Dilemma_ and _Getting Married_. The first is as regards its most amusing
and effective elements a throw-back to his old game of guying the men of
science. It was a very good game, and he was an admirable player. The
actual story of the _Doctor's Dilemma_ itself seems to me less poignant
and important than the things with which Shaw had lately been dealing.
First of all, as has been said, Shaw has neither the kind of justice
nor the kind of weakness that goes to make a true problem. We cannot
feel the Doctor's Dilemma, because we cannot really fancy Bernard Shaw
being in a dilemma. His mind is both fond of abruptness and fond of
finality; he always makes up his mind when he knows the facts and
sometimes before. Moreover, this particular problem (though Shaw is
certainly, as we shall see, nearer to pure doubt about it than about
anything else) does not strike the critic as being such an exasperating
problem after all. An artist of vast power and promise, who is also a
scamp of vast profligacy and treachery, has a chance of life if
specially treated for a special disease. The modern doctors (and even
the modern dramatist) are in doubt whether he should be specially
favoured because he is æsthetically important or specially disregarded
because he is ethically anti-social. They see-saw between the two
despicable modern doctrines, one that geniuses should be worshipped like
idols and the other that criminals should be merely wiped out like
germs. That both clever men and bad men ought to be treated like men
does not seem to occur to them. As a matter of fact, in these affairs of
life and death one never does think of such distinctions. Nobody does
shout out at sea, "Bad citizen overboard!" I should recommend the doctor
in his dilemma to do exactly what I am sure any decent doctor would do
without any dilemma at all: to treat the man simply as a man, and give
him no more and no less favour than he would to anybody else. In short,
I am sure a practical physician would drop all these visionary,
unworkable modern dreams about type and criminology and go back to the
plain business-like facts of the French Revolution and the Rights of
Man.
The other play, _Getting Married_, is a point in Shaw's career, but only
as a play, not, as usual, as a heresy. It is nothing but a conversation
about marriage; and one cannot agree or disagree with the view of
marriage, because all views are given which are held by anybody, and
some (I should think) which are held by nobody. But its technical
quality is of some importance in the life of its author. It is worth
consideration as a play, because it is not a play at all. It marks the
culmination and completeness of that victory of Bernard Shaw over the
British public, or rather over their official representatives, of which
I have spoken. Shaw had fought a long fight with business men, those
incredible people, who assured him that it was useless to have wit
without murders, and that a good joke, which is the most popular thing
everywhere else, was quite unsalable in the theatrical world. In spite
of this he had conquered by his wit and his good dialogue; and by the
time of which we now speak he was victorious and secure. All his plays
were being produced as a matter of course in England and as a matter of
the fiercest fashion and enthusiasm in America and Germany. No one who
knows the nature of the man will doubt that under such circumstances his
first act would be to produce his wit naked and unashamed. He had been
told that he could not support a slight play by mere dialogue. He
therefore promptly produced mere dialogue without the slightest play for
it to support. _Getting Married_ is no more a play than Cicero's
dialogue _De Amicitiâ_, and not half so much a play as Wilson's _Noctes
Ambrosianæ_. But though it is not a play, it was played, and played
successfully. Everyone who went into the theatre felt that he was only
eavesdropping at an accidental conversation. But the conversation was so
sparkling and sensible that he went on eavesdropping. This, I think, as
it is the final play of Shaw, is also, and fitly, his final triumph. He
is a good dramatist and sometimes even a great dramatist. But the
occasions when we get glimpses of him as really a great man are on these
occasions when he is utterly undramatic.
