POLITICS AND THE UNCOMMON MAN

I came across a somewhat lengthy quotation - allegedly by Shaw - the other day, as I was perusing an article about Greenwood Village's local election. Don't ask me why. 

The quotation reads as follows: 

“It is a curious fact that when we get sick, we want an uncommon doctor. If we have a construction job, we want an uncommon engineer. When we get into war, we want and uncommon admiral and an uncommon general. Only when we get into politics are we content with the common man.”

As usual, no source is provided. So I seached my database and... nothing! 

Well, it's no wonder. It turns out that none other than President Herbert Hoover pronounced these words as part of a telephone address from New York City to Wilmington College, Wilmington, Ohio on the occasion of the conference "Building For A Better Tomorrow." If you read the links below you'll see just how fitting the title was.  

The full text of the speech can be read at the Hoover Association's page, and you can see that it was later published as a booklet - a copy of which is available at the National Archives's site. 

Well, another misattribution, another dollar. We know of many witticisms and other quotations that have been erroneously ascribed to Shaw. 

However, this blog has no interest in the words of American Presidents - except for the occasional Shavianism. In fact, political speeches - or, rather, the speeches of politicians - are practically anathema for Shaw. See, for instance, what he had to say about the way the politicians of his time delivered their speeches through the wireless: 

"Most of the politicians are awful. Lloyd George was bad enough, and Churchill is no better. Someone ought to tell them that their House of Commons style, with long pauses between every word to think out what they are going to say next, is pitiful through the mike, especially when they pronounce their prepositions and conjunctions as if they were speaking oracles."

The quotation is from Hesketh Pearson's Bernard Shaw: A Biography (p. 469), and many of my dear friends from the ISS should re-read at least that page because another thing Shaw is quoted as saying is "Do you know anything about these infernal Shaw Societies?"  

At any rate, since Shaw was actually referring to style rather than to content, I'll spare President Hoover, Winston Churcill and all other politicians, and publish the post all the same. 

THE STATESMAN WHO HAS NO OTHER OBJECT THAN TO MAKE YOU VOTE FOR HIS PARTY

A couple of days ago, Lizzie Dunford, assistant house steward at Shaw's Corner and avid blogger, posted an interesting quotation by Shaw on her Facebook timeline: 

"The statesman who has no other object than to make you vote for his party at the next election may be starting you on an incline at the foot of which lies war, or revolution, or a smallpox epidemic, or five years off your lifetime." 

The quotation, as Lizzie rightly notes, belongs to a 1911 piece. Specifically, to the Preface to Three Plays by Brieux, a book containing the English translation of three works by French playwright Eugène Brieux. The book was published by Brentano and contained two different versions of Maternity - one of them translated by Charlotte Shaw, and the other by John Pollock. Together with the two versions of Maternity, the volume also included The Three Daughters of M. Dupont (trans. by St. John Hankin) and Damaged Goods (trans. by John Pollock). 

What seems odd about this quotation - at least when taken out of context - is that one may get the impression that Shaw is yet again grinding the axe of Fabian socialism and political reformation. Although that is partially the case, for Shaw never wrote a single line "for art's sake," the expanded context clarifies that Shaw is, by and large, trying to illustrate how the true dramatist, the man of genius, has a moral obligation to "interpret life." In other words, those who have got it must exert their "power of accurate observation" in order to educate, rather than "amuse themselves or their audiences." 

I reproduce the whole paragraph below for the amusement (and enlightenment) of my readers, in an attempt to "pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings, and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant." 

"But the great dramatist has something better to do than to amuse either himself or his audience. He has to interpret life. This sounds a mere pious phrase of literary criticism; but a moment's consideration will discover its meaning and its exactitude. Life as it appears to us in our daily experience is an unintelligible chaos of happenings. You pass Othello in the bazaar in Aleppo, lago on the jetty in Cyprus, and Desdemona in the nave of St. Mark's in Venice without the slightest clue to their relations to one another. The man you see stepping into a chemist's shop to buy the means of committing murder or suicide, may, for all you know, want nothing but a liver pill or a toothbrush. The statesman who has no other object than to make you vote for his party at the next election, may be starting you on an incline at the foot of which lies war, or revolution, or a smallpox epidemic, or five years off your lifetime. The horrible murder of a whole family by the father who finishes by killing himself, or the driving of a young girl on to the streets, may be the result of your discharging an employee in a fit of temper a month before. To attempt to understand life from merely looking on at it as it happens in the streets is as hopeless as trying to understand public questions by studying snapshots of public demonstrations. If we possessed a series of cinematographs of all the executions during the Reign of Terror, they might be exhibited a thousand times without enlightening the audiences in the least as to the meaning of the Revolution: Robespierre would perish as "un monsieur" and Marie Antoinette as "une femme." Life as it occurs is senseless: a policeman may watch it and work in it for thirty years in the streets and courts of Paris without learning as much of it or from it as a child or a nun may learn from a single play by Brieux. For it is the business of Brieux to pick out the significant incidents from the chaos of daily happenings, and arrange them so that their relation to one another becomes significant, thus changing us from bewildered spectators of a monstrous confusion to men intelligently conscious of the world and its destinies. This is the highest function that man can perform — the greatest work he can set his hand to; and this is why the great dramatists of the world, from Euripides and Aristophanes to Shakespear and Moliere, and from them to Ibsen and Brieux, take that majestic and pontifical rank which seems so strangely above all the reasonable pretensions of mere strolling actors and theatrical authors."

