GBS: Decline and Fall of an Ad-Man

In England, where shrines are big business, Shaw’s own house remains conspicuously un-mobbed by tourists, and his centenary brought out some harshly candid devaluations of his posthumous standing. Here in America, the same occasion was pitifully exploited by a Chicago hotel, which dedicated a “Shaw Room,” while the local Adult Education Council sponsored a vegetarian dinner. In France, André Maurois asked himself if Shaw were a great man, but then begged the question by merely recounting some anecdotes of the gratuitous snottiness to which Shaw so tirelessly exposed anyone associated with him.

In other words, less than ten years after his death, and in spite of close to a century of very resourceful public relations on his own behalf, Shaw’s image is getting smaller and smaller. As a waspish, uncarnivorous, camera-loving nonagenarian, he is still good for gossipy reminiscence. Indeed, he seems to have spent a substantial part of his time doing and saying things for just this purpose. But in any of the capacities in which he regarded himself highly—as a writer, for instance, or as a maker of plays, or as a thinker—his eclipse has been so abrupt as to seem possibly unjust. Actually, it is wholly deserved.

RP

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Robert Phelps

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In England, where shrines are big business, Shaw’s own house remains conspicuously un-mobbed by tourists, and his centenary brought out some harshly candid devaluations of his posthumous standing. Here in America, the same occasion was pitifully exploited by a Chicago hotel, which dedicated a “Shaw Room,” while the local Adult Education Council sponsored a vegetarian dinner. In France, André Maurois asked himself if Shaw were a great man, but then begged the question by merely recounting some anecdotes of the gratuitous snottiness to which Shaw so tirelessly exposed anyone associated with him.

In other words, less than ten years after his death, and in spite of close to a century of very resourceful public relations on his own behalf, Shaw’s image is getting smaller and smaller. As a waspish, uncarnivorous, camera-loving nonagenarian, he is still good for gossipy reminiscence. Indeed, he seems to have spent a substantial part of his time doing and saying things for just this purpose. But in any of the capacities in which he regarded himself highly—as a writer, for instance, or as a maker of plays, or as a thinker—his eclipse has been so abrupt as to seem possibly unjust. Actually, it is wholly deserved.