurston—Miss JanetAchurch—Miss Horniman. | ||
| XVIII. | [212] | |
| XIX. | [226] | |
Edvard Grieg—Sir Frederick H. Cowen—Dr HansRichter—Sir Thomas Beecham—Sir Charles Santley—Mr Landon Ronald—Mr Frederic Austin | ||
| XX. | [239] | |
| XXI. | [246] | |
Professor Granville Bantock—Mr Frederick Delius—Mr JosephHolbrooke—Dr Walford Davies—Dr Vaughan Williams—Dr W. G. McNaught—Mr JuliusHarrison—Mr Rutland Boughton—Mr John Coates—Mr Cyril Scott | ||
| XXII. | [263] | |
| XXIII. | [273] | |
| [283] | ||
[11]
]CHAPTER I
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
It was when I was a very young man indeed that I caught and succumbed to my first attack of Shaw-fever. I do not remember how I caught it; something in the Manchester air, no doubt, was responsible for my malady, for a handful of “intellectual” Manchester people had most daringly produced a complete Shaw play, and, though I had not witnessed the play, I had read it, and it was with delight that I saw The Manchester Guardian saying about You Never Can Tell just the very things I had myself already thought. I found that in my suburban circle of friends I was regarded as harbouring “advanced” ideas. Shaw, I was told, was “dangerous.” This bucked me up enormously, and I thereupon wrote a long essay on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and, desiring further to astonish and bewilder my friends, got into communication with Bernard Shaw with a view to having the essay published in pamphlet form. When it was known in Manchester suburbia that Shaw had written to me, a boy still at school, my friends could not decide whether I was cleverer than they had hitherto supposed or Mr Bernard Shaw more foolish than seemed possible.
I have never completely recovered from that first attack of Shaw-fever; like ague, it sleeps in my bones and, from time to time, makes its presence known by little convulsions that are disturbing enough while they last, but which generally die pretty quickly.
It was in the middle of 1901 that I wrote to Mr Shaw about the particular brand of socialism from which at [12] ]that time I was suffering. It must have been a very raw and crude brand, and my letter to Bernard Shaw must have amused him considerably. Certainly his reply was most diverting. Here it is: