Book Description

This book contains all known so far 151 aphoristic entries in the diaries of Beatrice Webb about her lifelong friend Bernard Shaw written between 1893 and 1943 and edited by a leading contemporary Shavian Vitaly Baziyan. On 12 February 1943 Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary: "Kingsley Martin [Editor of the New Statesman] and Raymond Mortimer here for tea and talk. He and Kingsley Martin wanted me to contribute extracts from my diary about Bernard Shaw. I told them that would be undesirable. Our relations with GBS had been those of warm friendship and courteous co-operation, but nearly all the entries in the diaries were about our brilliant friend's troublesome antics, his queer dealing with current events and contemporary personalities, and were, in a sense, mainly critical. Sidney [Webb] and he had co-operated and he had always been most generous in his appreciation of our work. He was a great dramatist, but whimsical in his dealings with other men. I preferred to abstain from any quotation from the diaries until both the Shaws and the Webbs were no longer living personalities. . . ." This time has now come. Beatrice Webb's keenest observations about the greatest dramatist Bernard Shaw are available for readers and represent an important source for the study of British cultural, social and political history. They help to get a clearer picture of world-renowned Irish playwright and Nobel laureate who was subsequently awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature as well as other celebrities of her time. Here are some aphorisms from Beatrice Webb: 'Bernard Shaw is a perfect 'house friend'-self-sufficient, witty and tolerant, going his own way and yet adapting himself to your ways. If only he would concentrate his really brilliant intellect on some consecutive thought.' 'Persons with no sense of humour regard him as a combined Don Juan and a professional blasphemer of the existing order. An artist to the tips of his fingers and an admirable craftsman. Above all a brilliant talker, and, therefore, a delightful companion. Some people would call him a cynic-he is really an Idealist of the purest water. He has also a clientele among the cynical journalists and men of the world. Shaw lives in a drama or comedy of which he himself is the hero-his amour propre is satisfied by the jealousy and restless devotion of half a dozen women, all cordially hating each other.' 'What a comfort to be a fanatic. It is Bernard Shaw's fanaticism to turn everything inside out and see whether the other side won't do just as well if not better; it is this fanaticism which gives him genuine charm. He has a sort of affectionateness too, underneath his vanity.' 'Everything he explains or proposes, in practical detail, is just the old Fabian stuff-measures which certainly have no necessary connection with his dogma of Equality of Income and Compulsory Labour-the income and the work to be wholly unconnected with each other. This strange dogma is nowhere justified.' 'GBS has had in his later years an immensely successful career alike in prestige and riches; he has been adored and flattered by the smart set of intellectuals at home and by more substantial minds abroad. In his old age few and far between have been his outspoken detractors. But he is not satisfied with his reputation as an artist. He hungers after acceptance as a great thinker and social reconstructor. Which he is not, never has been, and never could be. But why should he expect to be a superman in social reconstruction? He does not claim to be a mathematician.' 'What a transformation scene from those first years I knew him: the scathing bitter opponent of wealth and leisure, and now! the adored one of the smartest and most cynical set of English Society.' 'GBS is gambling with ideas and emotions in a way that distresses slow-minded prigs like Sidney and I, and hurts those with any fastidiousness.'