112-624: Marie Adelaide Elizabeth Rayner Lowndes (née Belloc ; 5 August 1868 – 14 November 1947), who wrote as Marie Belloc Lowndes , was a prolific English novelist, and sister of author Hilaire Belloc . Active from 1898 until her death, she had a literary reputation for combining exciting incidents with psychological interest . Four of her works were adapted for the screen: The Chink in the Armour (1912; adapted 1922), The Lodger (1913; adapted several times), Letty Lynton (1931; adapted 1932), and The Story of Ivy (1927; adapted 1947). The Lodger
224-592: A 1920 article. After a long-simmering feud, Belloc replied with a booklet, The Case of Dr. Coulton , in 1938. Belloc's style during later life fulfilled the nickname he received in childhood, Old Thunder . Belloc's friend Lord Sheffield described his provocative personality in a preface to The Cruise of the Nona . In 1937, Belloc was invited to be a visiting professor at Fordham University in New York City by university president Robert Gannon. Belloc delivered
336-634: A career as a critic. He had been celibate until his twenty-ninth birthday, when his shyness was overcome by Jane (Jenny) Patterson, a widow some years his senior. Their affair continued, not always smoothly, for eight years. Shaw's sex life has caused much speculation and debate among his biographers, but there is a consensus that the relationship with Patterson was one of his few non-platonic romantic liaisons. The published novels, neither commercially successful, were his two final efforts in this genre: Cashel Byron's Profession written in 1882–83, and An Unsocial Socialist , begun and finished in 1883. The latter
448-537: A career as a playwright: "I had rashly taken up the case; and rather than let it collapse I manufactured the evidence". After using the plot of the aborted 1884 collaboration with Archer to complete Widowers' Houses (it was staged twice in London, in December 1892), Shaw continued writing plays. At first he made slow progress; The Philanderer , written in 1893 but not published until 1898, had to wait until 1905 for
560-549: A comedy about an Englishman in Ireland, attracted leading politicians and was seen by Edward VII , who laughed so much that he broke his chair. The play was withheld from Dublin's Abbey Theatre , for fear of the affront it might provoke, although it was shown at the city's Royal Theatre in November 1907. Shaw later wrote that William Butler Yeats , who had requested the play, "got rather more than he bargained for ... It
672-478: A contributor, mostly anonymously. He was soon at odds with the magazine's editor, Clifford Sharp , who by 1916 was rejecting his contributions—"the only paper in the world that refuses to print anything by me", according to Shaw. "I see the Junkers and Militarists of England and Germany jumping at the chance they have longed for in vain for many years of smashing one another and establishing their own oligarchy as
784-456: A different view, and the management of the theatre staged extra matinée performances to meet the demand. The play ran from April to July, toured the provinces and was staged in New York. It earned him £341 in royalties in its first year, a sufficient sum to enable him to give up his salaried post as a music critic. Among the cast of the London production was Florence Farr , with whom Shaw had
896-681: A distance of some 55 miles, more than double that of a marathon, in only 11½ hours. He was awarded a first-class honours degree in history in June 1895. That autumn, Elodie entered religious life and joined the Sisters of Charity at Emmitsburg, Maryland, as a postulant . She left a month later, writing to Belloc that she had failed in her religious vocation. In March 1896, having secured financing as an Oxford Extension lecturer in Philadelphia , Germantown , Baltimore and New Orleans , Belloc took
1008-524: A federal arrangement, with national and imperial parliaments. Holroyd records that by this time the separatist party Sinn Féin was in the ascendency, and Shaw's and other moderate schemes were forgotten. In the postwar period, Shaw despaired of the British government's coercive policies towards Ireland, and joined his fellow-writers Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton in publicly condemning these actions. The Anglo-Irish Treaty of December 1921 led to
1120-581: A few weeks, far shorter than the time he had spent in his journey to California, the crestfallen Belloc made his way back across the United States, after a fruitless journey of thousands of miles. His biographer Joseph Pearce compares the return to Napoleon's long, winter retreat from Moscow. When Belloc finally reached the East Coast at Montclair, New Jersey , he received a letter from Elodie on 30 April 1891, definitively rejecting him in favour of
1232-406: A fine orator. "The most striking result of our present system of farming out the national Land and capital to private individuals has been the division of society into hostile classes, with large appetites and no dinners at one extreme, and large dinners and no appetites at the other" Shaw, Fabian Tract No. 2: A Manifesto (1884). From 1885 to 1889 Shaw attended the fortnightly meetings of
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#17328025146681344-458: A flamboyant figure well known in Dublin's musical circles. Shaw retained a lifelong obsession that Lee might have been his biological father; there is no consensus among Shavian scholars on the likelihood of this. The young Shaw suffered no harshness from his mother, but he later recalled that her indifference and lack of affection hurt him deeply. He found solace in the music that abounded in
1456-421: A follower. But Belloc has broader if sourer scope. For example, with Lord Lundy (who was "far too freely moved to Tears"): It happened to Lord Lundy then as happens to so many men about the age of 26 they shoved him into politics ... leading up to "we had intended you to be the next Prime Minister but three... instead, Lundy is condemned to the ultimate political wilderness: ...The stocks were sold;
1568-810: A granddaughter of Joseph Priestley . In 1867, Bessie Rayner Parkes married attorney Louis Belloc, son of Jean-Hilaire Belloc . In 1872, five years after they wed, Louis died but not before being wiped out financially in a stock market crash. The young widow then brought her children from France back to England. Belloc grew up in England; his boyhood was spent in Slindon , West Sussex. He wrote about his home in poems such as "West Sussex Drinking Song", "The South Country", and "Ha'nacker Mill"; after graduating from John Henry Newman 's Oratory School in Edgbaston , Birmingham. In September 1889, Belloc's sister Marie made
