"POOR DRUNKARD"

Evening Post, Volume CX, Issue 37, 12 August 1930, Page 9

"POOR DRUNKARD"

SHAW ON HIS FATHER

UNPLEASANT TRUTH

LONDON, 3rd August.

Between George Bernard Shaw and the Eev. J. C. Carliie, a leading Baptist minister, an interesting controversy has arisen. Eeferring to Mr. Bernard Shaw's preface to a private edition of Ms works, in which he describes his father as a miserable drunkard, invariably leaving parties which he attended scandalously drunk, the Rev. J."C. Carliie (editor of .tho "Baptist Times"), preaching in the Folkestone Baptist Church, of which he is pastor, said the preface would be remembered as immortalising the j failures of Mr. Shaw's father.

"The skeleton is taken out of the family cupboard and shown in all its nakedness," Mr. Carliie declared. "It is a pity that the dramatist did not remember the Latin tag about speaking well of the dead. No doubt all that Mr. Shaw says about the old man's drunken habits is 'perfectly true, but it is not chivalrous to bring him back from the dead to exhibit his nastiness as an excuse for his son's rudeness."

Mr. Shaw, in replying, says: "This sort of reprimand usually comes from people who think that because the truth is unpleasant one should tell lies. If a story is to be told about my family, I prefer to tell it myself, rather than leave it for a gentleman who might be out to-tell lies. Would Mr. Carliie say anything disparaging about Henry VHI. or bloody Queen Mary if he were preaching about them? The idea that one shouldn't say anything unkind about the dead is a thoroughly false one."