Timely Letters from a Libertarian
A new book of George Bernard Shaw's letters to The Times compiled by Ronald Ford provides a fascinating insight into the wit and genius of a novelist, playwright and prolific letter writer, who witnessed much in his lifetime.
Among the many words of wisdom attributed to George Bernard Shaw is the maxim “Liberty means responsibility”. Shaw certainly considered his own liberty as a citizen of the world, and his position as one of its most revered writers, a very great privilege and he devoted as much time as his intensely demanding career allowed to campaigning for the liberty of others. The forum chiefly used by Shaw for this purpose was The Times newspaper and it was in its pages that his wit and genius first came to light long before he achieved fame as a playwright.
Between 1898 and 1950 Shaw wrote nearly 170 letters to The Times in which he declared his views on the failures of modern society as well as expressing his opinions on an entire range of developments. Most of these concerns were of the highest importance but others were a little more light-hearted. Now, having been unavailable for more than 50 years, Ronald Ford has painstakingly retrieved these letters from the archives for a new collection. Together they represent yet another dimension of the life of this incredibly gifted and valiant Irishman.
Shaw lived a tremendously long time by any standards, his life roughly spanning the century from 1850 to 1950. Consequently, the landscape of this collection is highly diverse. We see a new world order emerge from the shadow of the old one. Close to the beginning we have Shaw enthusiastically penning letters calling for the introduction of electric street-lighting in the London suburb he had made his home. One of the final, and most powerful, letters sees Shaw warn readers about the awesome destructive power of the Atomic Bomb.
Shaw was already 40 when he had his first letter published in The Times, but the man who wrote it was a far cry from the indomitable intellectual he was to become. By the close of the nineteenth century Shaw was merely another brain for hire, who found erratic and poorly paid employment in a number of publications as a drama critic, concert reviewer (often going under the cheeky pseudonym of Corno di Basetto), and art expert. He was also beginning to write the first of many plays. His work in all of these areas received the same response: indifference. If his artistic voice was not going to be listened to Shaw decided to create a public voice with which he would make himself heard.
For this reason Shaw looked longingly to the august pages of The Times, the flagship newspaper of the British Empire. After having several letters rejected he finally made his debut with a letter clarifying the role of juries in murder trials. Three years later he was writing as a member of the St Pancras Health Committee, alerting the people of London to a developing smallpox epidemic in the Borough. From then on he was rarely absent from the paper for longer than six months, staying in touch with home affairs wherever he went and even telegraphing letters from far-flung corners of the Earth.
The first half of the twentieth century saw Shaw turn the letters' page into his own arena, using it to attack all that he disagreed with in modern civilization, including corporal and capital punishment, vivisection, racism, the employment of children, medical cartels, the greed of publishers and the need for armed conflict. He also used it as a platform to champion socialism, education, the rights of women as well as more personal causes such as the establishment of a National Theatre, the ending of censorship and the eradication of “slovenly speech”.
In every one of these letters, whether the topic is economics, health, art or science, Shaw knows his subject inside out, but the real pleasure comes from the way he uses ordinary words to effortlessly deflate the arguments of his enemies. His hatred of cruelty, hypocrisy and laziness at every social level and the urgency of his appeal to put an end to poverty mean that his letters remain very modern in their approach. His writing style is superbly droll while also being relentlessly vigorous, with a joke usually being the sure sign that he has embedded his sword once and for all in his opponent's side.
On the question of the force-feeding of suffragettes, he invites the Home Secretary to enjoy a sumptuous meal as thanks for looking after the women he has put in prison. The typical Shavian catch is that he must consume it through his nose. After his plays are refused performance permission Shaw publishes a personal statement which he regards as a sincere effort to make sense of the draconian censorship laws. To his bafflement Shaw reports that his statement caused hysteria up and down the corridors of the Lord Chamberlain's Office, with many officials stealing copies to show their friends.
Later in the same debacle Shaw is brought before the Censorship Committee. Here he must have tied the argument of the entire committee in such knots that even the beleaguered Bishop of Southwark was forced to agree that: “Morality needed a good deal of overhauling”. This prompted a dumbfounded fellow committee member to ask the Bishop “whether he had become a disciple of mine.”
Perhaps the funniest letter concerns Shaw's feelings of disgust at the dress of wealthy women. He gives an account of going to Covent Garden only for a woman to sit down in front of him who has “stuck over her right ear the pitiable corpse of a large white bird, which looked exactly as if someone had killed it by stamping on its breast and nailed it to the ladies' temple”. Shaw suggests that: “If I had presented myself at the doors with a dead snake round my neck, a collection of black beetles pinned to my shirtfront and a grouse in my hair, I should have been refused permission.” This collection is as good a representation of the vast scope of Shaw's mind as anyone could want. It is a timeless and perfect illustration of what imagination, humour, common sense and the written word can achieve when they are combined.π