Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences

								

and on 19th December 1901 wrote to me from Piccard’s Cottage,
Guildford, saying: “If you will let me know when you are coming to
London, I will make an appointment with pleasure and give you what
help I can.”
A few weeks later I went to Guildford, but I went there with a guilty
secret hidden in my breast. The secret was this. My publishers did not
care about issuing a complete book devoted to Bernard Shaw and all his
works. I gathered, much to my amazement, that they did not think him
of sufficient importance. The astounding idea was then suggested that
half my book should be concerned with Bernard Shaw and the other half
with Mr George Moore. Now, at the time of my visit to Guildford, I had
not imparted this information to Mr Shaw. I did not anticipate that he
would like the suggestion and I thought it wiser to disclose it to
him by word of mouth rather than by letter.
I came upon Mr Shaw taking photographs in the little front garden of
Piccard’s Cottage. It was a winter’s day and an inch of snow lay upon
the ground; yet he wore no overcoat. He insisted upon taking my
photograph. He took me sitting. He took me standing. And when he had
grown tired of playing with his new toy, he suggested that we should
go into the house.
There a hideous surprise awaited me. Lying upon the sofa of the study
was an open copy of the current week’s Candid Friend, a most
brilliant and most ruthless paper edited by Mr Frank Harris.
“There is something there,” said Shaw, nodding in the direction of the
sofa, “that should interest you, I think.”
I sat down, took up the paper and looked at the open pages. To my
horror I saw a most brutal, murderously clever full-page caricature of
Mr Hall Caine on one side, and on the other a long and most hostile
review of my stupid little book on the famous novelist.... Shaw, tall
and erect, stood looking at me a little malignantly, and, on the
instant, I was on my guard.
I read the review word by word and examined the caricature very
closely. The article was amazingly good, but, as I read it, I did so
wish it had been written about a book by somebody else. Frank Harris
himself, I think, had written the article and Frank Richardson had
drawn the caricature. I looked up at Shaw and smiled.
“Awfully good, don’t you think?” I said.
He nodded, and by his manner seemed to express approval of the way in
which I had come through the ordeal. He showed me some photographs he
had taken—not very good photographs. One, taken by his wife, I think,
showed Bernard Shaw with his arm round a female scarecrow; leaning
slightly forward, he was leering at it with narrowed eyes.
During lunch Shaw devoured a large number of vegetarian dishes and
drank water, whilst Mrs Shaw and I ate meat and drank wine. It was, I
think, the mellowing influence of a basin of raisins that loosed his
tongue and set him talking without cessation. He spoke of Karl Marx