From first to last Bernard Shaw has been nothing but a
conversationalist. It is not a slur to say so; Socrates was one, and
even Christ Himself. He differs from that divine and that human
prototype in the fact that, like most modern people, he does to some
extent talk in order to find out what he thinks; whereas they knew it
beforehand. But he has the virtues that go with the talkative man; one
of which is humility. You will hardly ever find a really proud man
talkative; he is afraid of talking too much. Bernard Shaw offered
himself to the world with only one great qualification, that he could
talk honestly and well. He did not speak; he talked to a crowd. He did
not write; he talked to a typewriter. He did not really construct a
play; he talked through ten mouths or masks instead of through one. His
literary power and progress began in casual conversations--and it seems
to me supremely right that it should end in one great and casual
conversation. His last play is nothing but garrulous talking, that
great thing called gossip. And I am happy to say that the play has been
as efficient and successful as talk and gossip have always been among
the children of men.
Of his life in these later years I have made no pretence of telling even
the little that there is to tell. Those who regard him as a mere
self-advertising egotist may be surprised to hear that there is perhaps
no man of whose private life less could be positively said by an
outsider. Even those who know him can make little but a conjecture of
what has lain behind this splendid stretch of intellectual
self-expression; I only make my conjecture like the rest. I think that
the first great turning-point in Shaw's life (after the early things of
which I have spoken, the taint of drink in the teetotal home, or the
first fight with poverty) was the deadly illness which fell upon him, at
the end of his first flashing career as a Saturday Reviewer. I know it
would goad Shaw to madness to suggest that sickness could have softened
him. That is why I suggest it. But I say for his comfort that I think it
hardened him also; if that can be called hardening which is only the
strengthening of our souls to meet some dreadful reality. At least it is
certain that the larger spiritual ambitions, the desire to find a faith
and found a church, come after that time. I also mention it because
there is hardly anything else to mention; his life is singularly free
from landmarks, while his literature is so oddly full of surprises. His
marriage to Miss Payne-Townsend, which occurred not long after his
illness, was one of those quite successful things which are utterly
silent. The placidity of his married life may be sufficiently indicated
by saying that (as far as I can make out) the most important events in
it were rows about the Executive of the Fabian Society. If such ripples
do not express a still and lake-like life, I do not know what would.
Honestly, the only thing in his later career that can be called an event
is the stand made by Shaw at the Fabians against the sudden assault of
Mr. H. G. Wells, which, after scenes of splendid exasperations, ended in
Wells' resignation. There was another slight ruffling of the calm when
Bernard Shaw said some quite sensible things about Sir Henry Irving. But
on the whole we confront the composure of one who has come into his own.
The method of his life has remained mostly unchanged. And there is a
great deal of method in his life; I can hear some people murmuring
something about method in his madness. He is not only neat and
business-like; but, unlike some literary men I know, does not conceal
the fact. Having all the talents proper to an author, he delights to
prove that he has also all the talents proper to a publisher; or even to
a publisher's clerk. Though many looking at his light brown clothes
would call him a Bohemian, he really hates and despises Bohemianism; in
the sense that he hates and despises disorder and uncleanness and
irresponsibility. All that part of him is peculiarly normal and
efficient. He gives good advice; he always answers letters, and answers
them in a decisive and very legible hand. He has said himself that the
only educational art that he thinks important is that of being able to
jump off tram-cars at the proper moment. Though a rigid vegetarian, he
is quite regular and rational in his meals; and though he detests sport,
he takes quite sufficient exercise. While he has always made a mock of
science in theory, he is by nature prone to meddle with it in practice.
He is fond of photographing, and even more fond of being photographed.
He maintained (in one of his moments of mad modernity) that photography
was a finer thing than portrait-painting, more exquisite and more
imaginative; he urged the characteristic argument that none of his own
photographs were like each other or like him. But he would certainly
wash the chemicals off his hands the instant after an experiment; just
as he would wash the blood off his hands the instant after a Socialist
massacre. He cannot endure stains or accretions; he is of that
temperament which feels tradition itself to be a coat of dust; whose
temptation it is to feel nothing but a sort of foul accumulation or
living disease even in the creeper upon the cottage or the moss upon the
grave. So thoroughly are his tastes those of the civilised modern man
that if it had not been for the fire in him of justice and anger he
might have been the most trim and modern among the millions whom he
shocks: and his bicycle and brown hat have been no menace in Brixton.
