Set Down in Malice: A Book of Reminiscences — Story, Setting & Ideas

high regard of Janet Achurch.

“But she uses her voice wrongly. It is quite the finest voice on the stage and, perhaps because she knows it is so fine, she is always trying experiments with it. For a Shakespeare passage, for example, she will plan out what I may call a scheme of sound; sound that will rise and fall with the passion and decline of the words, that will intensify and grow dim as the mood waxes and wanes. But the scheme, the design—for it _is_ a kind of design—is nearly always too elaborate, too involved. It is full of detail, and the detail is apt to become more prominent than the general outline. She will start off most magnificently, lose herself a little, recover herself, lose herself again, and then abruptly strike a woefully wrong note. Perhaps her ear is wrong; perhaps excitement betrays her. But, with all her faults—and even her faults are more interesting than other people’s excellencies—she remains a superb actress.”

Of Mr Sidney Webb I remember nothing that he said, nor have any of the loving words he spoke of the Fabian Society remained in my memory. He spoke of it a great deal, both at lunch and during our subsequent walk, but somehow or other the Fabian Society has always seemed to me a bloodless and dull sort of institution, and while he talked about it my thoughts wandered, and I mused rather sadly over the psychology of this man whose moral earnestness was so much greater than my own.

But I pricked up my ears when the word “Morocco” fell from his lips, though in the event he said very little about it. I found he had no great belief in the value of travel as a means of education, an expander of the mind. He himself had never travelled; places and countries so precisely fulfilled all your expectations that, really, what was the use of going to see them? Facts, people and ideas: nothing else aroused his curiosity.

Of shorthand he said ... well, you don’t particularly want to know what he said of shorthand, do you? And in _The Perfect Wagnerite_ he has said all that it is necessary for him to say about Wagner. Last of all comes H. G. Wells.

Now, I have not the remotest idea what Shaw thinks of Wells in these days, yet I would give a good deal to know. But sixteen years ago the older man had for the younger an almost reverential admiration. At the time of my visit to Shaw one of Wells’ books was appearing serially in, I think, _The Fortnightly Review_. Wells was busy looking into the future, and the future that he saw seemed, in some respects, so disagreeable yet so likely that Shaw was dismayed at the prospect.

“A great man, Wells,” said Shaw; “do you know anything about him?”

I told him the little I knew and, as we had finished lunch, I asked Mrs Shaw’s permission to light a cigarette.

Almost immediately after, we started on our walk.

Never shall I forget that terrible walk. I believed then, as I believe now, that Shaw was deliberately pitting his powers of endurance against my own—the powers of endurance of a middle-aged vegetarian against those of a young meat-eater. He walked with a long, easy stride, swinging his arms, breathing deeply through his wide nostrils. His pace, which never for a moment did he attempt to accommodate to mine, was at least five miles an hour. He forgot, or he did not choose to remember, that I had that morning travelled by the slow midnight train from Manchester, that I had crossed London, that I had reached Guildford by a weary Sunday train from Waterloo, and that I had just eaten an enormous lunch. I panted and struggled half a pace behind him. I became stupendously hot. I made unexpected and unathletic sounds, like a man who is being smothered. Blissfully unconscious of all this was Shaw.... I wonder?... No; blissfully conscious of all this was Shaw.

He talked steadily the whole time, but I was suffering from an inhibition of all my mental faculties. Yet, at the back of my mind, I kept saying to myself: “You know, you have not yet told him that he is to share your book with George Moore.” And each time I told myself that, I shuddered somewhat.

It was not until we had neared Mr G. F. Watts’ house that Shaw moderated his pace a little.

“That,” said he, in a curiously low voice—the kind of voice one uses in churches—“that is where G. F. Watts lives.”