Chapter VI
. for Shaw's own account of his conversion by Henry George.
[39] No more significant contradiction between practice and conviction can be found in Shaw's career than lies inherent in the fact that he began life by collecting Irish rents! “These hands have grasped the hard-earned shillings of the sweated husbandman, and handed them over, not to the landlord--he, poor devil! had nothing to do with it--but to the mortgagee, with a suitable deduction for my principal who taught me these arts.” Not without its spice of humour, also, is the fact that Shaw is to-day an absentee landlord, having derived from his mother an estate on which her family lived for generations by mortgaging. No wonder that Mr. Shaw contemplates with mingled feelings that process, which he has condemned from a thousand platforms, being carried on in his name between his agents and his mortgagees!
[40] _Who I Am, and What I Think._--Part I. In the _Candid Friend_, May 11th, 1901.
[41] Entering the Colonial Office twenty-five years ago, he served as Colonial Secretary of the Island of Jamaica from 1899 to 1904, and on three occasions served as Acting Governor. From 1905 to 1907 he was principal clerk in the West African Department; in April, 1907, he was appointed Governor of Jamaica, to succeed Sir Alexander Swettenham, and he was made a K.C.M.G. on King Edward's birthday in 1907.
[42] _Life of Francis Place._ Longmans, 1898.
[43] Peculiarly sad are the subsequent details of Clarke's life. After saving about a thousand pounds by frenziedly working away for several years as a journalist, he lost it all again in an unfortunate investment in the Liberator Building Society--the enterprise of the notorious Jabez Balfour. With an assured reputation as a journalist and author, Clarke might have repaired his fortunes. But the first great influenza epidemic almost killed him; and each year thereafter the epidemic laid upon him its increasingly tenacious grip. At last he sought to regain his health by foreign travel, only to die in Herzegovina. Clarke was the first leading Fabian to fall.
[44] In this connection, compare _Socialism in England_, by Sidney Webb. Swan, Sonnenschein and Co., 1890.
[45] The society was entitled “The Fellowship of the New Life,” and its first manifesto was entitled _Vita Nuova_. The following was its original basis, as drawn up by Mr. Maurice Adams, and adopted on November 16th, 1883:
“We, recognizing the evils and wrongs that must beset men so long as our social life is based upon selfishness, rivalry and ignorance, and desiring above all things to supplant it by a life based upon unselfishness, love and wisdom, unite, for the purpose of realizing the higher life among ourselves, and of inducing and enabling others to do the same.
“And we now form ourselves into a Society, to be called the Guild of the New Life, to carry out this purpose.”
[46] Compare _Memorials of Thomas Davidson, the Wandering Scholar_, collected and edited by William Knight. T. Fisher Unwin, London, 1907.
[47] Tract No. 2, dated 1884, which is now very rare, has for motto the words of the late John Hay:
“For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And, though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.”
Certain sections of this manifesto deserve quotation as illustrative of Shaw's original and characteristic mode of expression:
“That, under existing circumstances, wealth cannot be enjoyed without dishonour, or forgone without misery.
“That the most striking result of our present system of farming out the national land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners and no appetites at the other.
“That the State should compete with private individuals--especially with parents--in providing happy homes for children, so that every child may have a refuge from the tyranny or neglect of natural custodians.
“That men no longer need special political privileges to protect them against women; and that the sexes should henceforth enjoy equal political rights.
“That the established Government has no more right to call itself the State than the smoke of London has to call itself the weather. “That we had rather face a civil war than such another century of suffering as the present one has been.”
Tract No. 3, addressed “To Provident Landlords and Capitalists,” urged the proprietary classes to support “all undertakings having for their object the parcelling out of waste or inferior lands among the labouring class, and the attachment to the soil of a numerous body of peasant proprietors.” Among the probable results of such a reform was mentioned (section 5): “The peasant proprietor, having a stock in the country, will, unlike the landless labourer of to-day, have a common interest with the landlord in resisting revolutionary proposals.”
[48] Compare Fabian Tract No. 41.
[49] _The Transition to Social Democracy_, an address delivered on September 7th, 1888, to the Economic Section of the British Association at Bath. Printed in _Fabian Essays_, but first published in _Our Corner_, November, 1888, edited by Annie Besant.
[50] Tract No. 41, _The Fabian Society: Its Early History_, by G. Bernard Shaw.
[51] The main facts of the history of the Fabian Society as here recorded are derived chiefly from Fabian Tract, No. 41, _The Fabian Society: Its Early History_, by Mr. Shaw, and from conversations with Mr. Shaw. Compare, also, _The Fabian Society_, by William Clarke; Preface to _Fabian Essays_. Ball Publishing Co., Boston, 1908.
[52] For an interesting account of the early movements of Socialistic consciousness in England, compare _An Artist's Reminiscences_, by the artist, Walter Crane; Chapter “Art and Socialism,” pp. 249-338. Methuen and Co., 1907.
[53] Shaw's mother was never able to persuade herself, so strong were her aristocratic instincts, that in becoming a Socialist, George had not allied himself with a band of ragamuffins. One day, while walking down Regent Street with her son, she inquired who was the handsome gentleman on the opposite side. On being told that it was Cunninghame Graham, the distinguished _Socialist_, she protested: “No, no, George, that's impossible. Why, that man's a gentleman!”
[54] Compare _To-Day_, edited by Hubert Bland, for the year 1886.
[55] This manifesto, in full, is to be found in Fabian Tract No. 41, pp. 13-14.
[56] Tract No. 41: _The Fabian Society: Its Early History_, by G. Bernard Shaw.
THE CART AND TRUMPET
“I leave the delicacies of retirement to those who are gentlemen first and literary workmen afterwards. The cart and trumpet for me.”--_On Diabolonian Ethics._ In _Three Plays for Puritans_, p. xxii.
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