£5000 OFFER TO G. B. SHAW FROM AMERICAN HOSTESS.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18208, 15 July 1927, Page 8

£SOOO OFFER TO G. B. SHAW FROM AMERICAN HOSTESS.

TO DINE, TALK, AND CATCH THE NEXT BOAT HOME. LONDON, June 1. Mr George Bernard Shaw was offered £SOOO by an American hostess if he would “cross the Atlantic, dine with her, talk a little to her guests, and catch the next boat home." This was revealed by Sir Gerald du Maurier at a public meeting at the King’s Theatre, Hammersmith, yesterday, in support of the Cecil Houses, Women’s Public Lodging House Fund. Mr Shaw nodded assent when asked by Sir Gerald to corroborate the story. A Victorian “Relic”. “I am addressing you here in the character of an old relic of the Victorian age," Mr Shaw told the meeting. “The Victorian age succeeded in one of the most amazing and grotesque enterprises ever tried by mankind. They were a romantic people. The thought that woman was a human being was intolerable to them. They set up a convention that women were angels. “My secret, as a dramatic author, the secrut of that extraordinary knowledge of women which enchants the whole world, is that I have always assumed that woman is not a special creation, but that she is a human being, very much like myself. “It is due very largely to the Victorian idea of treating a woman as a special creation that we have the extraordinary state of society which neglects to provide for women what is provided for man as a matter of course. Mr Shaw Exultant. “Lord Rowton provided lodginghouses for men, but similar provision was not made for women. Mrs Chesterton wants you to make it. “I am an old man. I am more than seventy years of age. I am in the condition of Macbeth. Another million starving women are nothing to me. “I was some little while ago in that curious stage when I had a sort of sad feeling when my old friends and contemporaries began to drop around me. Nowadays I have got completely over that and exult whenever another one of them goes down."