“HOOTS, HOOTS, MON!”

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 35, 5 November 1928, Page 10

“HOOTS, HOOTS, MON!”

G. B. SHAW SDRS UP A HORNET’S NEST A PRINTED POSTCARD REFUSAL (United Press Association.—By Electric Telegraph.—Copyright.) (Australian Press Association.) (Rec. November 4, 5.5 p.m.) London, November 3. Mr. Bernard Shaw’s custom of sending a printed postcard curtly refusing to open bazaars or speak at public dinners has stirred up a hornet’s nest in the Trinity Literary Society at Glasgow, which offered the dramatist a fee of 40 guineas, and received the usual postcard. Instead of meekly receiving Shaw’s “No,” the Rev. 11. S. McClelland, the president, reported pointing out that G. K. Chesterton, Dean Inge, Sir Oliver Lodge, Augustine Birrell, Bishop Barnes, John Masefielfld, and other prominent men accepted the invitation, whereas Mr. Shaw accompanied the refusal by gratuitous and typically insolent advice to hand over the fee of 40 guineas to a young man. Mr. McClelland added that the replies of other lecturers of international reputation showed that it was possible to be both a genius and a gentlenian. He could not accept the plea that Mr. Shaw was too busy, ns he had ample time to bask almost naked on a raft in the sunny seas of the Riviera or spend an evening with a famous Yankee pugilist. Mr. Shaw replied with a postcard in the broadest Doric: “Hoots, hoots, mon! Dinna tak offence whaur nane was meant and gie yer siller to the young A telt ye.” A postscript added: “I trust this worthy and devoted student of Burns and Scott.”