Extracts from Bernard Shaw, The Diaries 1885-1897; edited & annotated by Stanley Weintraub; The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1986. Two volumes, 1239 pages. This has extracts from Vol.1, up to 1890 - see separate page for Volume 2 from 1891.
These extracts are items of interest to vegetarians - follow the link to amazon.com on the right for the full volumes. It appears to be currently out of print and only used copies are available.
There were almost daily references to restaurants visited, showing that Shaw seems to have had no problem finding vegetarian food in London, where there were dozens of vegetarian restaurants - his only real problems were in Germany and Italy. He made very frequent visits to several vegetarian restaurants, detailed below, and to many other restaurants and cafes of varying quality, but never any mention of any problems with them.
However his reports of the food he eats would not be considered too healthy today - lots of eggs (fried/omelette/egg salad), cheese (macaroni cheese seemed to be his staple diet, plus bread & cheese), milk (often in cocoa), cream, butter, chocolate, sweets, toffee, barley-sugar, ginger beer, lemonade (all with plenty of sugar no doubt), unspecified soup - with occasional mentions of fruit, nuts, brown bread, porridge, cake, buns; plus very rare mentions of mushrooms, lentils, rice, etc. Hopefully he ate vegetables/beans etc. as well, but never mentioned them...
There are many references to meetings with other vegetarians, these are linked in green where they first appear.
- notes in (regular type) are by the editor of the diaries. Notes in [italic] are by the editor of this web page.
1881 [from brief notes written later]
Jan. Became a vegetarian, and remained so until June. [Shaw does not say *why* he became vegetarian, but some time later apparently said it was from reading the works of Shelley in the reading room of the British Museum. However, Shaw was already a huge fan of Wagner's music, and had reviewed Wagner conducting his own music at the Albert Hall in 1877. In october 1880 the entire issue of the Bayreuther Blatter was taken over with articles by Wagner which included his promotion of vegetarianism. The reading room would certainly have had a copy, but only in German.]
May. In the last days of this month I got smallpox . . . Went then to Leyton (well on in June), [to his uncle Dr. Walter Gurly] resumed meat eating, and remained there until October.
October. I returned from Leyton on the 2nd, and resumed reading and writing at the B. Museum, and vegetarianism. Joined the Dialectical Society. [Shaw then remained vegetarian for life]
[the following years also just had even shorter notes, none of specific interest here]
1885
[from brief notes written later] A.B. (Mrs. Annie Besant) well known as a speaker. . . . She joined the Socialist movement in 1884. My intimacy with her gradually ripened until the beginning of 1887, when it very nearly became an intrigue. This was partly due to my thoughtlessness, and when the matter became serious I had to draw back with a consciousness of having behaved inconsiderately. This strained our relation for a time, and at the end of 1887 (23rd Dec.) she returned all my letters and reproached me very bitterly for my treatment of her.
[from notes at the beginning of the diary] Work every day in the reading room at the British Museum. Dined every day at the Wheatsheaf Vegetarian Restaurant, Rathbone Place. . . My habit of spending every Saturday evening with J. K. Barton at his house . . . was kept up but with many interruptions [one of the other regular visitors to barton's at this time was Cecil Sharp, age 26, three years younger than Shaw, and later to become famous as a collector of folk songs.] . . . Contributed art notes to Mrs. Besant's magazine Our Corner under the heading "Art Corner" every month from June onward. . . Continued vegetarianism. Took to woolen clothing system [dress reform was an issue amongst Victorian vegetarians]. . . Towards the end of the year I began reading German with Sydney Webb once a week [again suggesting that he would have read the Wagner article, even if he needed to ask for help with it. Shaw continued various attempts to improve his German for many years].
January [the first proper diary begins]
21. Lecture on "Socialism" to the Dialectical Society. Made acquaintance of Mrs. Besant. [gave further details of their meeting]
31. Spent the evening at Mrs. Besant's (First visit there).
February.
