AMONG ALL THE Shaviana thrown up by this centenary there
is one memoir which. I have no doubt, would give G. B. S. more pleasure than all the rest put together. It is the story of his meetings and correspondence with Dame Laurentia McLachlan, the Abbess of Stanbrook, which appears in this month's Cornhill. It is a remarkable and often moving story, the friendship between the two of them; growing out of St. Joan, and surviving (though only just) even the Black Girl and The Simpleton of the Unexpected Isles. It brings out excel- lently both Shaw's arrogance—he could not help regarding himself as a greater authority on Roman Catholicism than any Catholic—and his humility when confronted with some- body he felt a being superior to himself. There is a curious twist to the story, towards its close. Shaw insisted that 'the Godhead must contain the Mother as well as the Father': to the Abbess, the deification of the Mother of God was a heresy. The way things are going, it looks as if the heresy will soon be dogma. But the real interest in the memoir lies in Shaw's letters, which are among the most revealing he ever wrote.
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