Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's LifeAlec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel)
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Thirteen Years of a Busy Woman's Life
Alec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel)
Alec-Tweedie, Mrs. (Ethel), -1940; Great Britain -- Intellectual life -- 20th century
“Never read it in my life.”
“What! never read your own masterpiece!”
“No, madam. I am afraid you have made a mistake.”
“What! You do not mean to say that you are not Bernard Shaw?”
“No. I’m only Lewis Morris, the poet.”
Momentary collapse of the old lady, and amusement of my neighbour. By
this time I was in fits. Shaw having telegraphed he would not come in
till the meat course was over, Sir Lewis Morris had asked me if he
might take his place.
Old Lady (collecting herself): “Never mind. You had better sign your
autograph, all the same.”
And, not knowing whether to laugh or scowl, Sir Lewis Morris put on his
glasses and wrote his name, then turning to me, said:
“Well, that was a funny adventure.”
Bernard Shaw himself arrived a little later, and sitting near us,
waited for the moment when he was to get up and reply for the drama.
Being a vegetarian, he had avoided the first part of the dinner.
A merry twinkle hung round his eye all the time he talked, and with
true Irish brogue he duly pronounced all his _wh_’s as such, and mixed
up _will_ and _shall_! His red beard was almost grey, and his face has
become older and more worn since success weighed him down, and wealth
oppressed him so deeply.
I could not agree with Lewis Morris’s self-depreciatory remark that
few people “read my sort of stuff,” for I learnt on very excellent
authority that publishers have sold more than forty-five thousand
copies of his _Epic of Hades_—not bad for poetic circulation—and that
this and the _Songs of Two Worlds_ shared between them sixty editions.
Poor Lewis Morris died a few months after this little comedy occurred.
To continue with G. B. S., here may be given the recollection of a
luncheon at his home one day.
From dinners to a luncheon!—well, that is no great digression. Longer,
certainly, than from luncheon to dinner, with five o’clock tea thrown
in. To part from Bernard Shaw is too impossible.
“_Mrs. Bernard Shaw_” is the name upon the little oak gate across the
stairway leading to the second-floor flat near the Strand.
Below are a club, offices, and other odds and ends, above and beyond
the gate the great G. B. S. is to be found. “Bring your man to lunch
here,” was the amusing reply I received to a note asking the Shaws to
dine and meet “George Birmingham” (the Rev. James Hannay), the famous
Irish novelist.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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