4. Mrs. Besant at Dialectical.
13. [among his expenses] Justice 1d [one penny - Justice was a weekly journal part financed by Edward Carpenter who Shaw came to know later, he frequently bought copies of it]
March
5. Called on Mrs. Besant in the evening. . . she did not know how we stood with one another. Must get introduced.
13. Wrote letters to Joynes and Sherlock (James Leigh Joynes, 1853-1893, an ex-master at Eton, forced out because of his S.D.F. activities, was a vegetarian and a Shelleyan.)
25. Rec'd: Mrs. Besant for Irrational Knot £2/15/0 [his first payment for articles in her magazine, he wrote a series of articles under the same title.]
April
15. Dialectical. "Does Property in Land differ from other Property?" Mrs. Besant [other minor references to Mrs. Besant followed over the next few months, Shaw nominated her for Fabian Society membership]
May
14. Bedford [Debating] Society. Read on "Vegetarianism". . . speech on vegetarianism in the evening.
20. Dialectical. Drysdale on "Vaccination, Vegetarianism and Vivisection." [Shaw noted this but didn't attend] (Dr. R. Drysdale, senior physician at Metropolitan Free Hospital, author of Alcohol and Public Health, London, 1876, and biographer of Malthus, London, 1892.)
June
3. Dialectical. Dr. Anna Kingsford on "Vegetarianism, Vivisection, Vaccination, etc.". . . Spoke at Dialectical.
30. Dined at Porridge Bowl. (A vegetarian restaurant in Holborn).
July
18. . . to Lady Wilde's where I met . . . Mrs. Kingsford and others.
19. Sunday. Joynes's at Tilford. (9.5 train
from Waterloo. - With the Salt's and Joynes at Tilford. Bathed, tricycled, walked, played, sang and back at Waterloo at 21.45. (Henry Stephens Salt, ex-master of Eton, socialist, vegetarian, founder of the Humanitarian League, biographer of Thoreau [though most of that came a lot later] His attractive but lesbian wife Catherine, a sister of James Leigh Joynes, acted as occasional unpaid secretary for Shaw and enjoyed playing pianoforte duets with him on the Salt grand on his visits to Tilford.) [this is the first mention of Salt in the diaries, but it implies that they already knew each other well.]
October
6. Joynes at Wheatsheaf
[this was repeated later]
7. Dialectical. Mrs Besant "Ought there to be an Idle Class in the Future Society?" . . . to the Dialectical. Spoke. [more of these sessions, and further minor mentions of Mrs Besant followed]
1886
January
1.
Fabian. E. Carpenter. "Private Property" (Edward Carpenter, 1844-1929, a follower of Whitman and Thoreau. His Civilization: Its Cause and Cure, 1889, and Towards Democracy, 1883, were radical in politics and homoerotic in sexual matters.) [he was also a vegetarian activist and a friend of Henry Salt.]
3. Went to Hammersmith [William Morris's Hammersmith Socialist League] and spoke in the discussion after Carpenter's lecture.
[Shaw began writing as a critic for 'The World', which continued until 1894. He was also still writing for Mrs. Besant's 'Our Corner']
7. Mrs [Annie] Besant's to spend evening. - Did not get to Mrs. Besant's until nearly 22. [10.00pm - further mentions of Mrs. Besant followed as usual, relating to both the regular articles for her magazine, and their shared membership of the Fabian Society.]
18. Wrote article on Vegetarianism and sent it to PMG [Pall Mall Gazette]. ("Failures of Inept Vegetarians," signed by "An Expert," PMG, 26 January 1886). Joynes . . . at the Wheatsheaf. [a fairly frequent meeting with his vegetarian friend at the vegetarian restaurant].
March
10. First meeting of the Shelley Society at the Botany Theatre, University College. Stopford Brooke on "Shelley as Poet and Man". (The inaugural meeting of the Shelley Society, at which Shaw is reputed - there is no record of it in the staid abstracts - to have declared, "I am, like Shelley, a Socialist, an Atheist and a Vegetarian.")