1680-474: A house in the country, Shaw, concerned that this might cause scandal, agreed to their marriage. The ceremony took place on 1 June 1898, in the register office in Covent Garden . The bride and bridegroom were both aged forty-one. In the view of the biographer and critic St John Ervine , "their life together was entirely felicitous". There were no children of the marriage, which it is generally believed
1792-660: A nominated Fabian delegate, he did not attend the London conference at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street in February 1900, that created the Labour Representation Committee —precursor of the modern Labour Party . By 1903, when his term as borough councillor expired, he had lost his earlier enthusiasm, writing: "After six years of Borough Councilling I am convinced that the borough councils should be abolished". Nevertheless, in 1904 he stood in
1904-494: A rally in Trafalgar Square addressed by Besant was violently broken up by the authorities on 13 November 1887 ( "Bloody Sunday" ), Shaw became convinced of the folly of attempting to challenge police power. Thereafter he largely accepted the principle of "permeation" as advocated by Webb: the notion whereby socialism could best be achieved by infiltration of people and ideas into existing political parties. Throughout
2016-487: A recent French army veteran. Attending his first debate of the Oxford Union Debating Society, he saw that the affirmative position was wretchedly and half-heartedly defended. As the debate drew to its conclusion and the division of the house was called, he rose from his seat in the audience, and delivered a vigorous, impromptu defence of the proposition. Belloc won that debate from the audience, as
2128-556: A religious vocation; the steamship trip home was tainted with despair. The gloomy Belloc threw himself into restless activity. Determined to fulfill the obligation of military service necessary to retain his French citizenship, Belloc served his term with an artillery regiment near Toul in 1891. While he was serving in France, Elodie's mother Ellen died, removing a significant obstacle to Belloc's hopes, but, Elodie, although torn between her affection for Hilaire and her desire to serve God in
2240-450: A revision of an earlier tract in which Charlotte Wilson had defined socialism in anarchistic terms. In Shaw's new version, readers were assured that "socialism can be brought about in a perfectly constitutional manner by democratic institutions". The mid-1880s marked a turning point in Shaw's life, both personally and professionally: he lost his virginity, had two novels published, and began
2352-530: A romantic relationship between 1890 and 1894, much resented by Jenny Patterson. The success of Arms and the Man was not immediately replicated. Candida , which presented a young woman making a conventional romantic choice for unconventional reasons, received a single performance in South Shields in 1895; in 1897 a playlet about Napoleon called The Man of Destiny had a single staging at Croydon . In
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#17328025146682464-447: A schoolboy left him disillusioned with formal education: "Schools and schoolmasters", he later wrote, were "prisons and turnkeys in which children are kept to prevent them disturbing and chaperoning their parents." In October 1871 he left school to become a junior clerk in a Dublin firm of land agents , where he worked hard, and quickly rose to become head cashier. During this period, Shaw was known as "George Shaw"; after 1876, he dropped
2576-424: A sensitive boy, found the less salubrious parts of Dublin shocking and distressing, and was happier at the cottage. Lee's students often gave him books, which the young Shaw read avidly; thus, as well as gaining a thorough musical knowledge of choral and operatic works, he became familiar with a wide spectrum of literature. Between 1865 and 1871 Shaw attended four schools, all of which he hated. His experiences as
2688-656: A series of lectures at Fordham which he completed in May of that year. The experience ended up leaving him physically exhausted, and he considered stopping the lectures early. On 2 April 1941, Belloc's son Peter Gilbert Marie Sebastian Belloc died at the age of 36 of pneumonia. He fell ill while on active service with the 5th Battalion, Royal Marines in Scotland. He is buried in West Grinstead at Our Lady of Consolation and St. Francis churchyard. In 1942, Belloc suffered
2800-518: A stage production. Similarly, Mrs Warren's Profession (1893) was written five years before publication and nine years before reaching the stage. Shaw's first play to bring him financial success was Arms and the Man (1894), a mock- Ruritanian comedy satirising conventions of love, military honour and class. The press found the play overlong, and accused Shaw of mediocrity, sneering at heroism and patriotism, heartless cleverness, and copying W. S. Gilbert 's style. The public took
2912-495: A steamship to New York, and started making his way to Elodie in California. He expected to receive letters from her on his journey, but received none. To his shock and dismay, when he finally arrived in California in May, he discovered Elodie was deathly ill, worn out by the stress of the previous year. Belloc, thinking that after all their suffering, he and his beloved would be denied one another by her death, also collapsed. Over
3024-623: A stroke and never recovered from its effects. On the 12 July 1953, he also suffered burns and shock after falling on his fireplace. He died on 16 July 1953 at Mount Alvernia Nursing Home in Guildford, Surrey. Belloc was buried at the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Francis at West Grinstead, where he had regularly attended Mass as a parishioner. His estate was probated at £ 7,451. At his funeral Mass, homilist Monsignor Ronald Knox said "No man of his time fought so hard for
3136-539: A strong friendship, further deepened when Marie and Bessie accompanied the Hogans on their tour of France, visiting Paris with them. Hilaire was absent touring the French provinces as a correspondent for The Pall Mall Gazette , but when the Hogans stopped back in London on their return from another European trip the following year, Belloc met Elodie for the first time, and was smitten. Shortly after this meeting, Ellen Hogan