But God sent among those suburbans one who was a prophet as well as a
sanitary inspector. He had every qualification for living in a
villa--except the necessary indifference to his brethren living in
pigstyes. But for the small fact that he hates with a sickening hatred
the hypocrisy and class cruelty, he would really accept and admire the
bathroom and the bicycle and asbestos-stove, having no memory of rivers
or of roaring fires. In these things, like Mr. Straker, he is the New
Man. But for his great soul he might have accepted modern civilisation;
it was a wonderful escape. This man whom men so foolishly call crazy and
anarchic has really a dangerous affinity to the fourth-rate perfections
of our provincial and Protestant civilisation. He might even have been
respectable if he had had less self-respect.
His fulfilled fame and this tone of repose and reason in his life,
together with the large circle of his private kindness and the regard of
his fellow-artists, should permit us to end the record in a tone of
almost patriarchal quiet. If I wished to complete such a picture I could
add many touches: that he has consented to wear evening dress; that he
has supported the _Times_ Book Club; and that his beard has turned grey;
the last to his regret, as he wanted it to remain red till they had
completed colour-photography. He can mix with the most conservative
statesmen; his tone grows continuously more gentle in the matter of
religion. It would be easy to end with the lion lying down with the
lamb, the wild Irishman tamed or taming everybody, Shaw reconciled to
the British public as the British public is certainly largely reconciled
to Shaw.
But as I put these last papers together, having finished this rude
study, I hear a piece of news. His latest play, _The Showing Up of
Blanco Posnet_, has been forbidden by the Censor. As far as I can
discover, it has been forbidden because one of the characters professes
a belief in God and states his conviction that God has got him. This is
wholesome; this is like one crack of thunder in a clear sky. Not so
easily does the prince of this world forgive. Shaw's religious training
and instinct is not mine, but in all honest religion there is something
that is hateful to the prosperous compromise of our time. You are free
in our time to say that God does not exist; you are free to say that He
exists and is evil; you are free to say (like poor old Renan) that He
would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a metaphor or a
mystification; you may water Him down with gallons of long words, or
boil Him to the rags of metaphysics; and it is not merely that nobody
punishes, but nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a fact, as a
thing like a tiger, as a reason for changing one's conduct, then the
modern world will stop you somehow if it can. We are long past talking
about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent. It
is now thought irreverent to be a believer. I end where I began: it is
the old Puritan in Shaw that jars the modern world like an electric
shock. That vision with which I meant to end, that vision of culture and
common-sense, of red brick and brown flannel, of the modern clerk
broadened enough to embrace Shaw and Shaw softened enough to embrace the
clerk, all that vision of a new London begins to fade and alter. The red
brick begins to burn red-hot; and the smoke from all the chimneys has a
strange smell. I find myself back in the fumes in which I started....
Perhaps I have been misled by small modernities. Perhaps what I have
called fastidiousness is a divine fear. Perhaps what I have called
coldness is a predestinate and ancient endurance. The vision of the
Fabian villas grows fainter and fainter, until I see only a void place
across which runs Bunyan's Pilgrim with his fingers in his ears.
Bernard Shaw has occupied much of his life in trying to elude his
followers. The fox has enthusiastic followers, and Shaw seems to regard
his in much the same way. This man whom men accuse of bidding for
applause seems to me to shrink even from assent. If you agree with Shaw
he is very likely to contradict you; I have contradicted Shaw
throughout, that is why I come at last almost to agree with him. His
critics have accused him of vulgar self-advertisement; in his relation
to his followers he seems to me rather marked with a sort of mad
modesty. He seems to wish to fly from agreement, to have as few
followers as possible. All this reaches back, I think, to the three
roots from which this meditation grew. It is partly the mere impatience
and irony of the Irishman. It is partly the thought of the Calvinist
that the host of God should be thinned rather than thronged; that Gideon
must reject soldiers rather than recruit them. And it is partly, alas,
the unhappy Progressive trying to be in front of his own religion,
trying to destroy his own idol and even to desecrate his own tomb. But
from whatever causes, this furious escape from popularity has involved
Shaw in some perversities and refinements which are almost mere
insincerities, and which make it necessary to disentangle the good he
has done from the evil in this dazzling course. I will attempt some
summary by stating the three things in which his influence seems to me
thoroughly good and the three in which it seems bad. But for the
pleasure of ending on the finer note I will speak first of those that
seem bad.
