Shaw, Pennell

Joseph Pennell, famed U. S. etcher, likes to organize societies and lecture them when they are organized, on etching and engraving. If there are no societies to address, he is glad to speak in a museum or an art school. Often too he will put what he has to say into print, writing about his friendship with Whistler or this artist or that. Among his friends, it appears is George Bernard Shaw. Last Sunday Mr. Pennell talked about Mr. Shaw in The New York Times magazine section:

"George Bernard Shaw was one of the first men I met in London. I forget how I encountered him... He used to drop in and talk of his brilliant future and vow he would achieve it .... He had just written Cashel Byron's Profession, the only book of his I have ever read, and that because he gave it to me, though once later I heard him read Candida at H. W. Massingham's, and that was enough for me .... Soon The Star was started. Shaw was made Art Critic. I suppose it was writing on art that gave him the idea that he was an authority on the subject, but to this day he does not know the difference between a photograph and a painting .... Our Adelphi Terrace windows looked right into Shaw's.... One day Barrie, who then lived under us, wanted to show Shaw to some guests he had to lunch, and he fired a roll from his dining table through the open window on to Shaw's table and his guests saw Shaw and heard him too .... He can be very amusing when he does not try to be; when he does not pose and is just Shaw, expatriate, transplanted Irishman."