3248-410: A teenage ambition to become a painter, and had not yet thought of writing for a living, but Lee found a little work for him, ghost-writing a musical column printed under Lee's name in a satirical weekly, The Hornet . Lee's relations with Bessie deteriorated after their move to London. Shaw maintained contact with Lee, who found him work as a rehearsal pianist and occasional singer. Eventually Shaw
3360-503: A theory that Belloc asserted had been completely discredited. Wells remarked that "Debating Mr. Belloc is like arguing with a hailstorm". Belloc's review of Outline of History observed that Wells's book was a powerful and well-written volume "up until the appearance of Man, that is, somewhere around page seven". Wells responded with the small book Mr. Belloc Objects . Not to be outdone, Belloc followed with Mr. Belloc Still Objects . G. G. Coulton wrote Mr. Belloc on Medieval History in
3472-530: A tract, Why Are The Many Poor? , issued by the recently formed Fabian Society , Shaw went to the society's next advertised meeting, on 16 May 1884. He became a member in September, and before the year's end had provided the society with its first manifesto, published as Fabian Tract No. 2. He joined the society's executive committee in January 1885, and later that year recruited Webb and also Annie Besant ,
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3584-405: A tyrannical great-aunt. If, as Holroyd and others surmise, George's motives were mercenary, then he was disappointed, as Bessie brought him little of her family's money. She came to despise her ineffectual and often drunken husband, with whom she shared what their son later described as a life of "shabby-genteel poverty". By the time of Shaw's birth his mother had become close to George John Lee,
3696-616: A venture was contrary to the specified purpose of the legacy. He was eventually persuaded to support the proposal, and the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) opened in the summer of 1895. By the later 1890s Shaw's political activities lessened as he concentrated on making his name as a dramatist. In 1897 he was persuaded to fill an uncontested vacancy for a "vestryman" ( parish councillor ) in London's St Pancras district. At least initially, Shaw took to his municipal responsibilities seriously; when London government
3808-487: A walking pilgrimage from Central France across the Alps to Rome. The Path to Rome contains descriptions of the people and places he encountered, his drawings in pencil and in ink of the route, humour, poesy. In 1909, Belloc published The Pyrenees , providing many details of that region. As an essayist he was one of a small group (with Chesterton, E. V. Lucas and Robert Lynd ) of popular writers. During World War I , Belloc
3920-410: A well-known yachtsman. He won many races and was on the French sailing team. In the early 1930s, he was given an old pilot cutter named Jersey . He sailed this for some years around the coasts of England, with the help of younger men. One sailor, Dermod MacCarthy, wrote a book about it, called Sailing with Mr Belloc . Belloc wrote more than 150 books, the subjects ranging from warfare to poetry to
4032-559: Is in the same side chapel as the icon of Our Lady of Cambrai. At Oxford University, Belloc served as president of the Oxford Union. He went into politics after he became a naturalised British subject. A great disappointment in his life was his failure to gain a fellowship of All Souls College , Oxford in 1895. This failure may have been caused in part by his producing a small statue of the Virgin Mary and placing it before him on
4144-512: The Eye-Witness . Asked once why he wrote so much, Belloc responded: "Because my children are howling for pearls and caviar." Belloc observed that "The first job of letters is to get a canon", that is, to identify those works a writer sees as exemplary of the best of prose and verse. For his own prose style, he said he aspired to be as clear and concise as " Mary had a little lamb ." In 1902, Belloc published The Path to Rome , an account of
4256-551: The British Economic Association ; it was, Holroyd observes, "the closest Shaw had ever come to university education". This experience changed his political ideas; he moved away from Marxism and became an apostle of gradualism . When in 1886–87 the Fabians debated whether to embrace anarchism , as advocated by Charlotte Wilson , Besant and others, Shaw joined the majority in rejecting this approach. After
4368-612: The Feast of the Purification , 2 February 1914, likely from cancer. She was age 45, and Belloc, at age 43, had more than 40 years of life ahead of him. He wore mourning garb for the rest of his life and kept her room as she had left it. Nearly five years later, his son Louis was killed in 1918 while serving in the Royal Flying Corps in northern France. Belloc placed a memorial tablet at the nearby Cambrai Cathedral . It
4480-576: The First World War as equally culpable, and although not a republican , castigated British policy on Ireland in the postwar period. These stances had no lasting effect on his standing or productivity as a dramatist; the inter-war years saw a series of often ambitious plays, which achieved varying degrees of popular success. In 1938 he provided the screenplay for a filmed version of Pygmalion for which he received an Academy Award . His appetite for politics and controversy remained undiminished; by
4592-663: The Irish Literary Revival , including George Russell and James Joyce , and was a close friend of Seán O'Casey , who was inspired to become a playwright after reading John Bull's Other Island . Man and Superman , completed in 1902, was a success both at the Royal Court in 1905 and in Robert Loraine 's New York production in the same year. Among the other Shaw works presented by Vedrenne and Granville-Barker were Major Barbara (1905), depicting
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4704-532: The London County Council elections. After an eccentric campaign, which Holroyd characterises as "[making] absolutely certain of not getting in", he was duly defeated. It was Shaw's final foray into electoral politics. Nationally, the 1906 general election produced a huge Liberal majority and an intake of 29 Labour members. Shaw viewed this outcome with scepticism; he had a low opinion of the new prime minister, Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman , and saw