April
3. Walked to Hammersmith, delaying in the Park to read Archer's proofs. (William Archer was still correcting his Wagner book, never to be published) [Shaw had been proof reading it for some time and continued for a while to come]
9. . . . subscription to Shelley Society £1/1/0
13. (Tighe) Hopkins at Museum. He came with me to have a vegetarian dinner. Walker at Wheatsheaf. In the evening . . . read Shelley's Queen Mab for meeting tomorrow.
14. Shelley Society. Forman on Queen Mab. . . . Finished Queen Mab . . . Spoke at Shelley meeting.
May
7. Cenci performance (1st on record) at Grand Theatre, Islington. Shelley Society. (To evade state censorship legislation, the Shelley Society presented Shelley's notorious - it dealt with incest - verse drama, The Cenci, at the Grand Theatre, Islington, on the afternoon of 7 May 1886. By being open to Society members only, the play - refused a public license by the Lord Chamberlain - was technically a private performance. Shaw was in charge of promotion for the event, and gave away more press tickets than he should have, forcing him to wheedle several from the play's leading lady.)
11. Wrote Art Notes (on The Cenci) for Our Corner. (His long notice of the Shelley Society Cenci production, OC, June 1886, found the play more a curiosity than a theater piece.) [further comments on the production over the next few days]
12. Shelley Society, "Shelley's Religion" Read by (W.M.) Rosetti.
June
9. Fabian Conference. Had tea with Carpenter during adjournment.
[the three day conference was Annie Besant's idea. Edward Carpenter has other minor mentions]
16. Richter-Wagner Concert. Albert Hall [Richter was the conductor who had worked with Wagner in Bayreuth. Shaw went but did not review it. There were continual references to learning German which related to the continuing interest in Wagner]
19. Went with Mrs. Besant to the East End . . . to East India Dock [these excursions were described a couple of times as 'slumming it with Mrs. Besant', she was researching an article for her magazine.]
July
6. Cocoa etc. at Orange Grove (The Orange Grove, 37 St. Martin's Lane, would become a favorite vegetarian restaurant for Shaw and his friends)
7. Mrs. Besant lecturing at Kelmscott House [William Morris's House in Hammersmith] on "Interest and an Idle Class" . . . walked home with Mrs. Besant. [other references to her continue as usual]
September
6. Vegetarian tract in German 1d [one penny, but no indication of where it came from except that he took tea at the Wheatsheaf as usual, so perhaps they had it.]
16. Went to the Stone Gallery in St. Paul's, then to Garden in Jewin St. for dinner. ['Garden' sounds vegetarian again....]
November
16. Shelley's Hellas at St. James's Hall. W. S. Selle's music. Shelley Society. [there had been other meetings of the Society which Shaw did not attend]
December
3. After Fabian saw Mrs. Besant to bus at Piccadilly Circus. She told me that she had just ascertained that she had heart disease. (Annie Besant's heart ailment was romantic rather than organic.) [the first indication of a change in their relationship. Shaw was still in a sexual relationship with Jenny Patterson]
15. Shelley Society. W. M. Rosetti on "Prometheus Unbound". . . Reading Life of Mme Blavatsky . . . Spoke at Shelley Society. [Mme. Blavatsky founded the Theosophical Society - of which Annie Besant became the chair in 1891. Shaw wrote a review of the book a couple of days later.]
