SHAW IN DESPAIR

Southland Times, Issue 23610, 10 September 1938, Page 14

SHAW IN DESPAIR

EARLY FEARS FOR HIS PLAYS More than 70 letters written by Mr Bernard Shaw to J. E. Vedrenne, who produced several of his plays in partnership with Granville Barker, will be included in the season’s sales of rare books and manuscripts to be disposed of at Sotheby’s. The letters reveal G.B.S. in a new light. They are all frank and intimate, and show that he has not always been so sure of himself as we are accustomed to believe, writes a correspondent of The Sunday Times. “I am in a condition of sullen depression concerning ‘Major Barbara,’” he wrote in one letter.

Of “Captain Brassbound’s Conversion,” he confesses that “sometimes I think the play is no good,” and when writing “Misalliance,” nearly 30 years ago, he complained dolefully: “My bolt as a real playwright is shot.” One provincial production of “Man and Superman” proved so disturbing to him that he wrote:

“I came within an inch of suicide / and murder .... I feel no further disposition to pursue the heartbreaking trade of playwright, and shall henceforth devote myself to the advancement of the human race as a politician and essayist.” CHANGED HIS MIND A little later, however, he had no difficulty in changing his mind, and wrote to Vedrenne that he had just finished two plays—“both masterpieces.” Mr Shaw is a firm believer in the long play. In one letter, he strongly objected to any cuts in “John .Bull’s Other Island” merely to enable the audience “to catch the last train,” and of “Major Barbara” he said:. “You might as well dream of diluting the Atlantic Ocean as cutting Barbara down to an ordinary bill.” As for “Getting Married,” which was produced in 1908, he told Vedrenne “It just wants to-be made an hour longer and played every day for the next 10 years.” Some of the MSS. to be disposed of are of great historic interest. One is the final codicil to the will of Napoleon, and another a long letter in the handwriting of Oliver Cromwell. NAPOLEON’S CODICILS

Napoleon prepared many codicils to his will, but this, the eighth, was unsigned and therefore had no legal effect. Four of the clauses, however, are’ in the Emperor’s own writing, and it is touching to find that his last thoughts

were of his mother. The final clause in his writing ends with the phrase “a ma mere,” possibly the last words he ever wrote.

The Cromwell letter, signed in full, is dated June 13, 1643, the year in which he was made a colonel and began to organize his “Ironsides.” It deals with the movement and disposition of troops, the mustering of volunteers, and ends by saying that “it will not be good to lose the use of any force God gives us.”-The seal on the document is still intact.

There are many other MSS. of historic interest, among them no fewer than 76 unpublished letters of Catherine the Great to Soltikoff, her General-in-Chief and Court favourite.

Many of them, written during her spectacular tour of the Crimea in 1787, show her in a different aspect from the generally accepted portrait of the Empress. In these she appears as a woman of delicate feelings, moved by the beauty of nature, and ( as an adoring grandmother worrying about her son’s children and continually sending them little presents.