Books: Shaw’s Friends

WILLIAM MORRIS AS I KNEW HIM— George Bernard Shaw—Dodd, Mead ($1.50).

One of the few great British writers whose reputation has not bloomed abroad as well as at home is William Morris, Pre-Raphaelite, craftsman, for whom the Morris chair was named, child prodigy (he read the Waverly novels at the age of 4), interior decorator, architect, wealthy Socialist, amazingly prolific poet and creator of stained glass windows. Morris was the leading figure among British Socialists when George Bernard Shaw, 22 years younger, first met him. Shaw, author of five unpublished novels, principally known as a speaker in seething, rapidly-shifting London radical circles, was editing a small magazine at that time. To fill its pages he reached into the treasury of his unpublished fiction, one sample of which so entertained Morris that he asked to meet the author. The result was a friendship that lasted as long as Morris lived. Last week Shaw offered U. S. readers his pleasant reminiscences of his friend in a 52-page memoir originally published in England as the foreword to a monumental, expensive ($20.75) biography of Morris written by his daughter.

The book is primarily of interest to Shaw’s admirers, since it takes for granted a great deal of information about Morris which few U. S. readers are likely to possess. Reveling in the factional fights, manifestoes, grandiose plans and pitiful performances that then distinguished English Socialism, Shaw was more at horns among them than Morris, who was a radical from a strong sense of moral duty and an even stronger revulsion from the ugliness of industrialism. Morris was a “very great literary artist” but his tremendous vocabulary was often no help in describing uncongenial modern things. Shaw would suggest the right word, whereupon Morris would gasp with relief. Morris was infuriated with hecklers at debates, while Shaw courted them, so that Shaw would be put forward to demolish foolish questioners while Morris would retreat to the background, pulling his mustache and growling, “Damfool! Damfool!” Such assistance made Shaw feel as though he had given “a penny to a millionaire who has bought a newspaper and found his pockets empty.” Spending much time in Morris’ home, where the only social drawbacks were Shaw’s vegetarianism and Mrs. Morris’ aloof silences, Shaw soon fell in love with Morris’ beautiful daughter, May. The equally beautiful, stately and cool Mrs.

Morris, whose portrait was painted by most of the Pre-Raphaelites, addressed one remark to Shaw. Annoyed by his vegetarianism, she once served him a rich pudding, told him triumphantly after he had eaten two helpings with relish: “It will do you good; there’s suet in it.” Thereafter she never said a word to him.

Shaw admired Morris’ daughter from afar until on one occasion he saw her staring at him carefully and quite deliberately make “a gesture of assent with her eyes.” Deciding that he could not, as a brother-Communist, commit Morris’ “beautiful daughter to a desperately insolvent marriage,” Shaw said nothing to her. Still he believed that in some mystic way they were betrothed, and that she knew it, was consequently stunned when she ran off with a Comrade named Sparling, who was even poorer than himself. Nor was that all, for the rival’s possibilities of future eminence were, Shaw rightly felt, more limited than his own.

The young couple invited Shaw to live with them when overwork brought on a breakdown. Says he: “It was probably the happiest passage in our three lives.” But soon his Mystic Betrothal began to assert itself. “I had to consummate it or vanish.” His friendship with the inoffensive Sparling made the thought of stealing his wife revolting. Nor could the three friends arrange a divorce because Shaw could not afford to marry and Sparling could not afford to be divorced. Moreover, the scandal would have damaged the Cause. Shaw left. To his astonishment Sparling left soon after. May Morris got a divorce, resumed her maiden name. Although Shaw recognized that it was his own fault for not having told her how he felt before she married, he could never get over a feeling she should have known it anyway, still regards the mix up “as the most monstrous breach of faith in the history of romance.”