The Adventures of God in His Search for the Black Girl Page 22

  ‘When you speak of the pageant-like form of Saint Joan’, Shaw replied, ‘you are merely echoing my title-page, which calls it “a chronicle play”. However, I do not on the whole dispute your verdict. Indeed, I would wager that my best play,65 Heartbreak House, is seldom given in a school production. But in the matter of examinations and the like, you must allow me a little credit. While I was alive and it was in my power, I refused to be quoted in textbooks and did all I could to prevent the association in the infant mind of my name and work with school lessons.’66

  Several of the mouths round the table opened to comment in response. But God managed, without forfeiting an air of polite tentativeness, to say first:

  ‘Fascinated as I am by this literary discussion, and instructive as it no doubt indirectly is for me, I wonder if—’

  ‘Of course!’ cried Voltaire. ‘How selfish of us to chat on while you are suffering injustice and while the manifesto that is to put matters right has yet to be drafted. Gentlemen: order, please. Something must be done.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  No sooner had Voltaire uttered that plea than Shaw, without seeming to exert the smallest effort towards doing so, took command of the assembly.

  ‘First’, he began, ‘I must give fair warning to everyone present that, in the course of my extensive career as public speaker, committee member and (the obsolete ecclesiastical name by which borough councillors were still called in my day) vestryman, I quickly learned that committees of agitators are always unanimously resolved that Something Must Be Done. It is then that the person who has a plan for something which actually might be done carries the day, even if nobody agrees with his plan. I must also warn you that I early learned the first rule of those who would acquire the committee habit: Never Resign.67 Having said that, I propose that we now help God to draft his manifesto, the wording of which I will take down as we decide on it.’

  God obligingly caused a notebook and a pencil to appear on the table where they would be convenient to Shaw’s hand.

  ‘Could you please’, Shaw asked him, ‘make the pages lined, as I intend to write in shorthand.’

  ‘Do you’, Gibbon enquired of Shaw, ‘employ the system devised by Sir Isaac Pitman?’

  ‘Yes, but not’, Shaw replied, ‘in all its advanced elaborations. I am not given to recording other people’s thoughts verbatim and have therefore never needed to work up any great speed. In my life, my shorthand had to be decipherable by my secretary, not myself. I used only the simple outlines which nobody could misread, and took my time about writing them.’68

  ‘My posthumous discovery of Pitman’, Gibbon said, ‘was to me what his discovery of Freud was to Voltaire. In my case, too, the joy was mixed with a regret occasioned by the consideration of how much more swiftly could I have accomplished the bodily labour of writing my Decline and Fall had I known Pitman and had I been able to employ, as you did, a secretary who could read my outlines back. Pitman is not of course to be compared to Freud, because Pitman’s is an invention, not a discovery; an arbitrary system, not one that claims to be true. Yet as an arbitrary system it displays the very highest degree of internal logic, flexibility and economy of means. I place it in the first rank of those systems which are neither discoveries of truth nor artistic creations but which yet incarnate almost the whole resources of human ingenuity. Indeed, I rate it with chess and Aristotle’s logic.’

  ‘I wonder if the crossword puzzle has claims to be included,’ the psychoanalyst offered.

  ‘Gentlemen!’ Voltaire protested. ‘We must not be drawn aside into this enticing discussion (to which my own contribution would be to suggest oriental carpets). What we are looking for is an arresting opening or headline for God’s manifesto.’

  ‘I suppose’, Gibbon said regretfully, ‘that to begin “Conscript Fathers!” scarcely allows of an application to the modern world. I therefore suggest “Lectori Benevolo”.’

  ‘Not to be outdone in Latin’, the psychoanalyst said, ‘which is after all the language of Linnaeus as well as of litterae humaniores, and of the epigraph to Freud’s Interpretation of Dreams as well as of papal encyclicals, I suggest “Hominibus Sapientibus”.’

  ‘“Citizens!”’ suggested Voltaire.

  ‘“Electors of St Pancras’”, suggested Shaw ‘—with, of course, whatever is appropriate substituted for “St Pancras”.’

  ‘I wish it’, God said quietly, ‘to begin “To Whom It May Concern”.’

  ‘Well, if you wish it, so it must be,’ Shaw said, as he slowly inscribed …. ‘But to my ear it sounds as though you were writing a reference.’

