Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences

								




     XV. Miscellaneous                                  175

           Mr Arthur Henderson, M.P.—Lord Derby—Miss

           Elizabeth Robins—Mr Frank Mullings—Mr Harold

           Bauer—Mr Emil Sauer—Mr Vladimir de Pachmann



    XVI. Cathedral Musical Festivals                    187



   XVII. People of the Theatre                          199

           Sir Herbert Tree—Mr Gordon Craig—Mr Henry

           Arthur Jones—Mr Temple Thurston—Miss Janet

           Achurch—Miss Horniman.


XVIII. Berlin and Some of its People                  212



    XIX. Some Musicians                                 226

           Edvard Grieg—Sir Frederick H. Cowen—Dr Hans

           Richter—Sir Thomas Beecham—Sir Charles

           Santley—Mr Landon Ronald—Mr Frederic Austin



     XX. Two Chelsea Rags, 1914 and 1918                239



    XXI. More Musicians                                 246

           Professor Granville Bantock—Mr Frederick

           Delius—Mr Joseph Holbrooke—Dr Walford Davies

           —Dr Vaughan Williams—Dr W. G. McNaught—Mr

           Julius Harrison—Mr Rutland Boughton—Mr John

           Coates—Mr Cyril Scott



   XXII. People I would like to meet                    263


XXIII. Night Clubs                                    273



         Index                                          283

CHAPTER I
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

It was when I was a very young man indeed that I caught and succumbed
to my first attack of Shaw-fever. I do not remember how I caught it;
something in the Manchester air, no doubt, was responsible for my
malady, for a handful of “intellectual” Manchester people had most
daringly produced a complete Shaw play, and, though I had not
witnessed the play, I had read it, and it was with delight that I saw
The Manchester Guardian saying about You Never Can Tell just the
very things I had myself already thought. I found that in my suburban
circle of friends I was regarded as harbouring “advanced” ideas. Shaw,
I was told, was “dangerous.” This bucked me up enormously, and I
thereupon wrote a long essay on Ibsen’s A Doll’s House and, desiring
further to astonish and bewilder my friends, got into communication
with Bernard Shaw with a view to having the essay published in
pamphlet form. When it was known in Manchester suburbia that Shaw had
written to me, a boy still at school, my friends could not decide
whether I was cleverer than they had hitherto supposed or Mr Bernard
Shaw more foolish than seemed possible.
I have never completely recovered from that first attack of
Shaw-fever; like ague, it sleeps in my bones and, from time to time,
makes its presence known by little convulsions that are disturbing
enough while they last, but which generally die pretty quickly.
It was in the middle of 1901 that I wrote to Mr Shaw about the
particular brand of socialism from which at that time I was