Thirty Years with G.B.S - Paperback

THIRTY YEARS WITH G. B. S. - It is not only G. B. S. Whom all the Quick and Dead confess-Whose power exceeds one hundred horse, The Dramas greatest Living Force, The This and That and That and This Of too emphatic emphasis That never the renown outran Of those two simple words Great Man. It is not only He. I feel That we should praise the worlds that wheel About this comprehensive Sun Whose light has far, yet far to run, And of those spheres whod dare to match The one directed by Miss Patch It cant be altogether sport To stem the tide at Whitehall Court And to admit to S. G. B. The Oligoi thats you and me Not only this-but to suggest When one can find him at his best. Not only he who does this thing Deserves the credit, and I sing As our undying creditor As much as Shaw-his editor Miss Patch-the doyen of her age Amanuensis to the Sage-Tell me Miss Patch, how does one start To Learn to drive an Apple Cart GEOFFREY DEARMER-7th Oct. 1927. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I WE MEET 9 I1 WHERE WE WORKED 24 I11 How WE WORKED . 44 IV HE TAKEHS IS PEN TO SEA . . 60 V111 WHAT GABBY DID . IX FOBBINGTH EMO FF . X FRIENDS AN, D OTHERS FR, OM U. S. A. XI COMRADSEH AW . XI1 THE MYSTIC . XI11 MAN OF BUSINESS . XIV ASPIRINGM ETHUSELAH . XV HIMSELF . INDEX . WE MEET cc WILL Y o U CD ME and be my secretary My own has gone and got married on me. I was somewhat taken aback when, in the summer of 1920, I received this brisk summons from Mr. George Bernard Shaw. A string of coincidences had brought us together. Looking along Fleet Street towards St. Pauls from the Griffin at Temple Bar is the head in stone of one to whom primarily I owe my thirty years close association with G. B. S. Sir Horace Jones, designer of TowerBridge, and the man responsible for removing Temple Bar from the Strand, was my uncle and godfather. He left me the EIOO w ithout which I could not have got myself trained as a dispenser and gone off to Radnorshire where I met the Webbs and G. B. S. I will here confess that, when my father entrusted me with the certificate relating to this legacy, he urged me to keep it in a safe place, evidently thinking I should be satisfied with the small amount of interest it produced. But he did not know the practical turn of mind I possessed. I very soon cycled off to a bank in Rye and converted the certificate into hard cash. My first adventure with it yielded an experience which, when I came to know G. B. S., seemed to me to give me as much authority as he had to expound one of his pet theories, the training of children. He believed that satisfactory adults grew from children who had had a little discipline mingled with a lot of cuddling. Children, he thought, ought to be tirelessly noisy, playful, grubby-handed, except at meal times, soiling and tearing such clothes as they need wear, bringing not only the joy of childhood into the house but dust and mud as well. Because, after some mild tuition from a governess, he had, at the age of ten, endued the sterner curriculum of the Wesleyan Connexional School, Dublin, Shaw would have it for ever afterwards that all children were too disciplined and that parents sent them to school just to get rid of them. He rather altered his view of parsons when I told him what we had been 10 THIRTY YEARS WITH 3. B. S. allowed to do when we were children. I never accepted those theories of his I am rather inclined to agree with G. K. Chesterton who could notconceive what would happen to a child brought up on Shaws principle. I should think, commented G. K. C., he would commit suicide in his bath. I remember hearing G. B. S...