A PUBLICITY MERCHANT

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 60, Issue 4234, 22 January 1940, Page 6

A PUBLICITY MERCHANT

THE REAL BERNARD SHAW. AN ENTHUSIAST’S INTERPRETATION. George Bernard Shaw is always news. His life has been lived on that principle. Within the last thirty years he has been more written about and more often photographed than any ether man in the Empire, and he has encouraged it and revelled in it. Shaw has described himself as President of the Universe; and so far as publicity is concerned he has tried to live up to it. He is the prince of modern journalists, always ready to provide frontpage copy. Unquestionably his journalism has been brilliant, like that of two predecessors. Dean Swift and Sydney Smith; and like them he knew precisely when to speak and what to say. That has been the secret of his success. His latest biographer, Mr Maurice Colbourne, admits that Bernard Shaw is “ a publicity merchant,” but says that that is the fault of the public; and he agrees that G.B.S. has been permitted to lecture the English public because he is an Irishman. The English will stand criticism with impunity from outsiders, but they would not tolerate it from an Englishman. Mr Colbourne is air actor and a producer and whole-heartedly Shavian; and although his book, “ The Real Bernard Shaw,” is a little overidolatrous in places, he has provided a vivid sketch of Mr Shaw’s life and mission. Those who have been able to in his hero little beyond a highly successful self-advertising journalist who always knew when the public iron was hot and where to strike will find in the book much that is worthy of Careful study. Some people may doubt whether there is any real Bernard Shaw. Mr Colbournes says that there is—that there is a Shaw whose mission in life is that of teacher and preacher. He frankly admits that the mission would have been more generally recognised if Shaw had more vigorously controlled “Joey the Clown,” which obtruded itself into everything he did and too often played the mountebank.

Mr Colbourne mentions that the late Sir James Barrie used to tell how another personality, distinct from himself and yet part of himself, would take complete charge of a situation and write the famous Barrie whimsicalities while Barrie held the pen. So friendly did this personality become that Barrie called it Mhconachie.

Shaw, too, has an imp. His admirers call it “ the Shavian Touch,” but really it is Joey the Clown who has an irresistible impulse to turn the most serious and tragic work into a joke. In that way he has ruined much of Shaw’s most beautiful effects, dissolving both atmosphere and illusion and destroying both gravity and beauty. It is this imp, of course, which ruined Shaw’s early prospects as a successful playwright for the theatre. Again and again in the nineties Shaw’s plays failed miserably, yet no dramatist ever took greater pains than he did. His early plays were disastrous failures, due to some extent to Joey the Clown and also because Shaw would persist in directing the producer what he should do. Finally, in April, 1897, after several expensive failures, he decided to

issue his playa as books to depend on a reading public rather than on a theatre public. Mr Colbourne says that even in recent years Shaw “ never captured the citadel he assaulted so ardently in the nineties,” and many of his later plays were written with his mind on some great actor or actress who was to take a particular role. In a vivid sketch the author shows how Mr Shaw’s temperament was influenced by the dire poverty of his early years in London. It was a tragic experience. In the first nine years he earned only 15s by his pen, and his first regular employment brought him only £2 a week. During those years he was able to live with his mother, but the experience made him shy, arid, and aloof; “ and the lack of a common touch with humanity is the saddest thing about Bernard Shaw, for it lays the withering hand of a great sterility upon much of his work.” Mr Colbourne is at his best when he is describing the man. He admits that the world regards Shaw as abnormally conceited. He denies it, but says that, “ in cold business blood,” Bernard Shaw the man decided to advertise Bernard Shaw the teacher. Many years ago Shaw said to him, “ I have advertised myself so well that I find myself almost as legendary as ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ ” Self advertisement became a policy, and the publicity that Shaw received was wrongly ascribed to conceit. At least so Mir Colbourne says. The real Bernard Shaw, he says, is a teacher who believes in humanity and refuses to abandon hope for man. Mr Colbourne says that Shaw is not a dramatist first and foremost, but a preacher and a teacher. Yet with all his continuous vocal and witty enthusiasm, his impatience with cant, and his loathing of shoddy emotionalism, Shaw has failed to achieve what he wished to do because of his inability, as a general rule, to perceive any virtue in heroism and gallantry. Shaw is a worshipper of reason and strength, but neither will let him take that leap into the dark which is the essence of all faith. He is not a man of action. That is why other people remove the abuses about which he has written for years. He lacks what the Australian Bernard O’Dowd has called “ the flame of the soul of a poet.” “ The Real Bernard Shaw ” is not a biography so much as an interpretation, and one feels that despite the occasional criticism of Shaw’s obvious weaknesses it is the kind of book to which Mr Shaw, an artist in advertising, would give his heartiest approval.

Like his own books, it is good .journalism; it is a book that will make tire public again talk about G.B.S.