Shaw was twenty when he reached London--the meditative, impressionable,
speculative, iconoclastic age. Apparently he fell an easy prey
to the philosophical anarchists who then held the centre of the
stage--Proudhon, Lassalle, Marx, Louis Blanc, Engels, Liebknecht, and
the lesser Germans. Certainly it was a day of stimulating stirring
about. Huxley and Spencer were up to their necks in gore; Ibsen, with
“The League of Youth” behind him, was giving form to “The Pillars of
Society” and “A Doll’s House”; Nietzsche was tramping up and down his
garden path; Wagner was hard at work; “The Principles of Sociology”
had just come from the press. Sham-smashing was in the air. Everything
respectable was under suspicion.
It didn’t take Shaw long to spring out of the audience upon the stage.
His first novel, in truth, must have been begun long before he learned
to find his way about the streets of London. Whether it was good or bad
the human race will never know; publishers declined it without thanks,
and the author, when his manuscripts began to have a value, decided
that it should remain unpublished. “It was a very remarkable work,” he
says, “but hardly one which I should be well advised in letting loose
whilst my livelihood depends on my credit as a literary workman. I can
recall a certain difficulty, experienced even while I was writing the
book, in remembering what it was about....” Thus heavily did his theme
bear down upon him.
What the young Irishman did to relieve his imagination during the
next three years is not recorded. That he learned a great deal,
particularly of music and literature, is very probable. His sister
was a professional singer, and the persons he met were chiefly of the
literary-artistic sort. He was “but an infant of twenty-four, when,
being at that time one of the unemployed” he essayed to mend his
“straitened fortunes” by writing his second novel, “The Irrational
Knot.” It was no masterpiece, but if the few persons who glanced
through it possessed prophetic eyes they must have seen in it marks
of a genius rather startling. A year later came “Love Among the
Artists”--a volume of nearly 500 pages. Then, in order, came “Cashel
Byron’s Profession” and “An Unsocial Socialist.” Not one of these
extraordinary tales struck the fancy of the publishers. “An encouraging
compliment or two,” says Shaw, was his sole reward for the fatiguing
labor of writing them. Not until a good while afterward did any of
the five see the light, and then it was only “to fill up the gaps
in socialist magazines financed by generous friends.” “An Unsocial
Socialist” was the first to reach the dignity of covers. After it came
“Cashel Byron’s Profession” and “The Irrational Knot.” “Love Among the
Artists” was the last to appear upon the book stalls.