The fantastic phenomenon “G. B. S.,” accredited by popular superstition, after a long campaign on Shaw's part in the interest of creating and fostering the legend, is a phenomenon that obviously never could, never did, nor ever will, exist under the heavens. Indeed, it is one of Mr. Shaw's foibles to insist that he is short of many accomplishments which are fairly common, and in some ways an obviously ignorant, stupid and unready man. Certainly it is not a little strange that with all his remarkable knowledge of modern art, music, literature, economics and politics, he speaks no language but his own, and reads no foreign language, save French, with ease. I remember hearing someone ask Rodin whether Shaw really spoke French. “Ah! no!” replied Rodin, with his genial smile and a faint twinkle of the eyes; “Monsieur Shaw does not speak French. But somehow or other, by the very violence of his manner and gesticulation, he succeeds in imposing his meaning upon you!” Shaw is fond of relating the incident which laid the foundation for his reputation as an Italian scholar. “Once I was in Milan with a party of English folk. We were dining at the railway restaurant, and our waiter spoke no language other than his own. When the moment came to pay and rush for the train, we were unable to make him understand that we wanted not one bill, but twenty-four separate ones. My friends insisted that I must know Italian, so to act as interpreter, I racked my memory for chips from the language of Dante, but in vain. All of a sudden, a line from The Huguenots flashed to my brain: 'Ognuno per se: per tutti il ciel' ('Every man for himself: and heaven for all.') I declaimed it with triumphant success. The army of waiters was doubled up with laughter, and my fame as an Italian scholar has been on the increase ever since.”

As a rule, foreign critics rate Shaw higher as a thinker and philosopher than as wit and dramatist. The painters and sculptors likewise represent him as a personality of tremendous intellectual force. The bust by Rodin—intermediate as a work of art between his busts of Puvis de Chavannes and J. P. Laurens in the Musée de Luxembourg—reveals the thoughtful student, of philosophic insight and tremendous cerebration. Rodin, who finds Shaw “charming,” recently said to Mrs. John van Vorst: “He is perhaps a 'fraud,' as you Americans put it. But the first victim of Bernard Shaw's charlatanism is Bernard Shaw himself. Susceptible to impressions as are all artists, and a philosopher at the same time, he cannot do otherwise than deceive himself. The cold reason which he could, were it unhampered, apply to the problems of this life, is modified, reduced to vapour, by his delicate temperamental sensitiveness and by his keen Irish sense of humour. It is, in fact, to his Irish blood that Bernard Shaw, as we know him, is due. With the cold Anglo-Saxon current only in his veins, he would have proved the 'bore' par excellence who tries to divert us while reforming society, to win our applause by mere idol-breaking.”[246] Also, in the Hon. Neville S. Lytton's portrait of Shaw, after the Innocent X. of Velásquez, there is portrayed the modern pope of wit and wisdom.[247] And the redoubtable logician, the philosophic satirist, is admirably bodied forth in that remarkable photograph of Shaw—the masterpiece in portraiture of Alvin Langdon Coburn.[248]

The real Bernard Shaw is one of the most genial and delightfully entertaining of men. In his London quarters, at Adelphi Terrace, or in the quiet retreat of Ayot St. Lawrence, in Hertfordshire, he is easy, hospitable and unaffectedly natural.[249] In his manner, the combination of light spontaneity with a sort of effusive shyness is peculiarly engaging. There is something strikingly transitory about his presence: one always feels that he has just managed to catch Shaw “on the fly.” While he not infrequently plays up to his reputation for gay self-puffery, in such innocent diversions, for example, as ecstatically admiring the Rodin bust or rhapsodizing over Coburn's prints of him, it is always quite obviously with the humorous consciousness that his listener is sharing in the imposture. The genius of proverbial classification writes like an angel and talks like Poor Poll; Shaw possesses the unique distinction of talking, whether in his own home or upon the public platform, as trenchantly and as brilliantly as he writes. Unlike many celebrated raconteurs, whose ability consists almost solely in pouring forth a flood of polished anecdote and personal reminiscence, Shaw talks with apparent ease and equal wit upon any and every subject that comes to hand, from Richard Wagner to Anthony Comstock, from spiritualism to bicycling, from German philosophy to women's clothes. One is amused to discover that his extreme acuteness in analyzing subjects upon which he is an authority is equalled only by his marvellous glibness in talking of things of which he can really know little or nothing. Far from taking his cue from Coleridge or Wilde and monopolizing the conversation for hours at a time, he makes an attentive and appreciative listener, instantaneously responsive to clever characterization or thoughtful analysis. A great tease and joker, he is perpetually telling upon his friends devastatingly comic stories which they vehemently deny in toto. When he is not poking fun at your views or drawing your fire by carefully directed sarcasm, he is entertaining you with some humorous episode in his own life—a tilt with Anatole France, perhaps, a bit of repartee with which he turned the tables on Gilbert Chesterton, or an illiterate person's joke on Shaw which for the time being completely floored him.