4816-613: The Social Democratic Federation (SDF), where he discovered the writings of Karl Marx , and thereafter spent much of 1883 reading Das Kapital . He was not impressed by the SDF's founder, H. M. Hyndman , whom he found autocratic, ill-tempered and lacking leadership qualities. Shaw doubted the ability of the SDF to harness the working classes into an effective radical movement and did not join it—he preferred, he said, to work with his intellectual equals. After reading
4928-606: The partition of Ireland between north and south, a provision that dismayed Shaw. In 1922 civil war broke out in the south between its pro-treaty and anti-treaty factions, the former of whom had established the Irish Free State . Shaw visited Dublin in August, and met Michael Collins , then head of the Free State's Provisional Government . Shaw was much impressed by Collins, and was saddened when, three days later,
5040-400: The "George" and styled himself "Bernard Shaw". In June 1873 Lee left Dublin for London and never returned. A fortnight later, Bessie followed him; the two girls joined her. Shaw's explanation of why his mother followed Lee was that without the latter's financial contribution the joint household had to be broken up. Left in Dublin with his father, Shaw compensated for the absence of music in
5152-609: The 1880s the Fabian Society remained small, its message of moderation frequently unheard among more strident voices. Its profile was raised in 1889 with the publication of Fabian Essays in Socialism , edited by Shaw who also provided two of the essays. The second of these, "Transition", details the case for gradualism and permeation, asserting that "the necessity for cautious and gradual change must be obvious to everyone". In 1890 Shaw produced Tract No. 13, What Socialism Is ,
5264-612: The 1890s Shaw's plays were better known in print than on the West End stage; his biggest success of the decade was in New York in 1897, when Richard Mansfield 's production of the historical melodrama The Devil's Disciple earned the author more than £2,000 in royalties. In January 1893, as a Fabian delegate, Shaw attended the Bradford conference which led to the foundation of the Independent Labour Party . He
5376-562: The Artists (1881), but neither found a publisher; each was serialised a few years later in the socialist magazine Our Corner . In 1880 Shaw began attending meetings of the Zetetical Society, whose objective was to "search for truth in all matters affecting the interests of the human race". Here he met Sidney Webb , a junior civil servant who, like Shaw, was busy educating himself. Despite difference of style and temperament,
5488-616: The Bourbons nowhere." Total independence, he asserted, was impractical; alliance with a bigger power (preferably England) was essential. The Dublin Easter Rising later that month took him by surprise. After its suppression by British forces, he expressed horror at the summary execution of the rebel leaders, but continued to believe in some form of Anglo-Irish union. In How to Settle the Irish Question (1917), he envisaged
5600-482: The Irish leader was ambushed and killed by anti-treaty forces. In a letter to Collins's sister, Shaw wrote: "I met Michael for the first and last time on Saturday last, and am very glad I did. I rejoice in his memory, and will not be so disloyal to it as to snivel over his valiant death". Shaw remained a British subject all his life, but took dual British-Irish nationality in 1934. Shaw's first major work to appear after
5712-620: The Labour members as inconsequential: "I apologise to the Universe for my connection with such a body". In the years after the 1906 election, Shaw felt that the Fabians needed fresh leadership, and saw this in the form of his fellow-writer H. G. Wells , who had joined the society in February 1903. Wells's ideas for reform—particularly his proposals for closer cooperation with the Independent Labour Party—placed him at odds with
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#17328025146685824-582: The London premiere it had ended. The play attracted capacity audiences until July, when Tree insisted on going on holiday, and the production closed. His co-star then toured with the piece in the US. In 1899, when the Boer War began, Shaw wished the Fabians to take a neutral stance on what he deemed, like Home Rule , to be a "non-Socialist" issue. Others, including the future Labour prime minister Ramsay MacDonald , wanted unequivocal opposition, and resigned from
5936-607: The Man in 1894. Influenced by Henrik Ibsen , he sought to introduce a new realism into English-language drama, using his plays as vehicles to disseminate his political, social and religious ideas. By the early twentieth century his reputation as a dramatist was secured with a series of critical and popular successes that included Major Barbara , The Doctor's Dilemma , and Caesar and Cleopatra . Shaw's expressed views were often contentious; he promoted eugenics and alphabet reform , and opposed vaccination and organised religion. He courted unpopularity by denouncing both sides in
6048-661: The Old Gang should have given way to Wells some years earlier: "God only knows whether the Society had not better have done it". Although less active—he blamed his advancing years—Shaw remained a Fabian. In 1912 Shaw invested £1,000 for a one-fifth share in the Webbs' new publishing venture, a socialist weekly magazine called The New Statesman , which appeared in April 1913. He became a founding director, publicist, and in due course
6160-653: The Press was squared: The Middle Class was quite prepared. But as it is! . . . My language fails! Go out and govern New South Wales!" The Aged Patriot groaned and died: And gracious! how Lord Lundy cried! Of more weight is Belloc's Sonnets and Verse , a volume that deploys the same singing and rhyming techniques of his children's verses. Belloc's poetry is often religious, often romantic; throughout The Path to Rome he writes in spontaneous song. George Bernard Shaw George Bernard Shaw (26 July 1856 – 2 November 1950), known at his insistence as Bernard Shaw ,
6272-414: The accidental acquaintance of a Catholic widow, Mrs. Ellen Hogan, who was travelling from California on a European tour with two of her children, her daughters Elizabeth and Elodie. The travellers were both devoutly Catholic and keenly interested in literature, and Marie arranged a visit with her mother, Bessie, who in turn arranged an audience with Henry Cardinal Manning . These acts of generosity cemented
