A few weeks later I went to Guildford, but I went there with a guilty secret hidden in my breast. The secret was this. My publishers did not care about issuing a complete book devoted to Bernard Shaw and all his works. I gathered, much to my amazement, that they did not think him of sufficient importance. The astounding idea was then suggested that half my book should be concerned with Bernard Shaw and the other half with Mr George Moore. Now, at the time of my visit to Guildford, I had not imparted this information to Mr Shaw. I did not anticipate that he would like the suggestion and I thought [14] ]it wiser to disclose it to him by word of mouth rather than by letter.
I came upon Mr Shaw taking photographs in the little front garden of Piccard’s Cottage. It was a winter’s day and an inch of snow lay upon the ground; yet he wore no overcoat. He insisted upon taking my photograph. He took me sitting. He took me standing. And when he had grown tired of playing with his new toy, he suggested that we should go into the house.
There a hideous surprise awaited me. Lying upon the sofa of the study was an open copy of the current week’s Candid Friend, a most brilliant and most ruthless paper edited by Mr Frank Harris.
“There is something there,” said Shaw, nodding in the direction of the sofa, “that should interest you, I think.”
I sat down, took up the paper and looked at the open pages. To my horror I saw a most brutal, murderously clever full-page caricature of Mr Hall Caine on one side, and on the other a long and most hostile review of my stupid little book on the famous novelist.... Shaw, tall and erect, stood looking at me a little malignantly, and, on the instant, I was on my guard.
I read the review word by word and examined the caricature very closely. The article was amazingly good, but, as I read it, I did so wish it had been written about a book by somebody else. Frank Harris himself, I think, had written the article and Frank Richardson had drawn the caricature. I looked up at Shaw and smiled.
“Awfully good, don’t you think?” I said.
He nodded, and by his manner seemed to express approval of the way in which I had come through the ordeal. He showed me some photographs he had taken—not very good photographs. One, taken by his wife, I think, showed Bernard Shaw with his arm round a female scarecrow; leaning slightly forward, he was leering at it with narrowed eyes.
[15]
]During lunch Shaw devoured a large number of vegetarian dishes and drank water, whilst Mrs Shaw and I ate meat and drank wine. It was, I think, the mellowing influence of a basin of raisins that loosed his tongue and set him talking without cessation. He spoke of Karl Marx and Granville Barker, of Mrs Annie Besant and Janet Achurch, of Mr Sidney Webb and the Fabian Society, of Morocco and Ancoats, of Shorthand and Wagner, of The Manchester Guardian and H. G. Wells ... in a word, of Shakespeare and the musical glasses.
I rather gathered that he had “got over” Karl Marx years ago, and I inferred that he considered the work of this writer indispensable for young cubs to sharpen their teeth upon, but that he was by no means the last word in socialism. I think he thought that Bernard Shaw was the last word. For Granville Barker he had even then a great regard, and, speaking of him, he offered me some cider, a bottle of which Barker had drunk some days previously; as he offered the cider he said that Barker had “ridden over”—whence, I know not—on his bicycle and that the cider had made him half tipsy.... The thought of Mrs Annie Besant appeared to afford him vast amusement, but he spoke in terms of high regard of Janet Achurch.