1887
January
1. Soiree. Hammersmith Branch of Socialist League. . . Carpenter and others came back in the train.
5. Spoke at Dialectical [Society] and saw Mrs. Besant home. [similar references followed, but without him going in]
21. Declaration settled (The "declaration" was the Manifesto of the Fabian Parliamentary League, drafted by Annie Besant and revised by Shaw. It was issued gratis) [their meetings on various matters increased in frequency, becoming almost daily over the next few weeks]
March
9. Shelley Society, "Miss Alma Murray as Beatrice Cenci" B. L. Moseley . . . Spoke at the Shelley Society.
April
13. Shelley Society, A. Galt on "The Revolt of Islam," and H. B. Forman on "Shelley's Agitation for Reform in 1817." . . . Reading Wagner on conducting. Spoke at Shelley Society. [he reviewed the Wagner book for the Pall Mall Gazette]
14. Salts at the Wheatsheaf [the first mention of Henry Salt or his wife, Kate, in almost two years, though written in a way which suggests that they probably met occasionally in between.]
18. Began review of Ueber das Dirignen (Wagner) but found I could not work [he finished it two days later]. . . . on to Mrs. Besant's. Duets - Mozart E flat Symphony and Beethoven 7th. [They were now playing piano duets and continuing their frequent meetings for the next few months - indeed everything else continued much the same for the next few months].
November
26. Dinner at Alpha 11d (The Alpha was a vegetarian restaurant at 23 Oxford Street)
December
14. Shelley Society, E. Aveling on "Shelley's Socialism. . . . Spoke at the Shelley . . . went home. . . Salt came part of the way with us. [The first specific mention of Salt in connection with the Shelley Society, but he was probably there from the start.]
15. Debate on Vegetarianism at the Hatcham Liberal Club between Dr. Drysdale and W. S. Manning [Shaw noted this but did not attend]
23. [the relationship between Shaw and Mrs. Besant ended after she proposed a contract for living together as common law man and wife]
1888
January
3. Vegetarian 1d [one penny - this was the first issue of the large format weekly newspaper published by Arnold Hills. Hills was also President of the London Vegetarian Society which had broken away from the national Vegetarian Society, based in Manchester. Shaw had very little to do with them, despite their meeting being in the same building as the Fabian Society, mainly because of differences with their President, who was devout Christian and a builder of warships. Shaw records buying other journals regularly, but rarely this one - though the many vegetarian restaurants most likely had copies available for diners. A few years later Shaw joined the original, Manchester based, Society and remained a member for the rest of his life. The Vegetarian (London) eventually printed an article about him in 1897.]
6. Stayed to supper (which I did not partake of) at Headlam's after the Fabian. . . Mrs. Besant there also. [he mentioned a couple of times about not partaking of supper on these occasions, but it is not clear whether there was nothing vegetarian - which seems unlikely as was happy just eating bread and butter - or just not hungry. The references to Annie Besant from here on are less frequent and relating to business/socialist matters]
18. Dialectical Society, Member of Vegetarian Society, address by. [Shaw noted this but did not attend] J. L. Joynes and [Henry] Salt called just before I went out to dinner. [Joynes was vegetarian and Salt's brother-in-law, Shaw saw a lot of him around this time]
30. Tea at Salt's Played duets with Mrs. Salt in the evening. [the first record of many such soirees]
February
8. Shelley Society [noted but did not attend, mentioned more meeting with the Salts and Joynes at the Wheatsheaf, Shaw's main vegetarian restaurant, this was also a regular occurrence]
10. . . .I unexpectedly made a row by objecting to a smoking concert. [most vegetarians were anti-tobacco]
March
14. Shelley Society. Rev. Prof. J. B. Mayor on "Shelley's Metres." [Mayor was the President of the original Manchester based Vegetarian Society, and a professor of Latin at Cambridge. Shaw noted this meeting, but again did not attend]
April
6. Vegetarian 1d [probably bought at the Vegetarian Society office in the Memorial Hall as there was a Fabian meeting there that day]
11. Shelley Society, H. S. Salt on "Julian and Maddalo" [the Shelley Soc. seems to be something of an alternative vegetarian society as Salt did not have a lot to do with the new London VegSoc either... Shaw attended this time and spoke there]
22. . . . to Salt's at Tilford [Joynes also lived in Tilford, one of many weekends Shaw spent there with this group of vegetarians]
May
7. The Argosy, Hills on "Vegetarianism." [Arnold Hills, President of the London Vegetarian Society, Proprietor of The Vegetarian, extremely wealthy puritanical Christian and owner of the Thames Iron Works which built battleships for the Royal Navy. As an atheist and pacifist it is not too surprising that Shaw did not attend this talk.... Perhaps only surprising that he put it in his dairy at all.]
