Frank Harris, Frank Shaw

BERNARD SHAW-Frank Harris-Simon & Schuster ($4).

Said Oscar Wilde: "Shaw has no enemies, and none of his friends likes him.'' And: "Frank Harris has been received in all the great houses-once." That there must be a maggot of truth in both these candideries you will see after reading Frank Harris' Bernard Shaw. Death came for Frank Harris last August. He had corrected only the first proofs of his last book, leaving Shaw to make the final corrections: "quite the oddest job'' Shaw had ever had to do. For Bernard Shaw is neither an authorized nor an orthodox biography;/- a lesser man than Shaw might well have considered it a personal attack. Shaw did his odd job, corrected some facts; but "all the criticisms, jibes, explosions of passing ill humor, and condemnations have been piously preserved."

Shaw and Harris were born in different corners of Ireland within six months of one another, but they never met till they were grownup. Shaw's father was a genteel but scandalous drunkard. With the Shaws for many years lived, innocently but unconventionally, a singing teacher, George John Vandaleur Lee. To help the family impecuniosity Shaw went to work at 15, rose to be a cashier before he decided to seek his literary fortune in London. Painfully shy, Shaw's eyes would fill with tears "at the slightest rebuff." First thing he did in the British Museum was read all the books on etiquet. For nine years he wrote unwanted novels and was a complete failure, then his music criticism caught on. When Harris was editor of the Saturday Review he made Shaw his dramatic critic. Shaw's weekly column became a brilliant event.

Shaw's early Irish nationalism was sidetracked by Socialism and the Fabian Society, but for years "he would not rise or uncover for the English national anthem, nor drink the King's health at public dinners." Reputed the best businessman of living authors, in his poverty-stricken days Shaw rarely lived within his means. Once, instead of buying a cheap bowler he paid the top price for a top hat, had to wear it so long that "in its last days it had to be worn tail foremost, as the front rim had become too limp to lever the hat off successfully when he had to salute a lady."

Harris, a great believer in sex, disbelieved in Shaw's, finally succeeded in worming out of Shaw that he had been celibate till 29, had then paid several women "man's highest compliment'' before he married, in middle age, neither for love nor money-as Shaw himself puts it: "a childless partnership." Harris regretfully admits Shaw was "no ascetic," but adds: "he is absolutely free from the slightest trace of sensuality and is never offensive. In fact that is what I feel is the whole trouble with him."

Harris did not consider Shaw a really great man, did not think his work will live, gave him such muted praise as: "This garrulously great man who falls so often perilously close to being an old maid ... a Puritan rebel who insulted his times and was well paid for it." In a postscript (which Harris never saw) Shaw is singularly gentle in rebuttal. He contents himself with saying that Harris could never understand him, lays his quarrelsome friend's ghost with a coal of fire: "Here lies a man of letters who hated cruelty and injustice and bad art, and never spared them in his own interest. R. I. P."

/- Only authorized biography of Shaw: Archibald Henderson's.

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