Shaw's "Biographer-In-Chief"

SHAW'S "BIOGRAPHER-IN-CIDEF" ONE DAY IN 1903, a young mathematics student at the University of Chicago received an invitation to see an amateur performance at the Studebaker Theater. The play, entitled significantly, You Never Can Tell, was the work of an Irish dramatist, then comparatively unknown, named Bernard Shaw. The young researcher, engrossed in the "Twenty-seven Lines upon the Cubic Surface," though well versed in literature and the theater, had hardly heard of this Irish author. Overcoming his reluctance to run the risk of wasting an evening, he decided to attend. The play thrilled and enthralled him; he experienced a feeling of "being immersed in a shower bath of cosmic rays." Never again was his life to be the same.1 It was characteristic of young Archibald Henderson to enter assiduously on a study of his "discovery." He found that the Chicago publishing house, the H. S. Stone and Company, led by two recent Harvard graduates, had issued Plays, Pleasant and Unpleasant in two volumes (1898); Three Plays for Puritans (1901); two novels, Love Among the Artists (1900) and Cashel Byrons Profession (1901); and a book of music criticism, The Perfect Wagnerite (1899). He turned up several others of Shaw's works that had appeared under American imprints.2 Several months of study in his spare time convinced Henderson that Shaw was a neglected genius. "1 burned with indignation over the neglect of this unappreciated and undiscovered genius," he has recalled, "and resolved to set the world right in the matter." He decided to propose himself as Shaw's biographer. When in the late spring of 1904 he conveyed his intention in a letter, he hardly felt confident of a reply. But the reply came in the form of a long letter outlining the main sources and mentioning the difficulties of a biography of Shaw. This answer led to further questions from Henderson and, after months of delay, to another reply. On January 11, 1905, Shaw wrote on a post card: "If this business is to come off, we may as well do it thoroughly. Have you a spare photograph of yourself. I should very much like to see you. Failing that, your picture would be a help." A few days later there arrived in Henderson's home in the village of Chapel Hill, North Carolina, probably the most remarkable letter in the history of literature. It ran to approximately 12,500 words, fifty1 . Henderson, Archibald George Bernard Shaw: Man of the Century, New York, 1956, xiii-xiv; Bernard Shaw, Playboy and Prophet, New York, 1932, 3. In subsequent references I shall designate these books, respectively as Man of the Century and Playboy and Prophet. 2. Man of the Century, xv. 164 1959 165 four typewriter-size pages written in Shaw's small handwriting in purple ink. He had begun it January 3 and completed it January 17, 1905. Of this unique letter, Henderson has commented: It led to my becoming Shaw's authorized biographer. I was awed by the vistas Qf vast backgrounds revealed by Shaw's voluminou ~ reminiscences. Mter voicing my measureless debt of gratitude for this rich treasure of reminiscence, I urged my lack of experience in literary criticism and biography as a convincing reason.for carrying out my original plan of writing only a brief interpretation of his life and writings, rather than a huge, fulllength bi9graphy.3 In another letter, dated February 10, 1905, Shaw advised his student ~~to keep on the lines of Boswell's Johnson and Lockhart's Scott, not to .mention Plutarch." "Thanks for the portrait," he added. "You seem to be the man for the job."4 Later, ShawmentioriedGibbon as another writer whom Henderson should emulate.5 It was not until June, 1907, after much urging from Shaw, that the aspiring biographer made his first trip to London. Mark Twain happened to be a fellow passenger on the Minneapolis (he was en route to Oxford University to receive his honorary degree), and Henderson was not one to miss an opportunity of making this celebrity's acquaintance . It chanced that an article by Henderson on Shaw and parts of Twain's Autobiography appeared in the current (June, 1907) issue...