Michael Holroyd has now completed two volumes of an intended three-volume biography of George Bernard Shaw. The work is and will be a staggering achievement. In the first volume--titled The Search for Love 1856-1898--Holroyd takes us from birth to marriage. It is a complex and intimate journey. Shaw's childhood was almost desperately lonely. He felt he was a stranger, that he was "a sojourner on this planet rather than a native of it. Whether it be that I was born mad or a little too sane, my kingdom was not of this world: I was at home only in the realm of our imagination, and at my ease only with the mighty dead." Holroyd, commenting on the passage, says, "It is this voice from the living dead that, despite the marvelous Shavian cadence, chilled his audience. In the lost childhood of Sonny [Shaw's nickname] the philosophy of George Bernard Shaw was conceived."
Shaw's father was a drunkard and a feeble, ineffectual man, whereas Bessie, his mother, was a very strong character. "My mother," wrote Shaw, "was one of those women who could act as matron of a cavalry barracks from eighteen to forty and emerge without a stain on her character." Shaw's preoccupation with his mother's "sexlessness" had deep-seated roots. So did his frequent harping upon how much he resembled his father. For there was a third figure, Vandeleur Lee, a music-teacher and companion of Bessie Shaw's. Lee taught her to sing and then, when Shaw was eight years old, moved into the household, living with the family in their poor town house and the little cottage that they leased. This was the first ménage a trois of Shaw's life.
Holroyd, with remarkable objectivity, documents the progress of this domestic arrangement. He does not, during the course of his detailed account, lapse into glib psychoanalysis. This is a factual account. "Like his mother he was dazzled by Lee and adapted many of his startling ideas--everything from sleeping with the widows open, to eating brown bread instead of white and parading his disdain for all professional men: doctors, lawyers, academics and the like."
Shaw, of course, practiced these "ideas" for the rest of his life. But it was the ménage itself that had the most enduring effect upon him. He, for the rest of his life, insisted that the relationship between his mother and Lee was sexually innocent. It was this unconsummated ménage that became the paradigm for most of his major plays--Candida, Misalliance, The Devil's Disciple, Pygmalion, even Heartbreak House. And the unconsummated ménage would become the framework for literally dozens of relationships that he formed.
Pygmalion, act 3:
Mrs. Higgins: When will you discover that there are some
rather nice-looking young women about?
Higgins: Oh, I can't be bothered with young women. My idea
of a lovable woman is something as like you as possible. I
shall never get into the way of seriously liking young
women: some habits lie too deep to be changed. Besides
they're all idiots.
Mrs. Higgins: Do you know what you would do if you
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