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Details
SHAW, George Bernard (1856-1950). Typed letter signed ("G.B.S."), to T.E. Lawrence, with lengthy autograph postscript, London, 1 December 1922. 2 pages, large oblong 8vo, personal stationery.
"YOU ARE EVIDENTLY A VERY DANGEROUS MAN: MOST MEN WHO ARE ANY GOOD ARE"
SHAW'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF 'SEVEN PILLARS'. "The truth is," Shaw begins, "I haven't read it yet. I have sampled it." His wife "seized it first, and ploughed through from Alpha to Omega" but Shaw only now could get to it. What he read "puzzled" him "as to what is to be done with it...Obviously there are things in it that you cannot publish, yet many of them are things that WON'T die." He suggests the examples of Dickens and Oscar Wilde, who had letters or manuscripts withheld from publication until an interval of years had passed. "At least a couple [copies of 'Seven Pillars'] should be sealed and deposited in Bloomsbury and in New York. If a third were buried in Rome or Paris or Washington, the book would be fairly fireproof. Think it over."
Shaw draws an intriguing parallel to General Gordon: "Take the case of Gordon, for example. He was a most infernal scoundrel according to any workable standard of human morality. Yet that does not account for him at all. Have you considered the question as affecting yourself? You are evidently a very dangerous man: most men who are any good are: there is no power for good that is not also a power for evil...You have a conscience which would have prevented you from acting as Gordon did in China; so there will be a deep difference; but I wonder what, after reading the book through, I will decide to do with you if ever I become one of the lords of the east." Published in Letters to T. E. Lawrence.
"YOU ARE EVIDENTLY A VERY DANGEROUS MAN: MOST MEN WHO ARE ANY GOOD ARE"
SHAW'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF 'SEVEN PILLARS'. "The truth is," Shaw begins, "I haven't read it yet. I have sampled it." His wife "seized it first, and ploughed through from Alpha to Omega" but Shaw only now could get to it. What he read "puzzled" him "as to what is to be done with it...Obviously there are things in it that you cannot publish, yet many of them are things that WON'T die." He suggests the examples of Dickens and Oscar Wilde, who had letters or manuscripts withheld from publication until an interval of years had passed. "At least a couple [copies of 'Seven Pillars'] should be sealed and deposited in Bloomsbury and in New York. If a third were buried in Rome or Paris or Washington, the book would be fairly fireproof. Think it over."
Shaw draws an intriguing parallel to General Gordon: "Take the case of Gordon, for example. He was a most infernal scoundrel according to any workable standard of human morality. Yet that does not account for him at all. Have you considered the question as affecting yourself? You are evidently a very dangerous man: most men who are any good are: there is no power for good that is not also a power for evil...You have a conscience which would have prevented you from acting as Gordon did in China; so there will be a deep difference; but I wonder what, after reading the book through, I will decide to do with you if ever I become one of the lords of the east." Published in Letters to T. E. Lawrence.