6384-525: The best of Balliol loved and led me, God be with you, Balliol men. While at Oxford he was bestowed by his fellow students with a great honour: he was elected and served as President of the Oxford Union, the University debating society. He and another undergraduate, Anthony Henley, also achieved the record-breaking and amazing athletic feat of walking from Carfax Tower in Oxford, to Marble Arch in London,
6496-521: The contemporary art world whose views Shaw most admired were William Morris and John Ruskin , and he sought to follow their precepts in his criticisms. Their emphasis on morality appealed to Shaw, who rejected the idea of art for art's sake , and insisted that all great art must be didactic . Of Shaw's various reviewing activities in the 1880s and 1890s it was as a music critic that he was best known. After serving as deputy in 1888, he became musical critic of The Star in February 1889, writing under
6608-729: The contrasting morality of arms manufacturers and the Salvation Army ; The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), a mostly serious piece about professional ethics; and Caesar and Cleopatra , Shaw's counterblast to Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra , seen in New York in 1906 and in London the following year. Now prosperous and established, Shaw experimented with unorthodox theatrical forms described by his biographer Stanley Weintraub as "discussion drama" and "serious farce ". These plays included Getting Married (premiered 1908), The Shewing-Up of Blanco Posnet (1909), Misalliance (1910), and Fanny's First Play (1911). Blanco Posnet
6720-469: The division of the house then showed, and his reputation as a debater was established. He was later elected president of the Union. He held his own in debates there with F. E. Smith and John Buchan , the latter a friend. In the 1920s, Belloc attacked H. G. Wells 's The Outline of History . Belloc criticised what he termed Wells's secular bias and his belief in evolution by means of natural selection ,
6832-415: The dominant Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland; George Carr Shaw, an ineffectual alcoholic, was among the family's less successful members. His relatives secured him a sinecure in the civil service, from which he was pensioned off in the early 1850s; thereafter he worked irregularly as a corn merchant. In 1852 he married Bessie Gurly; in the view of Shaw's biographer Michael Holroyd she married to escape
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#17328025146686944-542: The dominant military power of the world." Shaw: Common Sense About the War (1914). After the First World War began in August 1914, Shaw produced his tract Common Sense About the War , which argued that the warring nations were equally culpable. Such a view was anathema in an atmosphere of fervent patriotism, and offended many of Shaw's friends; Ervine records that "[h]is appearance at any public function caused
7056-576: The few openly Catholic members of the British Parliament . Belloc was a noted disputant, with a number of long-running feuds. He was also a close friend and collaborator of G. K. Chesterton . George Bernard Shaw , a friend and frequent debate opponent of both Belloc and Chesterton, dubbed the pair the "Chesterbelloc". Belloc's writings encompassed religious poetry and comic verse for children. His widely sold Cautionary Tales for Children included "Jim, who ran away from his nurse, and
7168-567: The good things". Boys from the Choir and Sacristy of Worth Preparatory School sang and served at the Mass. Recent biographies of Belloc have been written by A. N. Wilson and Joseph Pearce . Jesuit political philosopher James Schall 's Remembering Belloc was published by St. Augustine Press in September 2013. A memoir of Belloc was written by Henry Edward George Rope . During his later years, Belloc sailed when he could afford to do so and became
7280-448: The government for ignoring social issues and concentrating solely on Irish Home Rule , a matter Shaw declared of no relevance to socialism. In 1894 the Fabian Society received a substantial bequest from a sympathiser, Henry Hunt Hutchinson—Holroyd mentions £10,000. Webb, who chaired the board of trustees appointed to supervise the legacy, proposed to use most of it to found a school of economics and politics. Shaw demurred; he thought such
7392-882: The government's attitude to Irish recruits, was banned in the UK and was presented at a Royal Flying Corps base in Belgium in 1917. Augustus Does His Bit , a genial farce, was granted a licence; it opened at the Royal Court in January 1917. Shaw had long supported the principle of Irish Home Rule within the British Empire (which he thought should become the British Commonwealth). In April 1916 he wrote scathingly in The New York Times about militant Irish nationalism: "In point of learning nothing and forgetting nothing these fellow-patriots of mine leave
7504-648: The house by teaching himself to play the piano. Early in 1876 Shaw learned from his mother that Agnes was dying of tuberculosis . He resigned from the land agents, and in March travelled to England to join his mother and Lucy at Agnes's funeral. He never again lived in Ireland, and did not visit it for twenty-nine years. Initially, Shaw refused to seek clerical employment in London. His mother allowed him to live free of charge in her house in South Kensington , but he nevertheless needed an income. He had abandoned
7616-493: The house. Lee was a conductor and teacher of singing; Bessie had a fine mezzo-soprano voice and was much influenced by Lee's unorthodox method of vocal production. The Shaws' house was often filled with music, with frequent gatherings of singers and players. In 1862 Lee and the Shaws agreed to share a house, No. 1 Hatch Street, in an affluent part of Dublin, and a country cottage on Dalkey Hill , overlooking Killiney Bay . Shaw,
7728-776: The impact of the extraordinary. Belloc died 14 November 1947 at the home of her elder daughter, the Countess Iddesleigh (wife of the third Earl ) in Eversley Cross, Hampshire, and was interred in France, in La Celle-Saint-Cloud near Versailles , where she had spent her youth. The Lodger (opera) is a 1960 opera by Phyllis Tate, based on the 1913 novel Hilaire Belloc Defunct Joseph Hilaire Pierre René Belloc ( / h ɪ ˈ l ɛər ˈ b ɛ l ə k / , French: [ilɛːʁ bɛlɔk] ; 27 July 1870 – 16 July 1953)
