G.B.S. AND GLASGOW

SHAW (GEORGE BERNARD, 1856-1950, playwright, critic, Fabian) AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT OF HIS ARTICLE 'THE RECTORIAL CONTEST', a brilliant, perceptive and witty disquisition on university education ('...destructive to all but the strongest minds, and seriously injurious even to them unless they protect themselves by a resolute neglect of their studies...'); on the concept of university rectors and their election ('...As far as I can make out, the real use of the Rectorial election is to enable the university to make a periodical gesture of insult to academic education...with a rush and roar of derision the academic electorate boots the representative of enlightenment downstairs and into the gutter, and carries the politician shoulder high to the rectorial chair with shouts of triumph. The Rector thus becomes an Abbot of Misrule...'); on the candidates for the post of Rector at Glasgow -- mentioning in passing H.G. Wells and Gilbert Murray -- namely Austen Chamberlain ('...is certain to win hands down unless he unexpectedly betrays cultural interests and knowledge of other things than the Party Game before polling day...'), G.K. Chesterton ('...who by sheer literary force has taken the position in London created in the eighteenth century by Dr. Johnson and left vacant by his death until the accession of G.K.C...Chesterton's experience of what is technically called public life is...limited to a single appearance as a juryman...but...he...is perhaps the greatest publicist we have...Socialism was neither magnanimous nor romantic enough for him. He repudiated it as an elephant might repudiate a set of toy chains...Chesterton, really a modest, friendly, affable, unassuming soul, is by sheer weight and stature and energy and gaiety enormously pretentious, colossally self assertive, all style (and such a whacking style!) and all art...Go to Chesterton for instruction, and he will most courteously impress you, persuade you, dazzle you, and delight you, until you are incapable of noticing that he has totally changed the subject...') and Sidney Webb ('...Webb's powers humiliate, all the more unbearably because he cannot see why everyone should not be as clever as himself, and persists in behaving like an ordinary person...He might as well be a nobody, for all the fun there is in it for himself or the spectators...He violates all the decencies of congruity...Public life is mere porridge-for-breakfast to him...Out of a few thousand pounds bequeathed to him by an ex-town clerk...he built up the London School of Economics and added it to the University of London: the greatest one-man achievement of the kind since the Middle Ages...I doubt whether such a portentous man should be allowed to contest election. It is not fair...He is the only man I ever met qualified to be a Universal Alderman...'); and on the forthcoming election at Glasgow itself ('...no election in our time has produced three candidates so piquantly contrasted as these three. And this, at least, I hope the University will appreciate, however foolishly -- that is to say, academically -- they may give effect to their appreciation...'), 15 pages, quarto, written in pencil, with numerous autograph revisions throughout, signed at the end with initials, used as the printer's copy with one ink instruction to the printer and one request of Mr Somerville (also signed 'G.B.S.'), and a few light marks from the printer's fingers, dated from Scourie, Sutherland, 4 August 1925

This brilliant essay, worthy of inclusion with his famous 'Prefaces', was written for Robert Somerville, President of the Glasgow University Labour Club, for publication in the university newspaper, The Student Leader (No. 2, 11-15 October 1925). As Shaw predicted, Austen Chamberlain was elected to the Rectorial Chair. Included with the article is an autograph letter by Sidney Webb to Mr Somerville, sending Shaw's manuscript ('...a clever and amusing paper which I enclose. Doubtless it is longer than you wished; but it is, of course, such "good copy" that you must not hesitate to print it somehow. You could certainly sell endless copies...'), 2 pages, octavo, 7 September 1925

Substantial autograph literary manuscripts by Shaw are rarely offered for sale. In the last twenty-five years only two more substantial than the present one have been sold at auction, the more important being Common Sense About the War.

£6,750