A Doubtful Quantity
Shaw's Corner. By Stephen Winsten. (Hutchinson. 18s.) THREE years ago, while Shaw was still alive, his neighbour, Mr. Stephen Winsten, published a book of conversations with him called Days with Bernard Shaw. As Mr. Winsten is an agreeable writer with an eye for detail—and as what he related with such friendly detachment was, granted its authenticity, of considerable Shavian interest—it was perhaps excusable that a commentator in another journal should have compaT'ed his work to Eckermann's Conversations with Goethe (not by the way, Goethe's Conversations With Eckermann, as the dust-cover of Shaw's Corner has it). But I know that this same commentator was pained and startled when Shaw wrote a letter to the journal in question, a week or two latef, which cast grave doubts on the value of Mr. Winsten's reminiscences. Shaw did, it is true, say: "It is a charming book .. . I admire his art and welcome his portraiture"—words which Messrs. Hutchinson are now using to commend Shaw's Corner—but he also listed a number of serious errors and added some lines which Messrs. Hutchinson's blurb-writer happens not to have quoted: "In hardly any passage in the book as far as I have had time to examine it has Mr. Winsten's art not improved on bare fact and occurrence by adding the charm of his own style to the haphazard crudity of nature . . . I write this letter only to warn Winsten's imitators and plagiarists not to draw all sorts of fantastic conclusions from mere inaccuracies in his narrative."
Faced with this protest from the subject of Mr. Winsten's attentions, what is a reviewer to make of a further instalment of their con- versations? The mixture appears as before; it is full of sprightly, amusing talk, ostensibly Shavian. But how trustworthy is it? Hoping for some reassurance from Mr. Winsten, I turned to his foreword, only to find: "Let it be understood that I did not walk about pencil in hand and with a questionnaire, nor had I any mechanical contrivance for recording our conversations, as some have suggested, nor can I lay claim to an exceptional memory." This is frank, but not reassuring.
I recently came across a book for children called The Story Book that Squeaks to You. On the cover was a picture of a cat and the words: "Press Me! I Squeak." The aged figure of Shaw on the cover of Mr. Winsten's book does not squeak, not physically, but I seem to hear, coming out of it, a faint and plaintive wail, the wail perhaps of truth which sees itself reflected in a slightly distorting
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