SHAW'S VILLAGE

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 553, 9 June 1933, Page 7

SHAW'S VILLAGE

old world r.etreat PICTUREISQUE SPOT IN WHJCH WRITER MAKES HIS HOME. FAR FROM CIYILISATION. Twenty-five miles from Charing Cross is a tiny village so remote from oivilisation that you cannot buy a daily newspaper there. There is no gas, no electricity, no water-main. Ihe village stragigles plcturesquely for half a mile or so by dips and bends, and linally tapers away into the homely and mildly undulating countryside of Hertfordshire. One of the last houses you come to before leaving the village has a quiet, almost ecclesiastical face. Its hricks are of a curious reddish grey, creepermantled, and its windows are wide and lorWjWrites Louis ICatin in the Sunday Dispatch, T-he green front gate does not harmonise very well with it. Dozens of tubby little chimney-pots poke inelegantly from its roofs. This is the house of Mr. Bernard Shaw. And the- village is Ayot St. Lawrence, unlcnown to the outside world a. quarter of a century ago — 6 now famous as the village where Shaw lives and writes and; has his being. "It is a queer place," said Mr. Sh'aw, addressing some of the villagers. "It is a quiet sort of village, and - the last thing of real importance that hapjpened here was, nerhaps, the Flood." ; Mr. Shaw either forgot or was too modest to mention one important happening at Ayot St. Lawrence since the Flood — and that was his coming to live- there. If his fame and glory have not reflected a lustre on his fel-low-villagers he has at lcast brought them an extra measure of prosperity. Every summer week-end motorists and cyclists and hikers dawdle through the only street, trying to ap. pear as though the very last thing they had come for was to seo where "Old G.B.S. lives, you know," or to hope against hope they might catch a second's glance of the genius himself. A dozen of th'em did have that experience the other day, when G.B.S. came along to post a letter. They loolced — and looked. "Didn't it emharrass him?" I asked a villager. "I'd like to see anything emharrass him," was the reply. Affection. They have a humorous sort of afI fection for Mr. Shaw, have the Ayot : people. He has won a place in their hearts, for there's nothing of the snol} sbout him, and he is always ready for a chat. But it took fourteen years to do it. j Typically insular are the Ayot St. I Lawrence folk, treating the idol of th'e highbrows, as he described it, "as an interloper and a suspicious stranger." Mr. Shaw boasts now that he is the | oldest inhabitant of the place, but I came across an older one — an ancient labourer who had lived there since 1864! It is a village of th'e past, is Ayot. : Gro-wth and change here have definitely left it, and the only movement is that of the exodus of young people v/ho will not tolerate the conditions ■ of labour upon the soil. j For Ayot is suffering as most of ! rural England is suffering. At the ! time of the 1921 Census the populaj tion was 137. In 1921 it was 110. | Now it is 93. I Th'ey won't work on the land, the j younger Ayot generation, and they ; migrate to the towns nearby-A-to the . new town of Welwyn Garden Oity four miles away, or St. Alhans, seven miles away. "When I was a young woman," , mourned a villager in my 'ears, "there ' were forty children going to the school. Now there are only five." For Bad Conduct. G.B.S. made a characteristic sug- 1 gestion regarding the school when th'e lady of the manor told him she j thought he ought to give a prize to 1 the scholars. She herself, she said, gave a prize for the best-conducted boy or girl. The reply of G.B.S. was j an offer to give a bad-conduct prize j to the worse-conducted boy or girl, ; and he and the lady of the manor j would watch their careers to nnd out ; wbich really turned out th'e best — j the rightly-eonducted or the wrongly- | conducted one. But his idea- was 1 never adopted. ! Now, alas, there are only five child- ! ren on whom to conduct the experi- i ment. Ayot St. Lawrence has become a village of country houses, or rich , people who, like Mr. Shaw, want a j peaceful haven for their work and ' week-ends. The haphazard dsvelop- j ment which has revised rural England j even in the remotest byways has halt- i ed here. It is unlilcely that "progress" of j this sort will eventuate at Ayot — at ; least in Mr. Shaw's time — for a rich loeal landowner has bought most of the 750 acres which compi^ise the manor, and he will not countenance iil-conceived erection of bricks and mortar on Ayot's lovely meads and grasses. 1 Mr. Shaw does not mix with the soclal life of Ayot. This tiny village is divided into two opposing factions, ; and, as one resident described it to 1 me, "It is a very unh'appy village." j When Bernard Shaw addressed the ' women's institute he referred to this ! antagoni'sm, and told them how to conduct it. He advised the women: , Apart from an oecasional lecture, "Learn to quarrel in the proper politd- j cal way. When you feel like letting yourself rip, call the other lady j names, and when you have finished let [ her get up and tell you off in the same way. When you have finished, gd to tea together. If you do that, your institute will be a great success." ' I For the first tiime for1 many years Ayot had a rural council election last ; year. Thirty-Six voters went to the j poll. 1 Every day at about half-pagt four I Mr. Sh'aw takes a stroll to the post j offiee, which is about 200 yards from his house. And from six to seven j

you may see his lithe, alert figure, with the white straw hat, striding rapidly around the quiet and scented lanes, fulfilling .his regular evening constitutdonal. He .lpoks, rather like a debonair young faun th'an the se(ptpagenarian to whom the local women's institute last July sent a message of congratulation on his reaching* his seventy-sixth birthday. On one occasion at the end of last summer he leetured to a group of hikers in the garden which fronts_ th'e old church. He wag- dressed entirely in red, I was told, and- worp a red straw hat. Famous though it is, Ayot is sfjill almost literally an island, l se-V-eral miles from; a railway station or a main soad, and except for those who come to stare at the house of G.B.S. it sees no trafSe or strangers. Mr. Sh'aw is a keen pho^ographer, and he has given .some of the negatives to the post-mistress, The reprodnctions are best-sellers among the week-end visifors. ''I have hundreds of photographs' of Ayot St. Lawrence taken in all seasons during the last 25 years," Mr. ShaW told me.