Genius

Saturday, January 31st., Cadogan Square, London.

Last night with Duff Tayler to "Jitta's Atonement", adapted (nominally translated) by Shaw from the play by Trebitsch. Fulham Grand. This play made a very deep impression on both of us. Shaw has taken an obviously conventional and machine-made play, left the first act in all its conventional competence, 'situation', and dullness, and then in the second and third acts treated the development of the theme realistically and wittily. The effect is simply electrical. The play wakes up, the artists wake up, and the audience wakes up. Enthusiasm obtains. It was an experience to be there.

J. Leslie Frith as Alfred Lenkheim, Nancy Price as Agnes Haldensted

The mere idea of starting on a purely conventional first act and then guying it with realism and fun, shows genius. In the other acts there is some of the most brilliant work, some tender, some brutal, and lots of the most side-splitting fun that Shaw ever did - and he is now approaching seventy I suppose. The 'hysterics' scene of laughter between the widow and the mistress of the dead man is startlingly original. The confession scene between the mistress and the daughter of the dead man is really beautiful. The fault of Shaw's changes to the play is that the husband of the dead man's mistress, a shallow person to begin with, suddenly in the third act becomes a wit and a practical social philosopher of the first order - a Shaw at his finest. There was a very good audience and any quantity of appreciation and delight. And this in spite of very, very little good acting and a good deal of very bad acting. Nancy Price was the best of them. Frith better than anybody could have hoped for. But then they had something to do, something that made them come to life.

At this moment Shaw is packing the big Regent Theatre with "St. Joan". And a repertory company begins a series of twelve of his plays at the Chelsea Palace next week. At this rate Shaw will soon be nearly as popular in London as he is in Berlin and Vienna. I wish that I were half as successful!

When I say I love books, this is what I mean. A month or so ago I picked up a nice copy of Lyell's "Principles of Geology" (2 volumes) in Clerkenwell. After my sleep yesterday afternoon I started to read a little in it. Good. Lyell was both erudite and lucid, an unusual combination in my experience. But I soon realised that most of the pages in both volumes remained uncut. I hadn't noticed when I bought them. They have the bookplate of "Edward Howes, Morningthorpe Manor" and I got to thinking how they must have sat on the shelves of his library, disregarded and unloved, for decades. I felt genuinely sorry for them. What a fate for a beautiful book! I could almost have cried. So, that is what it means to love books. I shall give them the attention they deserve commencing with a pleasurable session of careful cutting.