June
13. Shelley Society. H. Buxton Forman on "Rosalind and Helen" . . . Went to the Shelley Committee but did not stay for the meeting. [Shaw never made any specific mention of being elected to the committee, though he was probably on it from the start.] Went with Salt [presumably also on the committee] to Farringdon Rd. where I spoke [at the Fabian meeting]. Went with Mrs. Besant, who was in the chair . . . to the railway station. [these meetings with Salt and Mrs. Besant were fairly typical of the whole of this year]
August
5. Archer called to ask me to go to dinner somewhere at a restaurant, but I had already prepared my macaroni. [the diaries make frequent reference to macaroni at various restaurants, this one shows it was his staple diet at home as well, presumably with cheese.]
September
19. Meeting of the Shelley Society Committee . . . was insufferably dull. [at some point Arnold Hills became involved with the Shelley Society, which probably didn't help as far as Shaw was concerned]
October
9. Meet . . . at the Vegetarian restaurant in Buckingham St. [the first mention of this one, with no name. It recurs from time to time later. The people he meets and eats with in the many veg restaurants are not necessarily all vegetarian, but they seem to be happy enough to join him there.]
20. . . . came to tea here on his way to Mrs. Besant to the spiritualistic investigation they are holding there. (Mrs. Besant was becoming attracted to occult matters, and would alter the course of her life after reading Mme. Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, passed on to her by Shaw for review.) [Shaw has also been interested in phychic matters, seances etc., for a while, but had eventually dismissed it as a fraud].
22. Read Schopenhauer on the Metaphysics of Love. [Schopenhauer had been very influential on Wagner and many others who followed]
23. Read Schopenhauer on genius.
November
6. When I got to Birmingham I went to a vegetarian restaurant in Paradise St. and dined. [he went back there for tea after the meeting and back the next day. A few years later Arnold Hills opened a large vegetarian hotel in Birmingham, so there seems to have been plenty of trade.]
27. Private view of Beckmann's Richard Wagner in his home, Wahnfried. [this prompted Shaw to read several articles by Wagner over the next few days. He refers to reading the 'Meister', the quarterly publication of the Wagner Society, of which he was a member.]
December
12. . . . to the Aerated Bread Shop opposite the Mansion House station and had some eggs and chocolate there. [the first mention of what was a frequent eating place, there were a chain of these in various locations in London]
1889
January
2. Dialectical Society, Dr. Alice Vickery on "The Errors of Vegetarianism." . . . Spoke at the Dialectical. [Book . . . sent for review by The Star. The Secret Doctrine. . . ] (On this date, The Star sent him for review Madame Helena Blavatsky's The Secret Doctrine, in two volumes. Uninterested Shaw sent it to Annie Besant. The bible of Theosophy converted Mrs. Besant and changed her life. She would spend her later years in India, and die there as a great lady, having achieved a sort of Eastern sainthood.)
4. Fabian Society, Edward carpenter on "Civilisation: its Cause and Cure" . . . Attacked Carpenter rather strongly over his lecture - perhaps too strongly.
7. Spent the day making up my mind to pay up my arrears of subscriptions to the Shelley Society, Dialectical Society, and the Wagner Society. [He did renew all of them.]
10. Tea at Salts'. . . played the Eroica with Mrs. S. [continuing his visits and piano duets]
March
13. Read a paper on "Shelley's Politics" to the Shelley Society, at University College. . . worked all afternoon at the Shelley lecture. There were only half a dozen people there. Walked a little way with Salt. . .
