I saw your man and consoled him spiritually; but that is not the subject of this letter. I still think that you could write a useful sort of play if you were started. When I was in Kerry last month I had occasionally a few moments to spare; and it seemed to me quite unendurable that you should be wasting your time writing books about me. I liked the book very much, especially as it was so completely free from my own influence, being evidently founded on a very hazy recollection of a five-year-old perusal of Man and Superman; but a lot of it was fearful nonsense. There was one good thing about the scientific superstition which you came a little too late for. It taught a man to respect facts. You have no conscience in this respect; and your punishment is that you substitute such dull inferences as my "narrow puritan home" for delightful and fantastic realities which you might very easily have ascertained if you had taken greater advantage of what is really the only thing to be said in favour of Battersea; namely, that it is within easy reach of Adelphi Terrace. However, I have no doubt that when Wilkins Micawber junior grew up and became eminent in Australia, references were made to his narrow puritan home; so I do not complain. If you had told the truth, nobody would have believed it.
Now to business. When one breathes Irish air, one becomes a practical man. In England I used to say what a pity it was you did not write a play. In Ireland I sat down and began writing a scenario for you. But before I could finish it I had come back to London; and now it is all up with the scenario: in England I can do nothing but talk. I therefore now send you the thing as far as I scribbled it; and I leave you to invent what escapades you please for the hero, and to devise some sensational means of getting him back to heaven again, unless you prefer to end with the millennium in full swing.*
[* The scenario dealt with the return of St. Augustine to the England he remembered converting.]
But experience has made me very doubtful of the efficacy of help as the means of getting work out of the right sort of man. When I was young I struck out one invaluable rule for myself, which was, Whenever you meet an important man, contradict him. If possible, insult him. But such a rule is one of the privileges of youth. I no longer live by rules. Yet there is one way in which you may possibly be insultable. It can be plausibly held that you are a venal ruffian, pouring forth great quantities of immediately saleable stuff, but altogether declining to lay up for yourself treasures in heaven. It may be that you cannot afford to do otherwise. Therefore I am quite ready to make a deal with you.
A full length play should contain about 18,000 words (mine frequently contain two or three times that number). I do not know what your price per thousand is. I used to be considered grossly extortionate by Massingham and others for insisting on £3. 18,000 words at £3 per thousand is £54. I need make no extra allowance for the republication in book form, because even if the play aborted as far as the theatre is concerned, you could make a book of it all the same. Let us assume that your work is worth twice as much as mine; this would make £108. I have had two shockingly bad years of it pecuniarily speaking, and am therefore in that phase of extravagance which straitened means have always produced in me. Knock off 8% as a sort of agent's commission to me for starting you on the job and finding you a theme. This leaves £100. I will pay you £100 down on your contracting to supply me within three months with a mechanically possible, i.e., stageable drama dealing with the experiences of St. Augustine after re-visiting England. The literary copyright to be yours, except that you are not to prevent me making as many copies as I may require for stage use. The stage right to be mine; but you are to have the right to buy it back from me for £250 whenever you like.* The play, if performed, to be announced as your work and not as a collaboration. All rights which I may have in the scenario to go with the stage right and literary copyright as prescribed as far as you may make use of it. What do you say? There is a lot of spending in £100.
[* I could not very well offer him £100 as a present. G.B.S.]
One condition more. If it should prove impossible to achieve a performance otherwise than through the Stage Society (which does not pay anything), a resort to that body is not to be deemed a breach of the spirit of our agreement.
Do you think it would be possible to make Belloc write a comedy? If he could only be induced to believe in some sort of God instead of in that wretched little conspiracy against religion which the pious Romans have locked up in the Vatican, one could get some drive into him. As it is, he is wasting prodigious gifts in the service of King Leopold and the Pope and other ghastly scarecrows. If he must have a Pope, there is quite a possible one at Adelphi Terrace.
For the next few days I shall be at my country quarters, Ayot St. Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. I have a motor car which could carry me on sufficient provocation as far as Beaconsfield; but I do not know how much time you spend there and how much in Fleet Street. Are you only a week-ender; or has your wise wife taken you properly in hand and committed you to a pastoral life.
Yours ever,
G. BERNARD SHAW.