Bernard Shaw and the Quakers

BERNARD SHAW AND THE QUAKERS By Warren S. Smith* I . . . being often challenged to denominate myself . . . have ceased to reply that my nearest to an established religion is the Society of Friends, and while calling myself a Creative Evolutionist, might also call myself a Jainist Tirthankara as of eight thousand years ago. . . .1 In 1950, his ninety-fourth and last year of life, Bernard Shaw made the above statement as a sort of aside while he was commenting for the Atlantic Monthly on the recent publication of Dean Inge's Diary of a Dean. And two years before, in a preface for Richard Albert Wilson's The Miraculous Birth of Language, he had predicted that the next generation would not be so puzzled about his classification of himself as "a Quaker of sorts."2 Many persons today, including most Friends, would be puzzled by such a classification, even with the limiting phrase of sorts appended; but perhaps that is at least partially because it is so difficult to dismiss from our minds the image of wit, mountebank , and idol-smasher which he had so carefully created for us over so many years, and which tended (often to his own annoyance ) to obscure the truly mystical side of his personality. But no earnest reader of his works or viewer of his plays could ever miss the clear voice of the prophet nor doubt that his latterday affinity for the Society of Friends was anything but sincere. Miss Blanche Patch, the secretary of his later years, recalls his reply when a member of the press inquired (facetiously, I'm sure) whether he had not turned Roman Catholic: "I am not a Roman Catholic. ... If I had to be fitted into any religious denomination , the Society of Friends, who are at the opposite pole to the * Associate Professor of Theatre Arts, The Pennsylvania State University. Warren Smith has discussed Shaw's attitude towards Christianity generally in The Nation for July 28, 1956. 1 G. B. Shaw, "If I Were a Priest," Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 185, no. 5 (May 1950), p. 70. 2 Shaw, Preface to The Miraculous Birth of Language by Richard Albert Wilson (New York: Philosophical Library, 1948), p. 19105 106Bulletin of Friends Historical Association Roman Catholics, would have the best chance."3 But he goes on to say once more that in view of his very explicit writings on the subject there is no excuse for describing him as a member of any of the Churches. S. J. Woolf reports also that Shaw claimed to have the same religion as that of Dean Inge. "We are both Quakers," he explained . "We don't believe in set prayers. When we want to talk with God, we use the same language that we ordinarily use, not prayers composed for us by other people, and we do not need a church to hold communion with him."4 A similar report is given by his Quaker neighbor at Ayot St. Lawrence: One Sunday when I had just returned from a Friends Meeting, he and I talked about the Quaker faith. He said that he was a Quaker by temperament but not by faith. He could not define his faith and did not want to, but the accepted mythologies did not appeal to him. He said: "What an amazing title for a religious organization: Friends! That in itself was a stroke of genius. I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it. . . ."5 Then he told Stephen Winsten that he believed the "spontaneous" prayer of the Quakers involved long and arduous preparation just as his own "spontaneous" speeches always did; and he further chides Friends for denying the kind of religious healing that is to be found in art and music. In this he shows himself, as in nearly all his statements about Friends, to be more understanding of their historical positions than of their contemporary practices. Back of these proclamations, all made in his old age, lie more than casual thoughts about Friends. The Quakers (and especially George Fox) had inhabited his mind and writings for years. From the very beginnings it was obvious enough that there was something akin...