The economic front was never abandoned and the paper continued to attack all forms of Socialism including the recreation of Bumble by Mrs. Sidney Webb, with all the regimentation of the poor "for their own good" that Bumble represented. The inner secrets of the Fabian Office are unfolded by Shaw in a letter to Gilbert (dated Aug. 6, 1917).
MY DEAR G.K.C.
If you want to expose a scandalous orgy in the New Witness, you may depend on the following as being a correct account by an eye witness.
You know that there is a body called The Fabian Research Department, of which I have the hollow honour to be Perpetual Grand, the real moving spirit being Mrs. Sidney Webb. A large number of innocent young men and women are attracted to this body by promises of employment by the said Mrs. S.W. in works of unlimited and inspiring uplift, such as are unceasingly denounced, along with Marconi and other matters, in your well-written organ.
Well, Mrs. Sidney Webb summoned all these young things to an uplifting At Home at the Fabian office lately. They came in crowds and sat at her feet whilst she prophesied unto them, with occasional comic relief from the unfortunate Perpetual Grand. At the decent hour of ten o'clock, she bade them good night and withdrew to her own residence and to bed. For some accidental reason or other I lingered until, as I thought, all the young things had gone home. I should explain that I was in the two pair back. At last I started to go home myself. As I descended the stairs I was stunned by the most infernal din I have ever heard, even at the front, coming from the Fabian Hall, which would otherwise be the back yard. On rushing to this temple I found the young enthusiasts sprawling over tables, over radiators, over everything except chairs, in a state of scandalous abandonment, roaring at the tops of their voices and in a quite unintelligible manner a string of presumably obscene songs, accompanied on the piano with frantic gestures and astonishing musical skill by a man whom I had always regarded as a respectable Fabian Researcher, but who now turned out to be a Demon Pianist out-Heroding (my secretary put in two rs, and explains that she was thinking of Harrods) Svengali. A horribly sacrilegious character was given to the proceedings by the fact that the tune they were singing when I entered was Luther's hymn Eine Feste Burg ist Unser Gott. As they went on (for I regret to say that my presence exercised no restraint whatever) they sang their extraordinary and incomprehensible litany to every tune, however august its associations, which happened to fit it. These, if you please, are the solemn and sour neophytes whose puritanical influence has kept you in dread for so many years.
But I have not told you the worst. Before I fled from the building I did at last discover what words it was they were singing. When it first flashed on me, I really could not believe it. But at the end of the next verse no doubt or error was possible. The young maenad nearest me was concluding every strophe by shrieking that she didn't care where the water went if it didn't get into the wine.* Now you know.
[* The refrain of a poem in The Flying Inn.]
I have since ascertained that a breviary of this Black Mass can be obtained at the Fabian Office, with notes of the numbers of the hymns Ancient and Modern, and all the airs sacred and profane, to which your poems have been set.
This letter needs no answer—indeed, admits of none. I leave you to your reflections.
Ever