It was lively and interesting, was Mr. Henniker Heaton’sⒶtextual note luncheon—I mean the talk was—but we forgot all about the formidable world-questions which we were assembled [begin page 109] there to settle, and when we broke up and scattered homeward they had not been mentioned.

Ashcroft’s note:

“Wednesday, July 3. Luncheon with George Bernard ShawⒺexplanatory note; dined with Moberly Bell.”Ⓐtextual note

Bernard Shaw has not completed his fifty-second year yet, and therefore is merely a lad. The vague and far-off rumble which he began to make five or six years ago is near-by now, and is recognizable as thunder. The editorial world lightly laughed at him during four or five of those years, but it takes him seriously now; he has become a force, and it is conceded that he must be reckoned with. Shaw is a pleasant man; simple, direct, sincere, animated;Ⓐtextual note but self-possessed, sane, and evenly poised, acute, engaging, companionable, and quite destitute of affectations. I liked him. He showed no disposition to talk about himself or his work, or his high and growing prosperities in reputation and the materialities;Ⓐtextual note but mainly—Ⓐtextual noteand affectionately and admiringly—Ⓐtextual notedevoted his talk to William Morris, whose close friend he had been,Ⓐtextual note and whose memory he deeply reveres. He again regretted that I had not known Morris, and again quoted Morris’s colossal encomium upon “Huck Finn”—things which Mr. Shaw had already said to me in a letterⒺexplanatory note. The luncheon was in his own apartment, overlooking the Thames, and there were only three guests. Some of the talking was done by the three, for form’s sake, but we put the most of it upon Shaw, by preference, and to our own profit. One of the guests told me afterward that Shaw had had a troubled and discouraging and difficult time of it in acquiring a market for his literature in the beginning;Ⓐtextual note that in the first nine years he earned only six pounds—five for an ingeniously worded patent medicine advertisement, fifteen shillings for an article in an obscure journal, and five for a verse which he contributed to a child’s picture-book. He had been heard to say that he wrote the verse as a burlesque, and it was accepted seriously; adding “as many later writings of mine written seriously have been accepted as burlesques.”

There was a choice company at MoberlyⒶtextual note Bell’sⒺexplanatory note, and by consequence it was a delightful evening. Mr. Bell is manager of the London Times, and therefore is in a sense deputy king of England. He has held this powerful office many years. Mrs. Clemens and I dined at his house many times when we were sojourning in London seven years ago. Those dinners were on a large scale; the guests numbered as many as forty; they were drawn from all ranks and were of all kinds and qualities, except the commonplace. At one of those gatherings there was a theatrical little episode: at Mr. Bell’s right sat a handsome and stately and richly dressed lady, a Continental princess*Ⓐtextual note of proud and ancient lineage—a person of special interest, at the time, for the reason that she had lately been making Cecil Rhodes’s life uncomfortableⒺexplanatory note for him in South Africa, she declaring with energy and passion that he had proposed to her and been accepted, and had then retired from the engagement without pretext or excuse. Rhodes called these statements nonsense, and denounced them, both publicly and privately, as fabrications. The noise that ensued was great, and it traveled far; because of this,Ⓐtextual note the Princess was the centreⒶtextual note of interest at Mr.

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* Radziwill. [begin page 110] Bell’s dinner that night. Among her ornaments was a long rope of very large and very fine pearls—the largest and finest and costliest to be found in England at the time, it was said. All the ladies present discussed them admiringly, and gazed upon them with fascinated eyes; by and by the string broke, and the great pearls gushed away in a brilliant freshet and went rolling and scattering everywhere. A dozen of the guests at that end of the table, together with the servants, hastened to seek and secure the gems and restore them to the Princess. She sat still and was not disturbed; as she received them she counted them, and finally pronounced the tale complete. Four hundred thousand dollars’ worth, and none missing! I heard one lady speak across the table to another and say,

“How could she be so cool and so calm? She was perfectly indifferent.”

The other answered, in a modified and confidential voice,

“She always breaks that string, and makes that display, when she has a good house—and besides, the real ones are in the bank; these are paste.”