University of Virginia Library

THE first fallacy is that Bernard Shaw is an immensely public person; that he is a sort of twentieth-century Grand Monarch who, if manners allowed would dine like Louis XIV in the presence of the people and receive the press in his dressing-gown. Now, it is true that Bernard Shaw has been photographed by Alvin Langdon Coburn without a stitch; that at one period of his career he almost lived upon a public platform; that he invariably tells us the private history of each of his books and plays; that, partly from a sense of fun, and partly from a determination that what he has seriously to say shall be heard, he talks and writes a good deal about himself; and that he has allowed Mr. Archibald Henderson to compile a sort of concordance to his personality.

Nevertheless, it is not true that Bernard Shaw is an immensely public person. Or perhaps I should put it this way: Bernard Shaw whom the public knows is not an authentic revelation of the extremely private gentleman who lives in Adelphi Terrace. The Bernard Shaw whom the public knows might more accurately be described as a screen. What the public knows about Bernard Shaw is either trivial or misleading. Thus the public knows that Bernard Shaw can read diamond type with his left eye at a distance of twenty-eight inches; that he can hear a note the pitch of which does not exceed 30,000 vibrations per second; that, when he sits down upon a chair, the distance between the crown of his head and the seat is 3 feet, 1.8 inches. These things are trivial. Or the public knows that Bernard Shaw is a very striking and provocative writer of plays, that he is also a socialist and a vegetarian; and these things are misleading.

That is why any satisfactory account of Bernard Shaw rendered to those who have allowed themselves to be deceived by common fame must necessarily take the form of a schedule of popular fallacies. Such a schedule will at any rate be found more useful, and certainly less hackneyed, than a personal "interview" and description of one who has been more often photographed and handled in the picturesque and familiar way of the expert pressman than the most popular member of the British Cabinet. Perhaps, therefore, I may regard myself as excused from accurately sketching the wicket-gate which leads to Bernard Shaw's private dwelling, or from telling the story of his velvet coat, or from recording the number of times he has been met upon the top of an omnibus (where he used virtually to live), or betraying what he writes to young people in confidence about the nose of a celebrated author.

Intimate revelations of this kind do not

take the public far. They do not seriously disturb the inaccessible privacy which Bernard Shaw has always contrived to maintain. The truth is that the authentic author of "Man and Superman" has never really been interviewed; has never really "plucked me ope his doublet and offered them his throat to cut" to visitors who are likely to be hiding a kodak under their coat or to be surreptitiously fingering a note-book. Bernard Shaw of the interviews and the funny stories is public enough; but this Bernard Shaw is almost entirely a legend. Before this legend gets as firm a hold upon New York as it has upon London, it may be well to number some of the more striking fallacies of which it is composed. There is only one serious drawback to this method of approach, and this drawback vanishes almost as soon as it is explained. Exploding popular fallacies is disagreeable work, and it usually gives to the sentences of the author engaged upon it an air of quarreling violently with his readers and with his subject.

Such is not the intention or mood of this present article. I have an immense enthusiasm and liking for Bernard Shaw and for the greater part of most of what Bernard Shaw has written. I claim, indeed, to admire Bernard Shaw for sounder and weightier reasons than have yet occurred to Bernard Shaw himself. These reasons will be presented later in a postscript of appreciation. When the worst fallacies regarding Bernard Shaw have been briefly described and contradicted (it would require a large volume to describe and contradict them in detail), I shall be in a better position to assert, briefly again, wherein Bernard Shaw's genius truly consists; exactly how serious he is; and, more particularly, why he has just written a pamphlet about the war, and why he ought not to have done so. Meantime I hope that readers of this article will agree to digest the fallacies and to wait for the postscript; also to believe that my habitually indignant manner is simply the result of writing regularly about the British theater.

The first fallacy is already declared; namely, that Bernard Shaw is a public person. The second fallacy is that Bernard Shaw is an easy and profitable subject to write about. He is not. It is true that Bernard Shaw's interviews with the press are the best interviews, and that he invariably galvanizes the dullest of his appreciators into liveliness. Pronounce the name of Bernard Shaw in almost any company, and immediately every one perks up with an epigram or a paradox or an anecdote. Bernard Shaw, like Falstaff, is not only witty himself; he is the occasion that wit is in other men.

Nevertheless, Bernard Shaw is not a good subject. It is not encouraging to embark upon an enterprise with the sure knowledge that the thing has been done before and better done. Bernard Shaw is not a good subject because he has already been exhausted. There is not more than one expert upon Bernard Shaw. Every one professionally required to write about Bernard Shaw sets out under an unfortunate sense that the ground has already been covered; that the job has already been done brilliantly, thoroughly, and finally.

The best essays on the work of Bernard Shaw, the most impartial, authoritative, and penetrating, are by Bernard Shaw himself. The best stories about Bernard Shaw, whether they are the cruel, illuminating anecdotes which delight the envious, or the flashes of resource and honesty which are cherished by his friends and admirers, are once again by Bernard Shaw himself. Should you set out to extol or to advertise Bernard Shaw, you know that this has already been done with incomparable energy and talent, and that it has been done by one who knows. Should you, on the other hand, set out to expose or pull to tatters the reputation and character of Bernard Shaw, again you know that you are the merest amateur compared with G. B. S.; know also that, if you want to do the business effectively, and leave Bernard Shaw obviously for dead on the field of controversy, you will have to call in G. B. S. to help you. It is possible

to slay Bernard Shaw; but it is possible to slay him only in alliance with himself. It is a joke of the two hemispheres that Bernard Shaw better understands his merits than any one else in the world. It is a finer joke, and not so threadworn, that he better understands his limitations. Either way, whether you are celebrating his genius or asserting your position as the candid friend, you are forced to acknowledge at the last that your researches into Bernard Shaw are simply not in the same class with his own either in intimacy (which is surprising in an age when the press is often more intimate with a man than his own tooth-brush); in detachment and absence of favor (which, again, is surprising, in an age when men of letters take themselves very seriously); or in a severely just recognition of the subject's merit (more surprising still in an age when public men carefully cultivate a reputation for modesty).