  ‘I am writing a reference’, God replied: ‘for myself. You may be certain, by the way, that I shan’t speak of it by the old-fashioned name for a reference, a character.’

  ‘Very well,’ Shaw said. ‘I have the heading. The next problem we must discuss is the text.’

  ‘The text’, God said, ‘is to read: “I do not exist. Signed, with divine authority, God.”’

  ‘Capital,’ said Voltaire.

  ‘Foolproof,’ said Gibbon. ‘Those who disbelieve already will ignore it, as they do not believe in the authority on which it is stated. Those who believe will find themselves obliged to stop doing so.’

  ‘I confess’, Shaw said as he wrote it down in simple Pitman outlines, ‘I couldn’t better it.’

  ‘Aah,’ said God with a great gratified exhalation. ‘It’s done at last. If you will remember for how many thousands of years I have been, in one nasty form or another, believed in, you will have some idea of my sense of achievement – and of my gratitude to you all for your encouragement and help.’

  God was just leaning back in his chair with a gesture of satisfaction and fatigue when a soft contralto call, resembling in timbre a french horn or the sound a child makes by blowing through a dandelion stalk, caused him to turn round.

  Standing behind his chair like footmen, but chewing, were the three cows.

  ‘It reminds me’, God said, ‘of my supposed nativity. And as a matter of fact, I really do feel reborn.’

  With a rustle of quills, the hens and other birds arrived at the table and began clucking and pecking around it – all except a goose, who pecked instead, though quite amicably, at Gibbon’s knee.

  ‘No doubt’, Gibbon said, ‘it is the ghost of one of the Capitoline geese and recognises the historian of Rome.’

  Shaw took up his pencil again.

  ‘All that it remains to decide’, he said, ‘is where the manifesto is to be dropped.’

  ‘Dropped?’ queried God.

  ‘Well I assume’, Shaw replied, ‘that you will have copies printed and that you will distribute them from the sky in deference to the old and rather pretty belief that that is where you live. Since, incidentally, that belief is entertained as firmly in Canberra as in the Home Counties, and people in each place know that people in the other believe the same, it is evident that a great many people believe heaven to be circular. About the printing itself, I must forewarn you of a matter that often distresses authors when they first turn professional. It is inevitable that there will be printers’ errors; and a certain number of copies will surely be defective. There is nothing whatever that you can do to remedy this, and it is a waste of time and energy to let yourself lie awake at night regretting it. As for the location you should choose for your celestial leaflet raid, you will no doubt want to follow the sound economic principle of maximum results for minimum expenditure and will therefore select one of the world’s major centres of population, such as London or New York.’

  ‘I think Tokyo may have a claim,’ Voltaire said.

  ‘It depends’, the psychoanalyst said, ‘whether you go on absolute population or on density of population. For density, Calcutta is worth considering.’

  ‘We should also consider’, Voltaire said, ‘the likelihood or unlikelihood that the content of the manifesto will be further disseminated by word of mouth. Obviously, a copy that falls into the hands of an
illiterate is wasted, since he will not even be able to read it himself. But we must also bear in mind that, should the manifesto be dropped on one of the more tight-lipped cultures, such as those of northern Europe, the reader might read it and keep the information to himself. If, however, it were dropped on some nation of chatterboxes who set great store by intellectual chic (it may be apparent that I am thinking of my countrymen), then we could count on each reader to communicate the information to several other people.’

  ‘That is a good point’, God said, ‘but I do not know quite how to set it against the fact that Paris has a smaller population than several other cities, whose inhabitants may, however, be less talkative. This part of the plan is proving surprisingly difficult.’

  Round the table there was a silence as everyone sat and thought, while there emerged from the oleanders a continuous noise of grunts and crashes. The pink sow had arrived at the place of the meeting and was turning up the earth round the plants, using her nose almost as effectively as, and considerably faster than, an agricultural machine. The oleander stems were shaken and a number of petals trembled to the ground.

  At length Gibbon, in a gesture of discovery, slapped the palm of his hand down on the agate table.

  ‘Meh!’ complained the startled sheep beneath, while Gibbon declared definitively:

  ‘Rome!’