LEISURE IS NOT IDLENESS

Another email from my dear friend Richard Dietrich - known for his proverbial zeal for work - contains the following Shaw quotation, embellished with a not-very-Shavian background picture:

What really drew my attention - because I need no-one to remind me that leisure is the mother of virtue - is the source of the quotation. I must admit I'm not all that familiar with Shaw's political writings, so the title of this essay? book? escaped me. 

After a little research I found out that the above quotation was initially part of a lecture originally entitled "The Climate and Soil for Labour Culture." It was part of a series of three lectures presented by the Fabian Society in the spring of 1918. The other two speakers were Arthur Henderson and Sidney Webb. 

The lecture was later published in 1971 as part of Louis Crompton's (ed.) The Road to Equality. Ten Unpublished Lectures and Essays by Bernard Shaw. In this book, the title of the lecture was changed to "Socialism and Culture," and it contains several quotable gems, but not the above fragment. At least, not verbatim. In fact, it is an abridgement of a longer paragraph that reads as follows (the highlighted phrases being those in the picture above): 

"Now no thoughtful person will say that the country is altogether the poorer for this tendency. Leisure, though the propertied classes give its name to their own idleness, is not idleness. It is not even a luxury: it is a necessity, and a necessity of the first importance. Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done at leisure, and never paid for in cash or kind. Leisure may be described as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes: labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation."

I think I must agree with Shaw's views on leisure. After all, that's how this blog came into being. However, some may argue there's a contradiction between this vindication of leisure and Shaw's zeal for work. The synthesis of both notions can perhaps be found in the preface to Misalliance ("A Treatise on Parents and Children"): 

"The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active, which is pleasanter than any happiness until you are tired of it. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired. Music after dinner is pleasant: music before breakfast is so unpleasant as to be clearly unnatural. To people who are not overworked holidays are a nuisance. To people who are, and who can afford them, they are a troublesome necessity. A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell."

A WINGLESS BIRD? - SOUNDS LIKE A POLITICIAN TO ME!

Just a quick post to cheer up our followers before the weekend. 

On April 8th, 1934 the Shaws visited Christchurch as part of their tour across New Zealand. During an impromptu reception in their hotel lounge, he was told "about the New Zealand Moa, a wingless bird. Shaw jokes: 'It sounds like a politician to me. One of those politicians who haven't the slightest knowledge of politics.'" 

I found this quotation on page 297 of Gibbs's A Bernard Shaw Chronology, one of those books that is full of amusing anecdotes and sourced Shaw one-liners. A joy to read!

By the way, if you want to know a little more about the hotel the Shaws stayed in, here's an interesting fragment of a documentary that recounts the history of this former hotel, now a home made museum. 

Shaw's visit to New Zealand was such a momentous occasion that there was extensive newspaper coverage. All his interviews ended up being transcribed, word for word, in a book you can read online here. 

To finish with, let me recommend you digitalnz.org - a fantastic digitizing initiative from the antipodes (for those of you reading this from western Europe, of course). They have a nice collection of pictures of Shaw and other printed materials. Definitely worth a look. 

DEMOCRACY IS NO LONGER BOUGHT; IT IS BILKED.

In a recent email, Bernard F. Dukore reminds us of a very relevant quotation. In light of recent events, it seems fair to conclude that Bernard Shaw was right when he wrote the following lines in the Preface to The Apple Cart: 

"Money talks: money prints: money broadcasts: money reigns; and kings and labor leaders alike have to register its decrees, and even, by a staggering paradox, to finance its enterprises and guarantee its profits.  Democracy is no longer bought: it is bilked."

The modern tycoons of Breakages, Limited must be rubbing their hands. I wonder what King Magnus would think of all this.