Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/63

37 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW 37 up to this crisis. In 1876, twenty years old, he crosses from Ireland to London, knowing more and thinking more of pictures and music than of anything else in the world. A couple of years later, entirely by accident, he hears a certain young Sidney Webb (exactly his own age) laying down the laws of life to an audience of awe-stricken adults ; and resolves to become a plat- form speaker too. In pursuit of this fell purpose he permeates all the societies for scolding Society which were a feature of the London of that time, and by 1882 he has so out- woven Webb, has caught the trick of all-round truculence so perfectly, that even the most hardened and ferocious food-reformer, dress-reformer, land-reformer, reform-reformer, et hoc genus omne, will blench at the mention of his name. And in 1885, at the age of twenty-nine (perhaps feeling that this fearless independence had depended on his mother long enough), he is looking out for some settled job in journalism. Now, what would you expect to happen ? Naturally, he was made a musical critic. " I have never had a programme," he once said, " I simply took the job that was given me and did it the best way I could " ; but in those days of alert editors a man who knew more about pictures and music than anything else in the world, and who had learned to express himself imperiously, was journalistically a dedicated soul. He became art critic to The World in 1885, musical critic to the Star in 1888, and in 1895, following the course of nature, he was unhitched from the Star by Mr. Frank Harris and installed as dramatic critic to The Saturday, The inevitability of all that is as evident as 2 x 2 = 4. What happens next has the same infernal neatness. It was a perfect repetition of his earlier innocent dis- play among the societies and Socialists. He had taken rebelliousness more seriously than the rebels them-