  ‘Of course!’ Voltaire cried in instant welcome of the idea. ‘Where else should God renounce eternity but in the eternal city?’

  ‘Is that agreed then?’ asked Shaw, pencil pointed above the lined page.

  ‘Agreed,’ everyone said.

  , Shaw carefully wrote. Then he closed his notebook and said:

  ‘The logic of logistics must always yield to the finer logic of dramatic irony and poetic justice.’

  1 ‘The highest gratification which I derived from Voltaire’s residence at Lausanne was the uncommon circumstance of hearing a great poet declaim his own productions on the stage. […] Voltaire represented the characters best adapted to his years […] His declamation was fashioned to the pomp and cadence of the old stage; and he expressed the enthusiasm of poetry rather than the feelings of nature. My ardour, which soon became conspicuous, seldom failed of procuring me a ticket.’ (Edward Gibbon: Memoirs of My Life and Writings.)

  2 The theologian’s accuracy may be tested against the relevant articles in the 15th edition of A Catholic Dictionary (imprimatur 1950), published appropriately by Virtue and Co. Ltd.

  3 Brigid Brophy: The Burglar, Preface.

  4 Though this might possibly be the source of his misapprehension, the sermonist (who lived in 8th-century Gaul) in fact correctly declined Venus in the third declension. His trans-sexed reference is to ‘fratres suos Martem et Venerem’. See Wilhelm Levison: England and the Continent in the Eighth Century (Oxford, 1946), p. 151 and p. 311.

  5 ‘I never could understand the clamour that has been raised against the indecency of my last three volumes. 1. An equal degree of freedom in the former part, especially in the first volume, had passed without reproach. 2. I am justified in painting the manners of the time; the vices of Theodora form an essential feature in the reign and character of Justinian; and the most naked tale in my history is told by the Rev. Mr. Joseph Warton, an instructor of youth […] 3. My English text is chaste, and all licentious passages are left in the obscurity of a learned language.’

  6 La Pucelle d’Orléans.

  7 Articles of Religion, 1562.

  8 The reference is probably to The Times of 2 May 1972.

  9 Numbers, XXII, 28.

  10 Matthew, V, 12.

  11 Matthew, XIX, 24.

  12 Mark, XIV, 7.

  13 Mark, IX, 43.

  14 Luke, XXI, 34–35.

  15 Matthew, XXI, 19.

  16 Luke, XI, 13.

  17 Matthew, XIV, 25.

  18 Matthew, VIII, 32.

  19 Luke, V, 4–7.

  20 Matthew, X, 29.

  21 Genesis, I, 26–27.

  22 Estimate (minimum) by U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation.

  23 Matthew, X, 34.

  24 II, 8.

  25 Sixteen Self Sketches, XIV.

  26 Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory.

  27 The George Bernard Shaw Vegetarian Cook Book, edited by R. J. Minney.

  28 Sixteen Self Sketches, XVII.

  29 Sixteen Self Sketches, XII.

  30 Sixteen Self Sketches, X.

  31 R. J. Minney: The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw, Chapter 16.

  32 ‘In 1885 William Archer found me in the British Museum Reading Room […] He took my affairs in hand […] and the appointment of art critic to The World […] was transferred to me.’ (Sixteen Self Sketches, VII.)

  33 ‘Killiney strand was not shingly: it was sand from end to end.’ (Sixteen Self Sketches, XIV, Biographers’ Blunders Corrected.)

  34 Sixteen Self Sketches, XII.

  35 ‘pronounced Dawky’ (Sixteen Self Sketches, IV); he might helpfully have added that Howth is pronounced Hoath.

  36 Sixteen Self Sketches, VI.

  37 Back To Methuselah, Preface (The Dawn of Darwinism).

  38 Sixteen Self Sketches, IX.

  39 Saint Joan, Preface (The Maid in Literature).

  40 Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory.

  41 R. J. Minney: The Bogus Image of Bernard Shaw, Chapter 13.

  42 Back To Methuselah, Preface (What to do with the Legends).

  43 Biographia Literaria, Chapter 14.

  44 Three Plays for Puritans, Preface (Why for Puritans?).

  45 Don Giovanni, Act II; Man and Superman, Act III.

  46 Sixteen Self Sketches, IX.

  47 The psychoanalyst probably had in mind Freud’s reference (Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, XII) to ‘Bernard Shaw’s malicious aphorism to the effect that being in love means greatly exaggerating the difference between one woman and another’. Freud perhaps had in mind Undershaft’s remark to Cusins (Major Barbara, Act III), ‘Like all young men, you greatly exaggerate the difference between one young woman and another.’

