SHAW REPLIES

Southland Times, Issue 21581, 19 December 1931, Page 11

SHAW REPLIES

A POINT IN PROPRIETY

(By

Iota.)

Now that the papers are here the controversy started by Gordon Craig over the publication of the Shaw-Terry' letters is revealed in its proper light, and G. 8.5., seems to have victory all along the line, because not only was he opposed to publication, but objected until unexpected pressure made reconsideration essential. Then he re read Ellen Terry’s letters and agreed to their publication in an expensive edition to secure funds for the Ellen Terry Memorial organized by Edith Craig, the great actress’s daughter. He insisted, however, that Gordon Craig’s consent should be obtained. As Shaw said in an interview, Craig, who declared he would never consent, consented and declared he could be relied on not to do the very things he subsequently did. The consent was in writing and Shaw has published that letter after Craig’s heavy attack on himself. The argument, however, has served a good purpose because it has induced Shaw to give something about the manner in which the letters came to be given to the public. It seems that when Ellen Terry died Miss Craig thought that a volume of her letters might be compiled for publication; and she wrote to Shaw, as to other friends, to ask if he had any letters. He replied that he had some hundreds; and sent them to her so that she could pick out any that were suitable for such a volume, just as Ellen Terry, in her Memoirs, had included a suitable letter of his. Shaw says that he had never read the correspondence as a whole, and that he recollected it at a distance of thirty years. But Miss Craig did read it as a whole, and at once formed the opinion which has received such overwhelming confirmation from the reviewers that it brought her mother to life in her real character, and in all her strength, with a force and vividness which made it a duty to her memory to publish the correspondence in full. “At first I was almost as stupid as Craig,” Shaw goes on. “I remembered only the very intimate and affectionate character of the letters, and declarer! that their immediate publication was impossible. But as it was clear that some day or other they would be published, and I had better leave a document to explain them, I wrote an explanation for posterity. This was entitled: 'Preface to be attached to the correspondence of Ellen Terry and Bernard Shaw should it ever be published,’ and was marked ‘Very Private.’ I sent a proof of it to Mr Craig, and another to Edith Craig It is now before the public as the preface to the correspondence. Mr Craig and his family are none the worse for it, and I will give a penny to anyone who can discover in it the faintest disparagement of his father, Edward Godwin, whom I never met, and whose production of a Greek play at the old Circus in Argyle street many years ago pleased me very much.” The effect on Miss Craig was that she made up her mind that the preface should be published at once as well as the letters. “I was perplexed,” states Shaw, “and showed the proofs to a small court of honour consisting of two persons, one of them a famous soldier and the other a lady, the religious house, much respected by both of us. Without the letters the preface suggested to them only a correspondence that should not be published. I accepted their verdict; but Miss Craig remained unshaken. Presently legal questions arose. Ellen Terry’s executors had to realize her estate for the benefit of Miss Craig and Gordon Craig’s children. My letters and Ellen Terry’s copyrights were sold, and the assignee of the copyrights announced his intention of publishing Ellen Terry’s letters by themselves if he could not induce me to consent to the publication of mine with them.

“Under this pressure I consented to the publication of a limited edition at a high price, for the benefit of the Ellen Terry Memorial Institute, which Edith Craig and Lady Maud Warrender .were establishing at Smallhythe in Kent, and which could ba financed by no other means. It was the preparation of this edition which led to my reading the correspondence as a whole for the first time, and it converted me at once to Edith Craig’s opinion. I saw that she had been right all through, and Mr Craig’s notion that the letters should have been destroyed appeared very much as if he had reproached King George for allowing his grandmother’s letters to be given to the world.

“When I make up my mind I do not make it up by halves,, and I agreed that my hesitations had been absurd, and that the limited edition should be followeo by an ordinary unlimited trade edition at ordinary prices. But I made it a condition that Mr Craig should be consulted, and he, swearing he would ne’er consent, consented, as you have seen. I proposed that he should write a preface, and he entertained this until he learnt that the proposal was suggested by me, whereupon he repudiated it with vehemence, declaring that it was a trap for him.. He was treated by me throughout with inhumanly scrupulous correctness, and by his sister with anxious consideration; for she made me omit every line written by me that could possibly wound him.”

At this point Shaw begins to hit hard: “To sum it all up, I don’t think the public will be misled by Mr Craig’s grouch against me. After all, I wounded that sacred thing, a boy’s idolatry of the first great actor he ever saw. And his psychopathic hatred of ‘the great Ellen Terry’ will be forgiven for the sake of his romance about ‘little mother Nelly.’ ” The letter shown by Mr Shaw to a newspaper man for publication was as follows: — (COPY).

41, Downshire Hill, N.W. Ist Otober, 1930.

Dear Mr Shaw, Mr Adams, our mutual friend, is as you know a little bothered by the situation. He wants to do something that you and Edith both wish to have done, so I will not stand in the way and you may rest assured that having said this I shall stick to it; and when the book containing my mother’s and your letters is published you can rely on me not to write about it in the papers or to give interviews. Yours sincerely, (Signed) GORDON CRAIG. After this letter was published, Craig attacked Shaw for publishing the letters, and in his own work "Ellen Terry and Her Secret Self” included special pages in a folder in which he let himself go in what Shaw has called “a string of whoppers” about the letters. But Craig’s letter of October 1 of last year does seem to put him out of court, doesn’t it ?