I remember hearing him say that Anatole France and he, among others, were once dining together in Paris, and with great brilliance France spoke uninterruptedly for a long time about the strange type of men called geniuses. At the conclusion, Shaw said: “Yes, I know all about them, for I myself am a genius.” France, who knew virtually nothing of Shaw, was taken aback for only a moment. “Mais oui, monsieur,” he replied, “et une courtisane se nomme une marchande de plaisir!”

Simplicity and unostentation are the keynotes of Shaw's home life. The ornate, the gaudy, the useless are banished from his scheme of things. In his wife, a gracious person of great sweetness, he has both a charming companion and an enthusiastic supporter in all his multifarious activities. Mr. Shaw's retirement from the journalistic lists was signalized by his marriage to Miss Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend, who nursed him back to health and strength—and matrimony—after a serious accident. “I was very ill when I was married,” Mr. Shaw once wrote, “altogether a wreck on crutches and in an old jacket which the crutches had worn to rags. I had asked my friends, Mr. Graham Wallas, of the London School Board, and Mr. Henry Salt, the biographer of Shelley and De Quincey, to act as witnesses, and, of course, in honour of the occasion they were dressed in their best clothes. The registrar never imagined I could possibly be the bridegroom; he took me for the inevitable beggar who completes all wedding processions. Wallas, who is considerably over six feet high, seemed to him to be the hero of the occasion, and he was proceeding to marry him calmly to my betrothed, when Wallas, thinking the formula rather strong for a mere witness, hesitated at the last moment and left the prize to me.”

Shaw is the quintessence of vital energy. He rushes hither and thither, from one task to another, with a feverish, almost frenzied activity. “Bernard Shaw reminds me of a locomotive of the most modern type,” said one of his intimate friends, “perfectly adjusted and running with lightning speed—an engine of tremendous power and efficiency.” One is liable to receive a first impression that Shaw is a delicate and anæmic sort of person—an impression fostered by the mackintosh and gloves he habitually wears and the umbrella he is fond of carrying. Once you have seen the man in action, and realized his abundant vitality and apparently inexhaustible store of nervous energy, you are not surprised to note, in Coburn's nude portrait of Shaw, in the casually affected pose of Rodin's Le Penseur, very massive shoulders and strong muscular development in arms and back. “Mr. Bernard Shaw is New York incarnate,” once wrote Miss Florence Farr. “Both of them are feverish devotees at the altar of work. Empty Mr. Shaw and New York of work and hurry, the man has a headache and closes his eyes in pain; he feels no reason for existence; and the city is a desolation. To Mr. Shaw, as to New York,” she pointedly added: “'doing nothing' is hell and damnation.”[250]

As a conversationist, Mr. Shaw is the most witty and delightful person imaginable. “Shaw is just a great big boy,” one of his intimate friends said to me, “who enjoys life and the world and himself to the fullest extent.” His enjoyment of his own anecdotes, witticisms, and strokes of repartee is irresistibly contagious; you howl with merriment, even when the joke is on you—and untrue to boot, as it often is. Brevity is the soul of his wit; and yet his stories pour forth in a perfect flood, and the coming of the “point” is duly heralded. The bubbling, chuckling note in his voice, the hands rubbed together with lightning-like rapidity, his body convulsively rocking back and forth in his chair—then the “point” with a rush, followed by his mirthfully expressive: “Well, you know——!”; he fairly doubles up, his head is thrown back, his body shakes from head to foot, and his eyes dance and glitter like the sea when struck full by the rays of the sun. His habit is to turn his light batteries of genial sarcasm, satire and irony upon those things which he perceives to be the especial objects of your respect, admiration, or veneration; he invariably depreciates and even ridicules those works of his own which you express an especial liking for. In private conversation, as well as on the platform, he is frequently engaged in drawing your fire and “putting you to your trumps”; and he once laughingly remarked to me that nothing delighted him more than to create around him a miniature reign of terror.[251] Less strongly opinionated persons than himself, when challenged in this way, are occasionally frightened into concealing or belying their real views. I once heard one of Shaw's acquaintances say with much harshness: “The astuteness and acumen of Bernard Shaw is little short of miraculous. His power of making people say precisely what he wants to hear, and at the same time what they don't necessarily believe, is truly phenomenal, almost diabolic.” He always keeps his temper and seldom goes beyond sharp, but good-humoured banter; but when attacked upon some fundamental point in which his convictions are profoundly engaged or the meaning of his life fundamentally misinterpreted, he becomes a dangerous dialectic antagonist who unmasks upon his opponent all the batteries of his keen satire, cutting logic and mordant wit.[252]