The primary respect in which Shaw has been a bad influence is that he
has encouraged fastidiousness. He has made men dainty about their moral
meals. This is indeed the root of his whole objection to romance. Many
people have objected to romance for being too airy and exquisite. Shaw
objects to romance for being too rank and coarse. Many have despised
romance because it is unreal; Shaw really hates it because it is a great
deal too real. Shaw dislikes romance as he dislikes beef and beer, raw
brandy or raw beefsteaks. Romance is too masculine for his taste. You
will find throughout his criticisms, amid all their truth, their wild
justice or pungent impartiality, a curious undercurrent of prejudice
upon one point: the preference for the refined rather than the rude or
ugly. Thus he will dislike a joke because it is coarse without asking if
it is really immoral. He objects to a man sitting down on his hat,
whereas the austere moralist should only object to his sitting down on
someone else's hat. This sensibility is barren because it is universal.
It is useless to object to man being made ridiculous. Man is born
ridiculous, as can easily be seen if you look at him soon after he is
born. It is grotesque to drink beer, but it is equally grotesque to
drink soda-water; the grotesqueness lies in the act of filling yourself
like a bottle through a hole. It is undignified to walk with a drunken
stagger; but it is fairly undignified to walk at all, for all walking is
a sort of balancing, and there is always in the human being something of
a quadruped on its hind legs. I do not say he would be more dignified if
he went on all fours; I do not know that he ever is dignified except
when he is dead. We shall not be refined till we are refined into dust.
Of course it is only because he is not wholly an animal that man sees he
is a rum animal; and if man on his hind legs is in an artificial
attitude, it is only because, like a dog, he is begging or saying thank
you.
Everything important is in that sense absurd from the grave baby to the
grinning skull; everything practical is a practical joke. But throughout
Shaw's comedies, curiously enough, there is a certain kicking against
this great doom of laughter. For instance, it is the first duty of a
man who is in love to make a fool of himself; but Shaw's heroes always
seem to flinch from this, and attempt, in airy, philosophic revenge, to
make a fool of the woman first. The attempts of Valentine and Charteris
to divide their perceptions from their desires, and tell the woman she
is worthless even while trying to win her, are sometimes almost
torturing to watch; it is like seeing a man trying to play a different
tune with each hand. I fancy this agony is not only in the spectator,
but in the dramatist as well. It is Bernard Shaw struggling with his
reluctance to do anything so ridiculous as make a proposal. For there
are two types of great humorist: those who love to see a man absurd and
those who hate to see him absurd. Of the first kind are Rabelais and
Dickens; of the second kind are Swift and Bernard Shaw.
So far as Shaw has spread or helped a certain modern reluctance or
_mauvaise honte_ in these grand and grotesque functions of man I think
he has definitely done harm. He has much influence among the young men;
but it is not an influence in the direction of keeping them young. One
cannot imagine him inspiring any of his followers to write a war-song or
a drinking-song or a love-song, the three forms of human utterance
which come next in nobility to a prayer. It may seem odd to say that the
net effect of a man so apparently impudent will be to make men shy. But
it is certainly the truth. Shyness is always the sign of a divided soul;
a man is shy because he somehow thinks his position at once despicable
and important. If he were without humility he would not care; and if he
were without pride he would not care. Now the main purpose of Shaw's
theoretic teaching is to declare that we ought to fulfil these great
functions of life, that we ought to eat and drink and love. But the main
tendency of his habitual criticism is to suggest that all the
sentiments, professions, and postures of these things are not only comic
but even contemptibly comic, follies and almost frauds. The result would
seem to be that a race of young men may arise who do all these things,
but do them awkwardly. That which was of old a free and hilarious
function becomes an important and embarrassing necessity. Let us endure
all the pagan pleasures with a Christian patience. Let us eat, drink,
and be serious.
