UNUSUAL BEQUEST

Dominion, Volume 37, Issue 122, 18 February 1944, Page 5

UNUSUAL BEQUEST

Large Amount Left To Conquer Shyness MRS. G. B. SHAW’S WILL (British Official Wireless and Press Assn.) (Received February 17, 9.30 p.m.) RUGBY, February 16. Mrs. Charlotte Frances Shaw, wife of Mr. George Bernard .Shaw, who died on .September 22, left £154,967 gross and £150,976 net personalty. The duty paid was £49,702. After leavim, £20,000 in trust for a niece and various small bequests, she left the residue in trust for her husband for lifeMrs. Shaw left a large portion of her estate to conquer shyness among the people of her native Ireland, and to tur-ther-the art of social intercourse among them. The passage in her will dealing with the conquering of shyness stated. “In the course of a long life I have haa many. opportunities of observing the extent to which the most highly instructed and capable persons have their efficiency defeated and their influence limited -cr. want of any organized instruction and training for .personal contacts, whether with individuals or popular audiences, without which their knowledge is mcom-. municable (except through books), and how the authority which their .Abilities should give them is derisory _'by their awkward manners, and bow their employment in positions for which they haie valuable qualifications is made socially impossible by vulgarities of speech and other defects as easily . corrigible by teaching and training as simple illiteracy. . Cause of Social Friction.

“Mv experience and observation have convinced me that the lack of such training produces not only much social friction. but grave pathological results which seem quite unconnected with it, and that social intercourse is a fine art with a technique which everybody can and should acquire.” Mrs. Shaw then said that to carry out the objects which she had in mind she left a large portion to her fortune to the National City BaAk Limited, Dublin, as a special trustee to make a grant out ot income to anv foundation, institution or fund having for its object, first, the bringing of masterpieces of line art within the reach of the people of Ireland; secondly, the teaching, promotion and encouragement in Ireland or seitcontrol,. elocution, deportment, the arts of personal contact, social intercourse and other arts of public and private professional and business life; and thirdly, the establishment and endowment of any educational institution or any chair in any university college or educational institution for the purpose of giving instruction in or promoting the study by the general public of these subjects. Mrs. Shaw left the letters written. to her by Lawrence of Arabia to the British Museum and £lOOO to Lord (Passfield. Mr. Bernard Shaw, commenting on ms wife’s bequest, said: “That part of tiie will does not come into operation, till 1 'am dead. A considerable number or people have already written to me from Ireland to get hold of it. They are not going to get it.” Referring to a statement by an official, of the Workers’ Educational Association that the money should have been left to the association, Mr. Shaw said: “They want the money like every other organization in the country. What I have I hold. Mr. Churchill's .attitude is my attitude.”