GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 77, Issue 6985, 3 November 1948, Page 9

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

“GRAND OLD MAN OF TRUTHTELLING” “MY KINGDOM NOT OF THIS WORLD” George Bernard Shaw is now 92 years oid. He lives in retirement in the village of Ayot St Lawrence, near London, and although his public utterances are nowadays rare, they still have the power to stimulate, amuse or pique. He is‘the grand old man of truthtellingl and it is his lifelong insistence on dealing out the truth—as he sees it—to all who appear to be due for it that has made him as notorious as his writings have made him famous. Indeed, it is open to question whether Shaw would be lastingly famous by reason only of his reputation as a playwright were fillip not added by his flair for provocative thought and expression. His idiosyncrasies and mannerisms have made him one of the most colourful figures of our time, with his unconventional dress, acute observation of men and manners, scathing criticism, spartan habits (he does not smoke, drink, br eat meat or fish) and mischievous wit. He has no hobbies, plays no games, belongs to no clubs; he loves motoring and swimming, and says his amusements are “anything except sport, and particularly showing off.” His predominant determination to shear the humbug from life in general, however, is the .characteristic for which Shaw will be best remembered.

As a child he was sensitive and shy, a characteristic he carried into manhood, when he would sometimes walk up and down outside a house to which he had been invited before he could summon courage to ring the bell. His shyness drove him as a youth into living a fictitious life within his own imagination, wherein he was fearless, brave, powerful, a great fighter and lover—in short, all the things he was not. He saw himself a foundling, with no relatives; he heroworshipped Mephistopheles, whose pictures adorned the walls of his bedroom, and was delighted to find later in life that he was developing an almost Mephistophelian appearance himself.

Shaw has not been popular in his profession, mainly because he has not spared the objects of his criticisms —singers, conductors (he understands music well), impresarios and stage managers. He claims to have “that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it.” For instance, he describes Brahm’s Requiem as “so execrably dull that the very flattest of funerals would seem like a ballet after it.” H. G. Wells spoke of his “exasperating patience”; Oscar Wilde said that not one of his friends really liked him.

Actually, Shaw has usually avoided the company of literary people, since he dislikes their inevitable tendency to “take in each other’s washing.” His own plays, he claims, were written in shorthand, and always on the top of buses. When producing them it was his habit to read the play through first to the assembled cast, on which occasions he revealed a rare gift of making each character live, even to the voice peculiar to each. Sybil Thorndike, hearing him read Saint Joan, said: “Listening to that symphony was the greatest experience of my life.” His advice on how to write is: “Let yourself go, and take the next boat out of the country.” Although his married life was happy, and he is by nature sensitive to womanly charms, he is fond of making such remarks as, “The ideal love affair is conducted by post.” His experience with Ellen Terry—they corresponded for years without meeting—was wholly satisfactory to him, he could easily have met her, but “did not wish to complicate such a delightful intercourse. She tired of five husbands, but never of me.“ Decades of flattery, and a unique pedestal, have not bred arrogance in G-8.5., and he withstands eminence triumphantly. It has left him perhaps more self-assertive, but still with both feet firmly on the ground. He hides an innate modesty beneath a display of apparently blatant conceit. Sense of Humour Shaw’s sense of humour has been questioned by one critic, who contends 'that rather he has a ready wit and a glib tongue. He certainly takes a puckish delight in choosing dangerous subjects for his jestings—funerals, for instance. This is probably a hand-down from childhood days, when the Shaw family fairly rollicked to funerals in galloping mourning coaches. Even his own mother’s cremation was not sacrosanct, Bernard felt she wafc looking over his shoulder during the event, and sharing his amusement. • “I have the tragedian in me, and I have the clown,” he wrote, “and the clown trips me up in the most dreadful way.” As a vegetarian and a lover of animals (“I’d hate to eat anything 1 can pat”), he wishes.his own funeral to be followed, “not by mourning people, but by sheep, cows, pigs fowls and a travelling aquarium of fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of one who would rather die than eat them.”

There is no one in our day quite like this white-bearded puritan sage. His idiosyncrasies, as much as his literary and other abilities', have given him a place in the sun, and the key to them may be found in his own words: “Whether it be that I was bom mad or a little too sane, my kingdom was not of this world. I was at home only in the realm of my imagination, and at ease only with the mighty dead.” One of Shaw’s comedies, “You Never Can Tell,” was presented in Te Awamutu recently, by the Hamilton People’s Theatre, under the direction of Mr Haswell Paine.