Word: patches
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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THIRTY YEARS WITH G.B.S. (316 pp.)-Blanche Patch-Dodd, Mead...
...people who have written books about Bernard Shaw, or ever will, God-fearing Tory Blanche Patch, spinster daughter of a Church of England clergyman, had the best chance to observe her subject. For the last 30 years of his life, she was his private secretary. What gives her book its own rare fascination is the fact that, as Secretary Patch puts it herself, she was never "swept away...
...Black Eyes. When his human "writing factory" was going full blast (as it always was), Shaw had not the slightest desire (he assured Miss Patch) "to talk to anyone, alive or dead." His devoted staff rallied around his dedicated way of life without hope of an appreciative word ("he took one's work for granted"). He was the last man to think of raising wages, in part, says Chronicler Patch, because he was much too absorbed in writing about economics to notice anything so obvious as rising living costs. Illness, whether his own or others', was ignored...
...then, did people say, as did Shaw's chauffeur, "I would do anything for Mr. Shaw"? For one thing, Shaw at home was the most placid and modest of men. In 30 years, Miss Patch only saw him lose his temper twice. He seldom "contradicted any of us," and "of malice he was utterly incapable ... He could be kind," sums up the author in the most devastating remark of her book, "when he remembered you were there...
...when an idea became involved with the figures, Shaw's acumen (and scruples) deserted him instantly. When he became convinced, as he did in his last years, that he was becoming penniless, he quickly "proved" that he paid the Exchequer ?147 for every ?100 he earned. When Miss Patch demolished his calculations, he retorted brusquely: "I am sticking to my figure of ?147 as the easiest to remember...