15. Wagner Society, W. Ashton Ellis on "The Wagner-Liszt Correspondence". [the first mention of a meeting of the Wagner Soc. - but Shaw went to the Fabians instead.]
April
4. . . . dined at the Vegetarian Society's place. [after a visit to 'The Star' office, it is not clear what this means as the Society did not run a restaurant, though there was the Central Restaurant nearby.]
May
9. We went to the Vegetarian Restaurant in the next street and had something to eat. [also after a visit to the Star office, still no clearer which one, but probably the same.]
June
24. Richter concert - Wagner Society's program. [Richter was a conductor who had worked with Wagner in Bayreuth - Shaw went to this one and reviewed it for 'The Star']
26. Shelley Society, Stopford Brooke on "The Lyric Poetry of Shelley." . . . At the Shelley affair I stood at the door with Forman and took the shillings.
28. Had a long talk with Dowdeswell about Bayreuth. [Shaw's continuing attempts to improve his German were ultimately directed at visiting Wagner's opera house near Munich. Dowdeswell was a gallery owner, and presumably a member of the Wagner Society.]
July
8. Looked through the first act of the score of Parsifal at the Museum. [Wagner's last opera, which has an anti-hunting sub plot in act 1.]
13. Die Meistersinger at Covent Garden . . . Opera libretto 2/6 [Shaw's review said the performance was a failure but worth attempting. He was getting increasingly serious about Wagner now Bayreuth was impending]
18. Dowdeswell starts for Bayreuth [no explanation of why they were travelling separately]
20. Got a telegram. . . to say that the English Illustrated Magazine would give me £7/10/0 for an article on Bayreuth. Made up my mind to go. [the next few days were taken up with planning the trip, buying tickets etc. - all at very short notice.]
25. . . . en route for Bayreuth [Shaw travelled alone but met up wit at least three other Londoners on arrival three days later. The London Wagner Society had arranged accommodation.]
28. . . . eating some salmon in the absence of anything more vegetarian [an extremely rare departure for Shaw - and showing that Bayreuth had not followed Wagner's vegetarian dictums. He saw Parsifal, then Tristan und Isolde the next day, Die Meistersinger two days later, and finally Parsifal again the next day. He ate fish once more during this time but otherwise avoided it. Shaw had problems like this the next time he went abroad, to Italy two years later. The diaries very rarely suggest any problems finding vegetarian food in London.]
August
1. Leave Bayreuth [Shaw travelled back with two of his friends, after some sightseeing stop-overs he arrived in London on the 4th. There were no further reports of problems with the food. He wrote four articles about Bayreuth for various journals over the next two weeks.]
September
13. . . . we took a sudden fancy to see the zoo. [the concerns that most vegetarians would have with zoos today were not so evident at that time]
26. Vegetarian 1d [again this rare purchase coincided with a Fabian meeting in the same building as the London Vegetarian Society office.]
October
8. . . to Sweeting's in Fleet St. [with the editor of The Star], where I took a fish dinner for want of anything else. [the Bayreuth experience seems to have lowered his resistance. The fact that it was recorded shows he was uneasy about it.]
9/10 [continuing references to Wagner's Parsifal, Mrs. Besant, Shelley Society, Henry & Kate Salt. These have all been around but nothing very significant at this time.]
26. Salt reads a paper on "Thoreau's Theory of Life" at "It." ("It" was a literary club) [Salt went on to write several books on Shelley, Thoreau etc.]
November
14. Then I went to the Central Restaurant and began a political article... [the first reference by name of the vegetarian restaurant in Farringdon St. - which Shaw consistently calls Farringdon Rd., the two run into each other - though it is probably the one mentioned a couple of time before. The Memorial Hall, home to both the Fabian and London Vegetarian Societies, was in Farringdon St. - Fleet St., and the Star office, were nearby.]
20. Dialectical Society, Capt. Ffoundes on "Theosophic Follies and Fallacies". Shelley Society, Committee. [Shaw noted them, but didn't make it to either of them - no record of whether Annie Besant went to the Dialectical as she was, by now, very much into theosophy.]
