G.B.S. AS CLERK

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XVII, 19 November 1927, Page 9

G.B.S. AS CLERK

£lB PER ANNUM. George Bernard Shaw, clerk at eighteen pounds a year! With a vengeance, truth is stranger than fiction. In a recent issue of “ The Clerk,” the world-famous dramatist, who has on occasion not scrupled to compare himself favourably with the Bard of Avon, wrote an article from which, for the delectation and education of Shavian enthusiasts, we may be permitted to quote the following extracts: —

“ Although all my own clerking experience was over before I was 20, I bad, through an accident, been put into a position of trust and activity always previously given to a man of mature years. My employer afterwards testified that I was a treasure (for which I was so ungrateful as to damn his impertinence in the secrecy of my soul), yet the highest salary I touched was either £72 or £B4 pounds a year, I forget which. And I began at £18.” G. B. S. goes on to describe how he visited his former place of employment recently. (The writer of this note has stood at a discreet distance from the great man while he sat in the lounge of Gleneagles Hotel, in Perthshire, Scotland, and descanted on his clerking days.) Speaking of an employee who was contemporaneous with him, he says:—

“He had been there when I was there. He had been there for 40 years. All that time, whilst I was making six or seven reputations, touching nothing that I did not adorn, being abused by all the papers as only the famous are abused, and surveying mankind, if not from China to Peru, at least from Stamboul to Jamaica, he had kept on coming at ten every morning, and going home at five every evening, and was good for another ten years of it. “ And this is what would have happened to me but for the pure accident of my turning out to be the one man in every million or so who happens to have the knack of telling lies so attractively that people go to the theatre to see actors pretending they are true. "Granted that he was nothing like so worn out as I, and was obviously on better terms with himself. Granted that he was none of your English Newman Noggses, but an Irish metropolitan solicitor’s right-hand man. Granted that lie had never entered a third-class carriage in his life; that he despised shorthand as the craft of a common reporter; that he did not know at sight a typewriter from a cashregister. Still, I can not believe that when he and I were youths together | in the 1870’s he intended to be a clerk ■ all his life any more than I did.” i

The reminiscences of this literary Colossus, between whose outstretched and enormous limbs the common ruck of journalism must peep about to find itself a dishonourable grave, end thus, so far as his quondam crony and fellowclerk is concerned:—

“I fled from his majestic presence, recalling many memories.” —But after all, both did their jobs.

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DEATH OF LE QUEUX

There can be few lovers of a closelywoven plot of international complications who will not regret the passing of William F. T. Le Queux, at the age of 63, in Knocke, Belgium, after having written some forty novels of enthralling ■ interest. Algeria, Morocco, Macedonia, Turkey, Montenegro, Serbia, i Albania and many other countries were the hunting-grounds of this entrancing 1 story-teller, who was popular wherever he went. As a result of his wanderings in paths that led him far from the beaten tracks of the ordinary tourist’s itinerary, he picked up an uncanny knowledge of the methods and secrets of international diplomatic service which served as the basis for some of the most brilliant and fascinating fiction ever written. Not only so. He so mastered the essentials of knowledge in this regard that he was in the confidence of more governments than one, and rendered invaluable service in the solution of many grave problems. In the Balkan War, he acted as special correspondent for the London “ Daily Mail.” Not many know that apart from his prowess as a novelist, he was the first amateur wireless enthusiast to broadcast on his own account. ♦ * * * JOHN BUCHAN’S NEW NOVEL In addition to the multitudes of his other activities as managing director of a large publishing house, as member of Parliament, as historian and writer of frequent articles, Buchan has proved himself one of the most entertaining and prolific story-writers this generation has produced. Even at the time when his well-delivered, vigorous and closely-reasoned speech was being uttered in the Commons against the proposed reform of the House of Lords, the publishers announced the appearance of “Witch Wood,” in which his thorough insight into Scottish character and his genius for delineation have full scope. The story is framed in a seventeenth century background. Witches, devils and fairies were real beings then—as real, in the minds of the people, as the English dragoons who hunted the lurking Covenanters like deer over the bare hillsides.

It is chiefly the tale of how David Sempil, the young minister newly settled in his first charge, reacted to his environment, being torn between his allegiance to the Presbyterianism he professed and his admiration (and more) for the Royalist cause as exemplified by many of that persuasion who had befriended him. For guiding some of Montrose’s lost troopers—whom he met by chance at night on the moors—he was made the object of the scorn of hypocritical church members, and before long was excommunicated. In general, we have a splendidly drawn portrait of a genuine seeker for the right way, who perishes in a morass of suspicion and persecution. Buchan is himself a son of the Manse, but few w nld hove expected his ( i........ ( r p3«mcnt cf L r;< an 1 Covenant. (< ' «>n N- xt