The second of the two points on which I think Shaw has done definite
harm is this: that he has (not always or even as a rule intentionally)
increased that anarchy of thought which is always the destruction of
thought. Much of his early writing has encouraged among the modern youth
that most pestilent of all popular tricks and fallacies; what is called
the argument of progress. I mean this kind of thing. Previous ages were
often, alas, aristocratic in politics or clericalist in religion; but
they were always democratic in philosophy; they appealed to man, not to
particular men. And if most men were against an idea, that was so far
against it. But nowadays that most men are against a thing is thought to
be in its favour; it is vaguely supposed to show that some day most men
will be for it. If a man says that cows are reptiles, or that Bacon
wrote Shakespeare, he can always quote the contempt of his
contemporaries as in some mysterious way proving the complete conversion
of posterity. The objections to this theory scarcely need any elaborate
indication. The final objection to it is that it amounts to this: say
anything, however idiotic, and you are in advance of your age. This kind
of stuff must be stopped. The sort of democrat who appeals to the babe
unborn must be classed with the sort of aristocrat who appeals to his
deceased great-grandfather. Both should be sharply reminded that they
are appealing to individuals whom they well know to be at a disadvantage
in the matter of prompt and witty reply. Now although Bernard Shaw has
survived this simple confusion, he has in his time greatly contributed
to it. If there is, for instance, one thing that is really rare in Shaw
it is hesitation. He makes up his mind quicker than a calculating boy or
a county magistrate. Yet on this subject of the next change in ethics he
has felt hesitation, and being a strictly honest man has expressed it.
"I know no harder practical question than how much selfishness one ought
to stand from a gifted person for the sake of his gifts or on the chance
of his being right in the long run. The Superman will certainly come
like a thief in the night, and be shot at accordingly; but we cannot
leave our property wholly undefended on that account. On the other hand,
we cannot ask the Superman simply to add a higher set of virtues to
current respectable morals; for he is undoubtedly going to empty a good
deal of respectable morality out like so much dirty water, and replace
it by new and strange customs, shedding old obligations and accepting
new and heavier ones. Every step of his progress must horrify
conventional people; and if it were possible for even the most superior
man to march ahead all the time, every pioneer of the march towards the
Superman would be crucified."
When the most emphatic man alive, a man unmatched in violent precision
of statement, speaks with such avowed vagueness and doubt as this, it is
no wonder if all his more weak-minded followers are in a mere whirlpool
of uncritical and unmeaning innovation. If the superior person will be
apparently criminal, the most probable result is simply that the
criminal person will think himself superior. A very slight knowledge of
human nature is required in the matter. If the Superman may possibly be
a thief, you may bet your boots that the next thief will be a Superman.
But indeed the Supermen (of whom I have met many) have generally been
more weak in the head than in the moral conduct; they have simply
offered the first fancy which occupied their minds as the new morality.
I fear that Shaw had a way of encouraging these follies. It is obvious
from the passage I have quoted that he has no way of restraining them.
The truth is that all feeble spirits naturally live in the future,
because it is featureless; it is a soft job; you can make it what you
like. The next age is blank, and I can paint it freely with my favourite
colour. It requires real courage to face the past, because the past is
full of facts which cannot be got over; of men certainly wiser than we
and of things done which we could not do. I know I cannot write a poem
as good as _Lycidas_. But it is always easy to say that the particular
sort of poetry I can write will be the poetry of the future.