BATH-CRASHING G.B.S.

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 1063, 29 August 1930, Page 14

BATH-CRASHING G.B.S.

SHAW TALKS TO A NEW ZEALANDER AN IMPUDENT INTERVIEW (Written tor THE SUN) r V TALL, trim figure in light grey stepped smartly down Pall Mall and turned the corner into Carlton House Terrace. Trembling with the trepidation and elation a nervous elephant stalker must feel when he is trying to get within range of a crashing bull, I stepped out after tho man. A group of road-menders downed tools. “Look,” one said, “there goes old Bernard, there ’e is.” They looked after the grey figure. A moment of awful realisation came over me, like that which appals one as the tooth-puller says “Open wide, please,” or like the sensation of a first airplane flight when one discovers that although the peak of a mountain is opposite there is no bulk of solid land under one. My legs, working involuntarily _ overhauled him. “You’ve seen him, now quit and run,” my faint heart told me. But, I reasoned with myself, saying, “Was this not one of the things you travelled 13,000 miles and waited for a year to do? Do it, then! He can only say. Be off with you!’” My plans had been carefully laid, too. I had found out the time and route of his early walk, the day he would be back in town. I had even searched out the place where he takes his morning dip and had watched him, first weigh his slim, splendidly-kept body, then fling himself off the five-foot springboard—and a good dive, too —legs straight, feet together, and then swim three or four lengths. He swam soberly with a deep, quiet enjoyment of his breaststroke and his overarm (which was not strictly orthodox), his fluffy beard draggling in the water. Like a hungry faun, parting the bushes about bathing nymphs, I watched him, feeling some little shame and yet confident that this was one of those things which w;ere worth running the gauntlet of ignominity for. Yes, it was too late to quit now. Cutting the corner, I came up with him, trying abortively to frame some polite and yet striking mode of approach. I fumbled off my hat: “Pardon me, sir . . .” He turned and smiled, a cheery, intensely kind smile, with no trace of annoyance: no quizzical raising of eyebrows. He might have been expecting some one to dog his footsteps and accost him without an iota of excuse on the corner of Carlton House Terrace. Rapidly, brokenly, I told him my pame and my country and tried to make a clean breast of the bathing pool conspiracy. “A New Zealander?” he said. “Come, then, let’s go and talk on Westminster Bridge.” His walk did not slacken and I kept pace with him, aware that the passers-by were seeing me walking in the sun with George Bernard Shaw. I tried to show my knowledge of the connection between the bridge and Macaulay’s New Zealander, fumbled for words, talked jerkily, incomprehensibly. Suffering me kindly, he spoke about New Zealand. It was windy there, was it not? He was trying, from sheer beautiful courtesy to put me at ease. This was astounding. I tried to get off some good lines about New Zealand weather and English. English people were such bad publicists with their old joke about summer falling on a Wednesday, but the two summers I had experienced here were magnificent: much better than ours. I failed —sank into incomprehensibility again, was overcome with confusion. I realised that his face was pink and lively after his swim,-that his eyes were the kindest blue one could see, that he wore a collar of broad blue and white stripes. Still he bore with me, telling me that the summer had been late in starting, very late. Not a drip of an epigram, not a suggestion of a paradox, not a scintilla of hyperbole. Then it was that I confessed I rvas a journalist. “I hope that you are not trying to interview me?” He was forbearance personified. “Not if you don't wish it, sir.” I tried to explain that this was what 1 had wished to do for years, ever since I had laughed myself to tears over “Androcles and the Lion,” when I was a schoolboy; that my journalistic courage was greater than my personal courage; and that by convincing myself that this was an “interview,” I had plucked up enough spunk to do it . . . He did not seem to relish the story. “Oh.” he said. „ "You see,” he said, as we paced over the Horse Guards’ Parade and headed for the archway with the plated and plumed sentries, “by trying to interview me you are taking away my livelihood, for I am a journalist, too.” He continued, pleasantly, kindly. "Now, one might interview a famous physician or an artist or a millionaire, or a world’s champion pugilist. . . It might help them, but interview a journalist . . .!” He allowed the lesson to sink in, flattering me with the idea that I might trespass on his territory, and in the same stroke administering the mildest of rebukes. There was nothing dogmatic, overbearing, about him. He always waited for me to speak, tempted me to, and, if I managed to splutter anything out, waited for the splutter. The courtesy of his conversation was confounding; he almost made me think that he had met me by kindly design. And this was the revolutionist, the inventor, the man who stood the world on its head and wrote about it with calm, devilish deliberation—so they said ’ As we passed the stock-still sentry he said meditatively: “Oh, yes, they come to see me as one of the sights of London, like St. Paul’s.” He talked with the complacency with which an old lion at the zoo might chat to a cub about the inquisitive gazers outside the bars. He told me he was an old man. . . . Then he showed interest in me again and skipped lightly out of the way of a bus as we crossed Whitehall. When I caught him again he asked me if I intended to return to New Zealand, and he began to talk about journalism, pointing out that ihe plums of the profession were few. “There is only one editor of ‘The Times,’ you know” . . . that though a

good workmanlike article probably required more knowledge of men and their ways, more investigation, more ability at construction than a book, yet the writers of books. . . . I saw that he was trying to tell me that journalism was something of a dead end; that the writers of books, even bad books, were more likely to reach for the plums in the world’s orchard. He was giving me, an impudent street opportunist, kindly, excellent advice. He talked about his early days in journalism, how he used to write for a weekly, two thousand words or so. about any subject—musical or dramatic or literary criticism—and, how he had been accused of not being able to handle a newsstory. So he had showed ’em and got a story, two hours before the news men. He laughed at the memory. This was the first faint gleam of egotism. We had reached Whitehall Court. He stood on the lower step and put out his hand. "Good-bye,” he said, and the smile added “Good luck.” “Just a moment, sir,” I said, for 1 had remembered the idea which had first prompted a novel interview. Arnold Dolmetsch, the maker and player of old English instruments, had told me that Shaw wore five-toed socks, specially made for him. “Do you, sir—this is ait indecent question—do you wear five-toed socks?” There was not the slightest suggestion of surprise or reproval on his face as he said “Five-toed socks? Good gracious, no! Why?” I explained the origin of the question. “What could have tempted Arnold to have said that?” he queried. “Five-toed socks, no, no!” He ran up the steps, that tall slim figure in grey, who had expressed anxiety that my writing should affect his livelihood—George Bernard Shaw. lAN D. COSTER. London.