MR G. B. SHAW.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20964, 1 March 1930, Page 4

MR G. B. SHAW.

FURTHER SELF-REVELATION. (From Oub Own Correspondent.) LONDON. January 16. A series of lectures on “ Bernard Shaw, in, Life and Letters,” is to be given for the benefit of Leicester University College students. A copy of the syllabus of these lectures was forwarded to Mr G B. Shaw, who has commented upon it as follows: “I. I never cultivated anything. From a horribly shy and diffident young man, producing an impression of brazen impudence, because, I suppose, the ability of which I was unconscious asserted itself through the disadvantages and the ignorances of which I was too conscious. “ 2. I repeat, I was not conscious of my powers any more than I was conscious of the taste of the saliva that was always in my mouth. I wanted to be a painter, and even an opera singer—not a writer. I -wrote because I could do nothing else, and bad to do something. “3. Karl Marx died just before 1 heard of his existence. I heard Henry George speak, and was shunted by him on to the economic track which led me to Marx and Socialism, buj I never made his acquaintance. ENJOY HAMMERINGS. “4- As to ’enjoying hammerings,’ I don t think this is true. Cashel Byron, when he said that he nearly killed his first opponent because he did not know his own strength, explained the savagery of some of my early criticism. It is true that I was, and to some extent still am, very sensitive: but on the other hand, I can stand up to, and even enjoy, hammerings that drive other men to fury or re duce them to tears. And 1 often fail to conceive how they can be hurt by blows that make me laugh when I nap them myself.

.When,as a critic or debater, I ‘have’ to inflict pain, I do it like a dentist, with great reluctance and with all the ametheBla f ean Produce. But note that, as nothing is so maladroit as' any show o£ sparing the victim’s feelings, I always hit as excellently as I can, with an an of hitting as hard as I can. I have a horror of humiliating or discouraging people. I hke my man to feel that he has had a good fight, and been worthy of my steel; and not that I have been showln?i m. good taste at his expense. That is the line that leaves the least malice. . G. B. S. “ P.S.—Only a keen or fairly erudite musician can deal with the artistic side or my career. I was quite well educated, musically and graphically.”