Page:Men of Letters, Scott, 1916.djvu/71

45 THE INNOCENCE OF BERNARD SHAW 45 sample of reality : he got his ideas of human society from the members of his societies ; and innocently accepted the New Woman as woman. He knew nothing of the working North, nothing of pastoral England^ nothing even of the genuine suburbs or the actual provinces, or the places where life does expand with some serenity, repeating its comeliest delights. Morris had had Kelmscott to use as a base, his grey manor with its immemorial beauties was his hub ; and when he looked out from it he realized that Shaw's little London was a mere dirty splash on one of the spokes. But though Shaw took a Hertfordshire house many years later, and though a healthy Hibernian longing for the open has no doubt always been mixed with his motives, yet he never let that longing take him to his true kingdom ; and his work has been far more a product of indoor dilettantism than that of Mr. Henry James. For Mr. James has travelled tirelessly, shed- ding old shibboleths and learning the non-existence of horizons ; whereas Shaw has always remained com- placently satisfied that his early contact with life was remarkably complete. He is constantly pluming himself on the breadth of his experience : " Like a greengrocer and unlike a minor poet, I have lived instead of dreaming and feeding myself with artistic confectionery." "Three times every week I could escape from artistic and literary stuff and talk seriously on serious subjects with serious people. For this reason — because I persisted in Socialist propaganda — / never once lost touch with the real world." So does he point proudly to the bars of his prison and boast of how they keep reality before him. He honestly believed that a brisk debate with Mr. Belfort Bax brought him very near to the simple heart of human nature. He felt that he understood the democracy because he knew so many democrats. It was as a Fabian meeting multiplied, then, that