rive into
him. As it is, he is wasting prodigious gifts in the service of King
Leopold and the Pope and other ghastly scarecrows. If he must have a
Pope, there is quite a possible one at Adelphi Terrace.

For the next few days I shall be at my country quarters, Ayot St.
Lawrence, Welwyn, Herts. I have a motor car which could carry me on
sufficient provocation as far as Beaconsfield; but I do not know how
much time you spend there and how much in Fleet Street. Are you only
a week-ender; or has your wise wife taken you properly in hand and
committed you to a pastoral life.

Yours ever,
G. BERNARD SHAW.

P.S. Remember that the play is to be practical (in the common
managerial sense) only in respect of its being mechanically
possible as a stage representation. It is to be neither a
likely-to-be-successful play nor a literary lark: it is to be
written for the good of all souls.

Among the reviewers of the book, our old friend, the _Academy_,
surprised me by hating Shaw so much more than Chesterton that the
latter came off quite lightly. There was a good deal of the usual
misunderstanding and lists were made of self-contradictions on the
author's part. Still in the main the press was sympathetic and even
enthusiastic. But when Shaw reviewed Chesterton on Shaw, more than
one paper waxed sarcastic on the point of royalties and remuneration
gained by these means. The funniest of the more critical comments on
the way these men wrote of one another was a suggestion made in the
_Bystander_ that Shaw and Chesterton were really the same person:

. . . Shaw, it is said, tired of socialism, weary of wearing
Jaegers, and broken down by teetotalism and vegetarianism, sought,
some years ago, an escape from them. His adoption, however, of these
attitudes had a decided commercial value, which he did not think it
advisable to prejudice by wholesale surrender. Therefore he, in order
to taste the forbidden joys of individualistic philosophy, meat, food
and strong drink, created "Chesterton." This mammoth myth, he
decided, should enjoy all the forms of fame which Shaw had to deny
himself. Outwardly, he should be Shaw's antithesis. He should be
beardless, large in girth, smiling of countenance, and he should be
licensed to sell paradoxes only in essay and novel form, all stage
and platform rights being reserved by Shaw. To enable the imposition
to be sa