December
4. Dialectical Society, C. W. Forward on "Vegetarianism" [Charles Forward was a leading member of the London Vegetarian Society - Shaw didn't go...]
25. Broadstairs [Kent, with two friends, the following is quoted by the diary editor from another source] ("Surely, sir," Shaw quoted the proprietors of Nuckell's Place as saying, when offering him Christmas turkey with sausages, "surely you eat meat on Christmas Day." He insisted that he never ate meat. "Not even a little gravy sir? I think it would do you good." In refusing that, he claimed to have been offered, and rejected, "a discoloured mess of suet scorched in flaming brandy," as he found the distinction between that concoction and meat imperceptible. What his Christmas dinner actually was remained unrecorded.)
1890
January
18. Leave Paddington for Bristol . . . we went to a vegetarian restaurant and dined. [no problem there either]
February
12. Shelley Society. Wagner Society [these seemed to clash regularly on Wednesday evenings. Shaw went to the Wagner this time, though in one of his columns he described it as 'badly and wastefully managed'.]
March
25. . . . went to the vegetarian restaurant in Bride St. and dined there. [first mention of this one]
27. Dinner Pine Apple 1/2 [another new one, he went back there from time to time]
28. Dinner at vegetarian hotel in Buckingham St. [Shaw mentioned an unnamed vegetarian restaurant in Buckingham St. several times, this is the first reference to an 'hotel', presumably the same place.]
April
1. Tolstoi Club, social evening. [The first mention of this one, Shaw went to the 'first meeting of the new Fabian Executive' instead]
June
6. Fabian, St. James's Restaurant, Stepniak on "Tolstoy, Tchernychewsky, and the Russian School." [Shaw spoke there, Tolstoy was obviously the flavour of the month.]
20. Fabian, St. James's Restaurant, W. Boulting on "E. Carpenter and Karl Pearson." [Carpenter had been mentioned a couple of times over the last year or two, but not as much as previously.]
October
3. Dinner at Pine Apple 1/2 (The inside end paper of the 1890 volume of the diary has this note by Shaw: "Began to dine at the Pine Apple restaurant near Oxford Circus instead of at the Wheatsheaf off Rathbone Place, which I had gone to regularly for years. It had changed hands and the cooking had become insufferable. This was about end of October." When the Wheatsheaf's management changed again in May 1891, Shaw returned to it, but his attendance would be less loyal.)
12. On our way back I stopped at Salts' and had tea there. When I returned . . . I wrote some stuff for The Star about Salt's forthcoming lecture at the Shelley Society. (Four unsigned paragraphs . . . The Star, 14 October 1890. "It is an open secret that the bulk of the members [of the Shelley Society] hold Shelley's opinions in abhorrence, and, indeed, regard the Society as a genteel conspiracy to maintain that the poet was a devout upholder of the Church of England and a strict monogamist. One of the most awful blows the society ever received was at one of its earliest public meetings [March 10, 1886], when Bernard Shaw, with an ingenious air of having something particularly acceptable to communicate, got up and began, 'Mr. Chairman: I am a socialist, an atheist, and a vegetarian, and therefore feel that all true Shellyans will welcome my presence here this evening.' &c. &c. Whenever a lecture is delivered to the Society by anyone whose opinions in the least resemble Shelley's the committee invariably stays away, with the exception of William Rosetti, who never flinches from his place in the chair, the indomitable Furnivall, and Mr. Salt . . . . the mildest-mannered man that ever defied society.")
November
17. Borwick at Monday Pop. [Leonard Borwick, vegetarian pianist who went on to achieve some fame. Shaw missed this but reviewed others later]
29. Crystal Palace Concert. Liza Lehmann and Leonard Borwick. (G.B.S. praised young Borwick's "technical accomplishments" but felt that "the composer's spirit does not attain reincarnation in him".) [Borwick progressed to a more fluid style in time]
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