THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW 17 G.B.S.'s nonage were indeed mirrors held up to his nature — but only in order to help him fix his make-up. " He looked at his programme and calculated how soon his time to sing would come. Then he unrolled his music and placed two copies ready to his hand upon the table. Having made these arrangements with a self- possession that quite disconcerted the clergyman, he turned to examine the rest of the company." This is the curious projection of an ideal, not unwitting self- portraiture ; and " you cannot want a thing and have it too." Modelling these little mannequins — studying their gestures — perfecting their effectiveness with his pen — putting them into predicaments to learn how to behave and continually calling on them for impromptu speeches — "There, by the Grace of God," mutters our young author savagely, *' will one day go George Bernard Shaw." Fate, when she began to fool him, hadn't reckoned on this solemnity. The joke was already going rather far. IV It went further very shortly. The result of these efforts, heroically sustained (our Sigurd being mean- while financially supported, it is ironic but right to recall, by a radiant Mimmy in the person of that romantic young mother to whom he owed the imagina- tion he was thwarting), the result of these pig-headed efforts, this topsy-turvy idealism, was the construction of one of the most remarkable verbal weapons ever forged by a literary craftsman. It was an instrument built expressly for cut-and-thrust platform work ; and every irrelevant qualification or charm was ruthlessly threshed out of its texture. Now to get rid of these alloys and yet maintain the thing's temper meant the invention of a whole new range of prose devices ; and it is the way he worked at these, the devouring adroit- Mti of L»tter$. 3