7840-479: The indignity of being your representative. The crowd cheered and Belloc won the election, despite his Catholic faith. He retained his seat in the first 1910 election but did not stand in December 1910. Belloc's only period of steady employment after that was from 1914 to 1920 as editor of Land and Water . Otherwise, he lived by his writing and was often financially insecure. Belloc first came to public attention shortly after arriving at Balliol College, Oxford as
7952-417: The instant departure of many of those present." Despite his errant reputation, Shaw's propagandist skills were recognised by the British authorities, and early in 1917 he was invited by Field Marshal Haig to visit the Western Front battlefields. Shaw's 10,000-word report, which emphasised the human aspects of the soldier's life, was well received, and he became less of a lone voice. In April 1917 he joined
8064-464: The language as encapsulating Shaw's ideas and his means of expressing them. Shaw was born at 3 Upper Synge Street in Portobello , a lower-middle-class part of Dublin . He was the youngest child and only son of George Carr Shaw and Lucinda Elizabeth (Bessie) Shaw ( née Gurly). His elder siblings were Lucinda (Lucy) Frances and Elinor Agnes. The Shaw family was of English descent and belonged to
8176-770: The late 1920s, he had largely renounced Fabian Society gradualism, and often wrote and spoke favourably of dictatorships of the right and left—he expressed admiration for both Mussolini and Stalin . In the final decade of his life, he made fewer public statements but continued to write prolifically until shortly before his death, aged ninety-four, having refused all state honours, including the Order of Merit in 1946. Since Shaw's death scholarly and critical opinion about his works has varied, but he has regularly been rated among British dramatists as second only to Shakespeare ; analysts recognise his extensive influence on generations of English-language playwrights. The word Shavian has entered
8288-654: The leading dramatist of his generation, and in 1925 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature . Born in Dublin, in 1876 Shaw moved to London, where he struggled to establish himself as a writer and novelist, and embarked on a rigorous process of self-education. By the mid-1880s he had become a respected theatre and music critic. Following a political awakening, he joined the gradualist Fabian Society and became its most prominent pamphleteer. Shaw had been writing plays for years before his first public success, Arms and
8400-459: The many current topics of his day. He has been called one of the Big Four of Edwardian Letters, along with H. G. Wells , George Bernard Shaw, and G. K. Chesterton , all of whom debated with each other into the 1930s. Belloc was closely associated with Chesterton, and Shaw coined the term "Chesterbelloc" for their partnership. Belloc was co-editor with Cecil Chesterton of the literary periodical
8512-481: The memoir, I, too, Have Lived in Arcadia, published in 1942, she told the story of her mother's life, compiled largely from old family letters and her own memories of her early life in France. A second autobiography Where love and friendship dwelt appeared posthumously in 1948. Ernest Hemingway praised her insight into female psychology, revealed above all in the situation of the ordinary mind failing to cope with
8624-481: The more difficult by the opposition of Elodie's mother, who wished Elodie to enter the convent, and Hilaire's mother, who thought her son was too young to marry. Belloc pursued Elodie with letters, and, after her return to the United States, in 1891, he pursued her in person. The impoverished Belloc, still only twenty years old, sold nearly everything he had to purchase a steamship ticket to New York, ostensibly to visit relatives in Philadelphia . Belloc's true reason for
8736-525: The national consensus in welcoming America's entry into the war: "a first class moral asset to the common cause against junkerism ". Three short plays by Shaw were premiered during the war. The Inca of Perusalem , written in 1915, encountered problems with the censor for burlesquing not only the enemy but the British military command; it was performed in 1916 at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre . O'Flaherty V.C. , satirising
8848-594: The next few weeks, however, Elodie recovered and after a tumultuous, six-year courtship, Belloc and Elodie were married at St. John the Baptist Catholic church in Napa, California , on 15 June 1896. They settled initially in Oxford. In 1906, Belloc purchased land and a house called King's Land at Shipley, West Sussex in the United Kingdom. The couple had five children before Elodie's untimely death on
8960-411: The next four years Shaw made a negligible income from writing, and was subsidised by his mother. In 1881, for the sake of economy, and increasingly as a matter of principle, he became a vegetarian . In the same year he suffered an attack of smallpox ; eventually he grew a beard to hide the resultant facial scar. In rapid succession he wrote two more novels: The Irrational Knot (1880) and Love Among
9072-465: The owners and reciting poetry. Hilaire's first letter on his arrival in San Francisco is effervescent, happy to see Elodie and full of hopes for their future, but his manifestly zealous courtship was to go unrewarded. The joy he felt at seeing Elodie soon gave way to disappointment when the apparently insurmountable opposition of her mother to the marriage manifested itself. After a stay of only
9184-408: The part of the managers of Vienna and Berlin that I should have my plays performed by them first." The British production opened in April 1914, starring Sir Herbert Tree and Mrs Patrick Campbell as, respectively, a professor of phonetics and a cockney flower-girl. There had earlier been a romantic liaison between Shaw and Campbell that caused Charlotte Shaw considerable concern, but by the time of
9296-506: The pen-name Corno di Bassetto. In May 1890 he moved back to The World , where he wrote a weekly column as "G.B.S." for more than four years. In the 2016 version of the Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , Robert Anderson writes, "Shaw's collected writings on music stand alone in their mastery of English and compulsive readability." Shaw ceased to be a salaried music critic in August 1894, but published occasional articles on