  48 Sixteen Self Sketches, XVII. That this is the seventeenth section of a volume called Sixteen Self Sketches does not give the lie to Shaw’s proud claims, elsewhere in it, that ‘I have the arithmetic […] of an ex-cashier’ (XII) and that (as a cashier) ‘I was never a farthing out in my office accounts’ (V). The explanation is that the first sketch is not a Self Sketch but is (in the form of letters written during Shaw’s babyhood) by Shaw’s father. However, in Shaw’s reference (XVII) to ‘the thousand and three conquests of Don Juan’, the puritan in Shaw has conquered both the arithmetician and the Mozartian. 1003 is the total number of conquests which Leporello’s catalogue (Don Giovanni, Act I) attributes to Don Juan in his native land alone. Shaw has forgotten to add in the 640 in Italy, 231 in Germany, 100 in France and 91 in Turkey.

  49 Man and Superman, Epistle Dedicatory.

  50 Sixteen Self Sketches, II.

  51 The Millionairess, 1936. (Shaw married in 1898.)

  52 Sixteen Self Sketches, V. The junior partner was Thomas Courtney Townshend (Audrey Williamson: Bernard Shaw: Man and Writer, I). Janet Dunbar (Mrs G.B.S., 2) records that Mrs Shaw’s family name was changed successively from Townsend to Payne-Townsend to Payne-Townshend.

  53 Back To Methuselah, Preface (My Own Part in the Matter).

  54 Back To Methuselah, Preface (The Dawn of Darwinism).

  55 Back To Methuselah, Postscript (World’s Classics edition, 1945).

  56 Collected Papers, Volume IV, IX. (Cf. Brigid Brophy: Prancing Novelist, IV).

  57 Back To Methuselah, Postscript.

  58 ‘All my attempts at Art for Art’s Sake broke down: it was like hammering nails into sheets of notepaper.’ (Bernard Shaw: Sixteen Self Sketches, IX.)

  59 The Evolutionary Appetite.

  60 Saint Joan, Preface (The Epilogue).

  61 Saint Joan, Preface (To the Critics, Lest They Should Feel Ignored).

  62 Totem and T
aboo, II.

  63 Act III.

  64 Collected Papers, Volume V, XVI.

  65 according to Shaw’s inscription in Frank Harris’s copy (Frank Harris: Bernard Shaw, Chapter 13).

  66 Letter of 1932 (Letters to Macmillan, selected and edited by Simon Nowell-Smith, p. 194).

  67 Sixteen Self Sketches, X.

  68 Blanche Patch: Thirty Years With G.B.S., Chapter 1.

  Epilogue

  ‘Have you heard no tales of their Black Prince who was blacker than the devil himself […]?’

  Bernard Shaw: Saint Joan, Scene 1

  A lady once asked him how he came to define Pastern the knee of a horse: instead of making an elaborate defence as she expected, he at once answered, ‘Ignorance, Madam, pure ignorance.’

  James Boswell: The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D., 1755

  The book called the book of Matthew says (c. iii, v. 16) that the Holy Ghost descended in the shape of a dove. It might as well have said a Goose – the creatures are equally harmless, and the one is as much a nonsensical lie as the other.

  Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason, II, footnote

  To the pilgrims the piazza represented itself as a huge, mercilessly sunned space which they were suddenly doomed to plod across.

  They had come from Belgium, by coach, under the organisational auspices of a pious, though lay, confraternity.

  Successive days in the coach had accustomed their muscles to passivity and their sense of temperature to air-conditioning. Their perception of distance in relation to time had become set at the coach’s, not their bodies’, rate.

  Expelled from the coach short of their objective, they made a laboured and straggly group, frustrated because their minds traversed the space in an instant, leaving their hot, passive bodies the lengthy chore of catching up.

  Most of them as they walked were looking at their own feet because that was what they were, prompted by soreness, thinking about.