“Your ideas are all right,” said the old gentleman, when Wells at last had finished, “but they are not practical.”
“If the ideas are right,” said Wells, “your business is to make them practical.”
Of Shaw, it is said that he is never at rest unless he is working. Shaw once told me that he only had three speeches. One about politics (including religion); one about art (together with life in general); and the other one about himself. He said he found these three—with variations—served him for all purposes.
“People think I am making new speeches,” he said. “I'm repeating things that I have told them over and over again, if only they had listened. I'm tired of talking,” he said. “I wouldn't have to talk one-tenth as much, if people only listened.”
He used to say there were two schools of elocution: one the Lyceum Theatre (in Irving's time) and the other Hyde Park. He himself had graduated in Hyde Park, mounted on a chair without a back, opposite the Marble Arch. There is only one way of countering Shaw on a platform. It is hopeless trying to cross wits with him. The only thing is to force him to become serious. Then I have known him to flounder. His mind works like lightning. I remember the then President of the Playgoers' Club coming to him one day. It was at the beginning of the cinema boom. He was an earnest young man.
“We want you to speak for us on Sunday evening, Mr. Shaw,” he said, “on the question: Is there any danger of the actor being eliminated?”
“You don't say which actor,” answered Shaw, “and, anyhow, why speak of it as a danger?”
Shaw is one of the kindest of men, but has no tenderness. His chief exercise, according to his own account, is public speaking; and his favourite recreation, thinking. He admitted to me once that there have been times when he has thought too much. He was motoring in Algiers, driving himself, with his chauffeur beside him, when out of his musings came to him the idea for a play.
“What do you think of this?” he said, turning to his chauffeur; and went on then and there to tell the man all about it.
He had usually found his chauffeur a keen and helpful critic. But on this occasion, instead of friendly encouragement, he threw himself upon Shaw and, wrenching the wheel out of his hands, sat down upon him.
“Excuse me, Mr. Shaw,” the man said later on; “but it's such a damn good play that I didn't want you to die before you'd written it.”
Shaw had never noticed the precipice.
Conan Doyle used to be another tremendous worker. He would sit at a small desk in a corner of his own drawing-room, writing a story, while a dozen people round about him were talking and laughing. He preferred it to being alone in his study. Sometimes, without looking up from his work, he would make a remark, showing he must have been listening to our conversation; but his pen had never ceased moving. Barrie had the same gift. He was a reporter on a provincial newspaper in his early days, and while waiting for orders amid the babel and confusion of the press room, he would curl himself up on a chair and, quite undisturbed, peg away at something dreamy and poetic.
A vigorous family, the Doyles, both mentally and physically. I remember a trip to Norway with Doyle and his sister Connie: a handsome girl, she might have posed as Brunhilda. She married Hornung the novelist. Another sister married a clergyman named Angel, a dear ugly fellow. They lived near to us at Wallingford, and next door to them happened to live another clergyman named Dam. And later on Dam was moved to Goring, and found himself next door to a Roman Catholic priest whose name was Father Hell. Providence, I take it, arranges these little things for some wise purpose.
We had a rough crossing to Norway. Connie Doyle enjoyed it: she was that sort of girclass="underline" it added to her colour and gave a delightful curl to her hair. She had a sympathetic nature, and was awfully sorry for the poor women who were ill. She would burst in upon them every now and then to see if she could be of any help to them. You would have thought her mere presence would have cheered them up. As a matter of fact, it made them just mad.
“Oh, do go away, Connie,” I heard one of her friends murmur, while passing the open door, “it makes me ill to look at you.”
Doyle was always full of superfluous energy. He started to learn Norwegian on the boat. He got on so well that he became conceited; and one day, at a little rest house up among the mountains, he lost his head. We had come there in stoljas—a tiny carriage only just big enough for one person, drawn by a pony about the size of a Newfoundland dog, but marvellously sturdy. They will trot their fifty miles in the day and be frisky in the evening. While we were lunching, with some twenty miles still in front of us, a young officer came into the room, and said something in Norwegian. Of course we turned him on to Doyle; and Doyle rose and bowed and answered him. We all watched the conversation. The young Norwegian officer was evidently charmed with Doyle, while Doyle stood ladling out Norwegian as though it had been his mother tongue. After the officer was gone, we asked Doyle what it was all about.
“Oh, just about the weather, and the state of the roads, and how some relation of his had hurt his leg,” answered Doyle carelessly. “Of course I didn't understand all of it.” He turned the conversation.
When we had finished lunch, and the stoljas were brought out, Doyle's pony was missing. It appeared Doyle had “lent” it to the young officer, whose own pony had gone lame. The ostler, who was also the waiter, had overheard the conversation. Doyle had said “Certainly, with pleasure.” He had said it once or twice. Also the Norwegian equivalent for: “Don't mention it.”
There wasn't another pony within ten miles. One of our party, who had taken a fancy to the view, and thought he would like to spend a day or two in the neighbourhood, let Doyle have his stolja. But for the rest of that trip, Doyle talked less Norwegian.
Leprosy is still a living terror in Norway. Eating bad fish is the cause of it. Round about the fjords, preserved fish is the chief article of food during the long winter. Doyle, as a doctor, got permission to visit one of the big leper hospitals and took me with them. Not till one has seen the thing can one understand the full meaning of that awful cry: “The leper, the leper.” The strange thing was the patience of the poor marred creatures, their quiet acceptance of their fate. Above the doors were texts of scripture. “His mercy endureth for ever,” was one of them. The bell was ringing for service when we thanked our guide for an interesting afternoon. We left them trooping towards the little cold grey chapel.
Doyle had always a bent towards the occult. He told me once a curious story. It led him to conclusions with which he may now disagree. He and another member of the Psychical Research Society were sent down to an old manor house in Somerset to investigate a “phenomenon,” as it is now termed—“ghost story,” our grandmothers would have said. There lived in this house a retired Colonel and his wife with their only daughter, an unmarried woman of about five and thirty. For some time past, strange noises had been heard: a low moaning, rising to a wailing sob, and a sound as of a chain being dragged across the floor. Night after night, the noises would be heard. Then, for a while, they would cease. And then they would come again. The servants—so the old gentleman explained—were being frightened out of their lives: most of them had left; and even the dogs were becoming jumpy. Doyle and his friend were to say nothing about the Psychical Research Society. They were to come merely as guests, friends of the Colonel's, that he had run across in London. He had not told his wife and daughter. His idea was that no woman could keep a secret. The Colonel himself pooh-poohed the whole thing. He put it down to rats. But his wife's health was becoming affected. He was evidently more worried than he cared to show.