9408-485: The rate of one per year until 1946. She produced over forty novels in all - mainly mysteries, well-plotted and on occasion based on real-life crime, though she herself resented being classed as a crime writer. She created the French detective Hercules Popeau, roughly contemporaneously to Agatha Christie 's creation of Belgian detective Hercule Poirot . Popeau appeared in two novels and a series of short stories. Her mother died in 1925, fifty-three years after her father. In
9520-444: The religious life, was unwilling to cross her mother's wishes so soon after her mother's untimely death and persisted in refusing Belloc's advances. After his year of service was concluded, still pining for and writing to Elodie, he took the entrance exam to Oxford University , and matriculated to Balliol College in January 1893. Belloc later wrote in a poem: Balliol made me, Balliol fed me, Whatever I had she gave me again; And
9632-655: The rest of their lives. They retained a London flat in the Adelphi and later at Whitehall Court . During the first decade of the twentieth century, Shaw secured a firm reputation as a playwright. In 1904 J. E. Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker established a company at the Royal Court Theatre in Sloane Square , Chelsea to present modern drama. Over the next five years they staged fourteen of Shaw's plays. The first, John Bull's Other Island ,
9744-553: The same year the critic William Archer suggested a collaboration, with a plot by Archer and dialogue by Shaw. The project foundered, but Shaw returned to the draft as the basis of Widowers' Houses in 1892, and the connection with Archer proved of immense value to Shaw's career. On 5 September 1882 Shaw attended a meeting at the Memorial Hall, Farringdon , addressed by the political economist Henry George . Shaw then read George's book Progress and Poverty , which awakened his interest in economics. He began attending meetings of
9856-583: The society when it followed Shaw. In the Fabians' war manifesto, Fabianism and the Empire (1900), Shaw declared that "until the Federation of the World becomes an accomplished fact we must accept the most responsible Imperial federations available as a substitute for it". As the new century began, Shaw became increasingly disillusioned by the limited impact of the Fabians on national politics. Thus, although
9968-412: The society's "Old Gang", led by Shaw. According to Cole, Wells "had minimal capacity for putting [his ideas] across in public meetings against Shaw's trained and practised virtuosity". In Shaw's view, "the Old Gang did not extinguish Mr Wells, he annihilated himself". Wells resigned from the society in September 1908; Shaw remained a member, but left the executive in April 1911. He later wondered whether
10080-463: The subject throughout his career, his last in 1950. From 1895 to 1898, Shaw was the theatre critic for The Saturday Review , edited by his friend Frank Harris . As at The World , he used the by-line "G.B.S." He campaigned against the artificial conventions and hypocrisies of the Victorian theatre and called for plays of real ideas and true characters. By this time he had embarked in earnest on
10192-511: The table during the interview for the fellowship. From 1906 to 1910, Belloc was a Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Salford South . During one campaign speech, he was asked by a heckler if he was a "papist". He responded: Gentlemen, I am a Catholic. As far as possible, I go to Mass every day. This [taking a rosary out of his pocket] is a rosary. As far as possible, I kneel down and tell these beads every day. If you reject me on account of my religion, I shall thank God that He has spared me
10304-643: The trek to America became apparent when, after spending a few days in Philadelphia, he began to make his way across the American continent. Part of his journey was by train, but when the money ran out, Belloc just walked. An athletic man who hiked extensively in Britain and Europe, Belloc made his way on foot for a significant part of the 2870 miles from Philadelphia to San Francisco. While walking, he paid for lodging at remote farm houses and ranches by sketching
10416-407: The two quickly recognised qualities in each other and developed a lifelong friendship. Shaw later reflected: "You knew everything that I didn't know and I knew everything you didn't know ... We had everything to learn from one another and brains enough to do it". Shaw's next attempt at drama was a one-act playlet in French, Un Petit Drame , written in 1884 but not published in his lifetime. In
10528-642: The war was Heartbreak House , written in 1916–17 and performed in 1920. It was produced on Broadway in November, and was coolly received; according to The Times : "Mr Shaw on this occasion has more than usual to say and takes twice as long as usual to say it". After the London premiere in October 1921 The Times concurred with the American critics: "As usual with Mr Shaw, the play is about an hour too long", although containing "much entertainment and some profitable reflection". Ervine in The Observer thought
10640-490: Was a French-English writer, politician, and historian. Belloc was also an orator, poet, sailor, satirist, writer of letters, soldier, and political activist. His Catholic faith had a strong effect on his works. Belloc became a naturalised British subject in 1902 while retaining his French citizenship. While attending Oxford University , he served as President of the Oxford Union . From 1906 to 1910, he served as one of
10752-595: Was a writer, activist and an advocate for women's equality, a co-founder of the English Woman's Journal and the Langham Place Group . As an adult, Belloc campaigned against women's suffrage as a member of the Women's National Anti-Suffrage League . Belloc's maternal grandfather was Joseph Parkes (1796–1865). Belloc's grandmother, Elizabeth Rayner Priestley (1797–1877), was born in the United States,
10864-488: Was also adapted as a 1940 radio drama and 1960 opera . Born in George Street , Marylebone , London and raised in La Celle-Saint-Cloud , France, Belloc was the only daughter of French barrister Louis Belloc and English feminist Bessie Parkes . Her younger brother was Hilaire Belloc , whom she wrote of in her last work, The Young Hilaire Belloc (published posthumously in 1956). Belloc's paternal grandfather
10976-405: Was an Irish playwright, critic, polemicist and political activist. His influence on Western theatre, culture and politics extended from the 1880s to his death and beyond. He wrote more than sixty plays, including major works such as Man and Superman (1902), Pygmalion (1913) and Saint Joan (1923). With a range incorporating both contemporary satire and historical allegory , Shaw became
