on which older men stand does not exist for the
recruit. Nothing is more natural than that you should reconstruct me
as the last of the Rationalists (his real name is Blatchford); and
nothing could be more erroneous. It would be much nearer the truth to
call me, in that world, the first of the mystics.

If you can imagine the result of trying to write your spiritual
history in complete ignorance of painting, you will get a notion of
trying to write mine in ignorance of music. Bradlaugh was a
tremendous platform heavyweight; but he had never in his life, as far
as I could make out, seen anything, heard anything or read anything
in the artistic sense. He was almost beyond belief incapable of
intercourse in private conversation. He could tell you his adventures
provided you didn't interrupt him (which you were mostly afraid to
do, as the man was a mesmeric terror); but as to exchanging ideas, or
expressing the universal part of his soul, you might as well have
been reading the letters of Charles Dickens to his family--those
tragic monuments of dumbness of soul and noisiness of pen. Lord help
you if you ever lose your gift of speech, G.K.C.! Don't forget that
the race is only struggling out of its dumbness, and that it is only
in moments of inspiration that we get out a sentence. All the rest is
padding.

Yours ever
G. BERNARD SHAW.

In the book on Shaw which appeared in August 1909, G.K. did as he had
done with his other literary studies: gave (inaccurately) only as
much biography as seemed absolutely necessary, and mainly discussed
ideas. He saw Shaw as an Irishman, yet lacking the roots of
nationality since he belonged to a mainly alien governing class. He
saw him as a Puritan yet without the religious basis of Puritanism.
And thirdly, he saw him as so swift a progressive as to be ahead of
his own thought and ready to slay it in the name of progress.

All these elements in Shaw made for strength but also created
limitations, "Shaw is like the Venus of Milo; all that there is of
him is admirable." Where he fails is in being unable to see and
embrace the full complexity of life. "His only paradox is to pull out
one thread or cord of truth longer and longer into waste and
fantastic places. He does not allow for that deeper sort of paradox
by which two opposite cords of truth become entangled in an
inextricable knot. Still less can he be made to realise