Set Down in Malice. A Book of Reminiscences

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

IT was when I was a very young man indeed that I caught and succumbed to my first attack of Shaw-fever. I do not remember how I caught it; something in the Manchester air, no doubt, was responsible for my malady, for a handful of “intellectual” Manchester people had most daringly produced a complete Shaw play, and, though I had not witnessed the play, I had read it, and it was with delight that I saw The Manchester Guardian saying about You Never Can Tell just the very things I had myself already thought. I found that in my suburban circle of friends I was regarded as harbouring “advanced” ideas. Shaw, I was told, was “dangerous.” This bucked me up enormously, and I thereupon wrote a long essay on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and, desiring further to astonish and bewilder my friends, got into communication with Bernard Shaw with a view to having the essay published in pamphlet form. When it was known in Manchester suburbia that Shaw had written to me, a boy still at school, my friends could not decide whether I was cleverer than they had hitherto supposed or Mr Bernard Shaw more foolish than seemed possible.

I have never completely recovered from that first attack of Shaw-fever; like ague, it sleeps in my bones and, from time to time, makes its presence known by little convulsions that are disturbing enough while they last, but which generally die pretty quickly.

It was in the middle of 1901 that I wrote to Mr Shaw about the particular brand of socialism from which at 
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that time I was suffering. It must have been a very raw and crude brand, and my letter to Bernard Shaw must have amused him considerably. Certainly his reply was most diverting. Here it is:

“By all means give ‘every penny you can spare to those who are most in need of monetary help.’ If you will be kind enough to send it to the Treasurer of the Fabian Society, 3 Clement’s Inn, London, W.C., you may depend upon its being wanted and well used. If you prefer relieving needy persons, I can give you the names and addresses of several fathers of families who can be depended on to absorb all your superfluous resources, however vast they may be. By making yourself poor for their sakes you will have the satisfaction of adding one more poor family to the existing mass of poverty and contributing your utmost to the ransom which perpetuates the existing social system. You will go through life consoled by an inexhaustible sense of moral superiority to bishops and other inconsistent Christians. And you will never be at a loss for friends. Where the carcass is there will the eagles be gathered.