VII
It is when we come to such novels as "The Lake" and "The Brook Kerith" that we discover Mr. Moore at his greatest. Zola is forgotten and only the strength of Mr. Moore himself is now displayed. "The Lake" is among the most beautiful stories of our time, a finely-conceived and finely-wrought book, more complete and unified than "The Brook Kerith," which, in spite of much beauty and scholarship, is marred organically by a dispersal of the interest. The latter novel is in three sections, the first dealing with Joseph of Arimathea, the second with Jesus, and the third with Paul. Each of these sections by itself is well and even superbly done, although in my judgment, the first of them is much the best of the three; but the interest which the reader has in any one of the three sections is not felt in the whole book because the three great figures are not grouped together. We begin with Joseph and then, at the point when we are absorbed in him, are hurried on to Jesus, undergoing a similar experience with Him when we are hurried off to Paul. The book is not a closely-knit drama in which the characters constantly act and re-act upon each other, but is more akin to three separate plays in which certain figures recur in greater or less positions. Mr. Moore, in short, was uncertain whether to make Joseph or Jesus or Paul the hero of his story, and he unwisely compromised by making each of them hero for a portion of it, with the result that each is of supreme importance for a third of the book and of subordinate importance for the remainder of it. "The Brook Kerith" is, nevertheless, a considerable achievement and is in itself sufficient to secure a high place in English letters for its author.
The legend is that Mr. Moore is a trifler with life, a man without purpose, immensely egotistical, having some of the simplicity of the buffoon. The truth is that he is an audacious, exceedingly adroit and utterly unthwartable artist who bends the visible world to his purpose of discovering and perfecting a formula of words with which to express his vision of the invisible world. He has, indeed, a simplicity of character, but it is not the simplicity of the buffoon: it is the immense and dissolving simplicity of the man of genius.
BERNARD SHAW
I
There is a kind of shy, embarrassed man of merit who cannot keep or even reach to his proper position in the world without making some sort of pretence about himself. Mr. Bernard Shaw is such a man. He has created his legend with such extraordinary skill that those who know him well have great difficulty in persuading the general public, which has neither the time nor the intelligence to understand a man of marked personality, to believe that the legend is a legend, that the reputed Bernard Shaw is not the real Bernard Shaw. The common notion is that he has an insatiable craving for publicity, is immensely conceited and self-centred, and does not care what folly of thought or conduct he commits if by so doing he draws attention to himself. The truth about him is that he is a shy and nervous man, singularly humble-minded and sincere, very courageous and full of quick, penetrating wisdom, and so generous and kindly that he may be said to be willing to do more for his friends than his friends will do for themselves. He is a Don Quixote without illusions. When he tilts at windmills, he does so because they are windmills in private ownership, and he wishes them to be driven by electricity and owned by the local authority. In print and on platforms, Mr. Shaw brags and boasts and lays claim to an omniscience that would scandalize most deities, but no one who has the ability to distinguish between sincerity and mere capering is in the least deceived by his platform conceit. He is one of the very few men in the world who can brag in public without being offensive to his auditors. He can even insult his audience without hurting its feelings. There is a quality of geniality and kindliness in his most violent and denunciatory utterance that reconciles all but the completely fat-headed to a patient submission to his chastisement; and his most perverse statements are so swiftly followed by things profoundly true and sincerely said that those who listen to him are less conscious of his platform tricks than are those who merely read newspaper reports of his speeches. This is largely due to the fact that the newspapers print only his flippant and fantastic stuff, and omit his vital matter. I have seen reporters at one of his meetings sitting with their pencils loosely dangling from their fingers while Mr. Shaw spoke wisely and deeply, and then, when he uttered some trivial or outrageous thing, coming to life and hastily scribbling the jape into their notebooks.
It is my purpose here to insist that Mr. Shaw is a shy man with a large element of the gawky school boy in him so that he is awkward and embarrassed when he comes suddenly into the presence of strangers without having been warned that strangers are to be encountered. I have seen him blush like a boy on finding people in a room which he had expected to find unoccupied, and when one meets him casually in the street he is at first nonplussed and without conversation or power to do more than smile amiably. It is not easy to make this shyness of his plain to those who have met him once or twice because he has remarkable powers of recovery and can cover up his initial embarrassment with very great skill; and also because his platform manners are very easy and his general social manners are exceedingly gracious. He has made many pretences in his life, but the one pretence that he has never succeeded in maintaining is the pretence that he is a bad-mannered man. There are stories told of him that seem to show him in a graceless, even cruel, character, but these are no more than might be expected from a man of nervous temperament who is being bothered excessively by the demands of people who have no right to make demands on him at all. Against those stories may be set far more stories of acts of exceptional kindliness to those who are in trouble or in need of advice and encouragement. Very few great men have given so generously of their time and strength to helping young men of talent to obtain recognition as Mr. Shaw has done.