11088-704: Was banned on religious grounds by the Lord Chamberlain (the official theatre censor in England), and was produced instead in Dublin; it filled the Abbey Theatre to capacity. Fanny's First Play , a comedy about suffragettes , had the longest initial run of any Shaw play—622 performances. Androcles and the Lion (1912), a less heretical study of true and false religious attitudes than Blanco Posnet , ran for eight weeks in September and October 1913. It
11200-588: Was called back to California prematurely to take care of another of her children who was stricken with illness. She left her two daughters, who wished to remain in London, under the care of the Belloc family, and, Bessie asked her own son to squire the Hogan daughters around London. Belloc's interest in Elodie grew more fervid by the day. This was the beginning of a long, intercontinental, and star-crossed courtship, made all
11312-569: Was driven to applying for office jobs. In the interim he secured a reader's pass for the British Museum Reading Room (the forerunner of the British Library ) and spent most weekdays there, reading and writing. His first attempt at drama, begun in 1878, was a blank-verse satirical piece on a religious theme. It was abandoned unfinished, as was his first try at a novel. His first completed novel, Immaturity (1879),
11424-451: Was early cut off in dreadful agonies". A similar poem tells the story of "Rebecca, who slammed doors for fun and perished miserably". The tale of "Matilda who told lies and was burned to death" was adapted into the play Matilda Liar! by Debbie Isitt . Quentin Blake , the illustrator, described Belloc as at one and the same time the overbearing adult and mischievous child. Roald Dahl was
11536-410: Was eaten by a lion" and "Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death". He wrote historical biographies and numerous travel works, including The Path to Rome (1902). Belloc was born in La Celle-Saint-Cloud , France to a French father, Louis Belloc (1830–1872) and an English mother. His sister Marie Adelaide Belloc Lowndes also became a writer. Belloc's mother Bessie Rayner Parkes (1829–1925)
11648-562: Was followed by one of Shaw's most successful plays, Pygmalion , written in 1912 and staged in Vienna the following year, and in Berlin shortly afterwards. Shaw commented, "It is the custom of the English press when a play of mine is produced, to inform the world that it is not a play—that it is dull, blasphemous, unpopular, and financially unsuccessful. ... Hence arose an urgent demand on
11760-499: Was never consummated; whether this was wholly at Charlotte's wish, as Shaw liked to suggest, is less widely credited. In the early weeks of the marriage Shaw was much occupied writing his Marxist analysis of Wagner 's Ring cycle , published as The Perfect Wagnerite late in 1898. In 1906 the Shaws found a country home in Ayot St Lawrence , Hertfordshire; they renamed the house " Shaw's Corner ", and lived there for
11872-628: Was perceived by soldiers as a "kept correspondent" for the Entente leadership. The Wipers Times mocked him as "Belary Helloc," a satirical persona who advanced foolish suggestions for winning the war. His 1907 Cautionary Tales for Children , humorous poems with an implausible moral, illustrated by Basil Temple Blackwood (signing as "B.T.B.") and later by Edward Gorey , are the most widely known of his writings. Supposedly for children, they, like Lewis Carroll 's works, are more to adult and satirical tastes: "Henry King, Who chewed bits of string and
11984-459: Was published as a serial in To-Day magazine in 1884, although it did not appear in book form until 1887. Cashel Byron appeared in magazine and book form in 1886. In 1884 and 1885, through the influence of Archer, Shaw was engaged to write book and music criticism for London papers. When Archer resigned as art critic of The World in 1886, he secured the succession for Shaw. The two figures in
12096-571: Was reformed in 1899 and the St Pancras vestry became the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras , he was elected to the newly formed borough council. In 1898, as a result of overwork, Shaw's health broke down. He was nursed by Charlotte Payne-Townshend , a rich Anglo-Irish woman whom he had met through the Webbs. The previous year she had proposed that she and Shaw should marry. He had declined, but when she insisted on nursing him in
12208-487: Was sceptical about the new party, and scorned the likelihood that it could switch the allegiance of the working class from sport to politics. He persuaded the conference to adopt resolutions abolishing indirect taxation , and taxing unearned income "to extinction". Back in London, Shaw produced what Margaret Cole , in her Fabian history, terms a "grand philippic" against the minority Liberal administration that had taken power in 1892. To Your Tents, O Israel! excoriated
12320-559: Was the French painter Jean-Hilaire Belloc , and her maternal great-great-grandfather was the theologian/philosopher Joseph Priestley . Her mother died in 1925, 53 years after her father. In 1896, Belloc married Frederick Sawrey A. Lowndes (1868–1940), a journalist. They had one son and two daughters, the elder of whom married the Earl of Iddesleigh . She published a biography, H.R.H. The Prince of Wales: An Account of His Career , in 1898. From then on novels, reminiscences and plays appeared at
12432-451: Was too grim to appeal to publishers and did not appear until the 1930s. He was employed briefly by the newly formed Edison Telephone Company in 1879–80 and, as in Dublin, achieved rapid promotion. Nonetheless, when the Edison firm merged with the rival Bell Telephone Company, Shaw chose not to seek a place in the new organisation. Thereafter he pursued a full-time career as an author. For
12544-443: Was uncongenial to the whole spirit of the neo-Gaelic movement, which is bent on creating a new Ireland after its own ideal, whereas my play is a very uncompromising presentment of the real old Ireland." Nonetheless, Shaw and Yeats were close friends; Yeats and Lady Gregory tried unsuccessfully to persuade Shaw to take up the vacant co-directorship of the Abbey Theatre after J. M. Synge 's death in 1909. Shaw admired other figures in
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