SHAW OUTED BY PETER TOMPKINS—
The London
Times has recently published, in two installments (on June 13 and June 14), an
interview with Peter Tompkins, Molly's son, which jumps the gun on a similar
interview that is scheduled for publication in "Dionysian Shaw," the
next issue of SHAW due out in a couple of months. The editor,
Michel Pharand, reports that the Times article goes
beyond the interview in SHAW in being more definite about Molly's abortion,
among other things, and spills more beans. It also perhaps reveals
the motivation behind this publicity: Peter Tompkins is writing a film script! “Shaw in Love” will no doubt be coming to a Cineplex
near you. The June 13 account is by John
Follain,
=====================================================
Shaw's
secret fair lady revealed at last
By Richard
Owen
The ageing playwright had a passionate affair with an
American actress in her twenties who he taught to speak properly and dress
elegantly
THE playwright George Bernard Shaw had his own Eliza Doolittle: a beautiful, married American actress with whom
he had a hitherto secret love affair that resulted in an abortion.
Shaw even acted out his own Pygmalion, teaching Molly
Tompkins how to polish her diction, dress elegantly and behave in society.
Shaw met Mrs Tompkins, and
her husband, the American sculptor Laurence Tompkins, in 1921, when he was 65
and the American couple both ardent Shavians were in their early twenties.
The friendship between Mrs
Tompkins and Shaw was first recorded in a volume of their correspondence
published after her death in 1960 by her son, Peter Tompkins. It was also
included in Michael Holroyd's 1991biography of Shaw
which noted that Mrs Tompkins, then 24, had a
"blatantly attractive" figure, dark hair and "eyes like muscatel
grapes".
But her son told The Times yesterday that he had
censored the letters to protect his father, who was alive when they were
published. He had now decided to reveal for the first time that his mother and
Shaw had had "a sexual as well as spiritual relationship which went on for
years", both in
He disclosed that his mother had had an abortion in
Mrs. Tompkins met Shaw when she was an aspiring
actress who dreamt, with her husband, of building a Shavian theatre in Puritan
America. She idolised Shaw, already famous for plays
such as Man and Superman, Major Barbara, Androcles
and the Lion and John Bull's Other Island.
Shaw had married Charlotte Payne-Townshend,
an Irish heiress, in 1898. The marriage
is believed to have been unconsummated, but Shaw "was very far from being
the eunuch people think he was", Mr Tompkins
said. His mother had had "a passionate sexual relationship" with
Shaw.
"I considered revealing the truth when my father
died in 1972, but still held back," said Mr
Tompkins, 85, a veteran American journalist who acted as a secret Allied agent
in Nazi-occupied
He said he had decided to disclose the affair now
because he was not getting any younger. He said: "My mother told me many
things about herself and Shaw. In fact I asked her to write it all down, which shedid. She later burnt the notebooks, alas, but the
details are etched on my memory".
He said his mother had confessed exactly when and
where she went to bed with Shaw, as well as her other lovers, and had admitted
that her child by the playwright had been aborted. "There was no question
the baby was Shaw's," Mr Tompkins said.
In an article to be published this week by the Annual
of Bernard Shaw Studies at Penn State University, Mr
Tompkins reproduces the uncut version of a typed letter from Shaw to Mrs Tompkins dated December 4,1944, when he was 88 and
newly widowed.
Shaw writes: "Did any of your numerous Sunday
husbands, of whom I was certainly the most eminent, really fail to respect
Mr Tompkins said that Shaw and his mother had first made
love at or near Stresa, on
Mr Tompkins first learnt of the affair in his teens.
"My mother described these scenes to me. At the island people swam naked,
sex was openly discussed, with all the emotional jealousies." They also
spent time together in
Mr Tompkins said Shaw "distinguished between
marriage and sexuality, and wanted a child with my mother as part of his belief
in the life force".
He had been miserable after the abortion "grey faced, with his arms folded" when he and Mr Tompkins went to meet his wife on her return from
He said both Shaw and his father "genuinely loved
my mother, as she loved them". His parents had eventually separated and
then divorced, "though I do not believe Shaw was the cause. It was a kind
of ménage à trois: my
father used to swim every day with Shaw at the RAC Club when they were in
He was not Shaw's son; he was already three at the
time his mother met the playwright. "But Shaw took me under his wing,
treated me like a son, paid my school fees and in a sense protected me from my
mother. She was very authoritarian, whereas he was tender and loving and took
my side."
He clearly remembered the sensation of Shaw's rough
tweed on his legs when he sat on his lap as a small child. "He taught me
how to rebel against moral hypocrisy."
He said Charlotte Shaw almost certainly knew about the
affair. "I think she was very jealous of my mother, who after all was
young and stunningly beautiful. I remember my mother telling me that once she
and Shaw came back from a boat trip on
They had also been disturbed by police while making
love by the River Toce, which runs into the lake.
"My mother became pregnant a couple of weeks later."
Mr Tompkins said his mother had played Eliza in
Pygmalion when she studied at RADA (thanks to Shaw's influence), "but she
kept stamping her foot and saying 'Eliza isn't funny'." This was perhaps
because Shaw had himself consciously adopted the role of Henry Higgins,
teaching Molly to polish up her diction and drop her American provincialisms,
advising her to "remember that you are a human being with a soul and the
divine gift of articulate speech".
Pygmalion, first staged in 1913, was based on the tale
by the Roman poet Ovid of Pygmalion, the King of Cyprus, who sculpted an ivory
statue and then fell in love with it. In Shaw's play Professor Higgins, a
teacher of phonetics, falls in love with his own creation in the form of ElizaDoolittle, a Cockney flower girl to whom he teaches
elocution and society manners. When Shaw met Mrs
Tompkins he was still working onversions of the play,
transforming it into a screenplay for the 1938 film directed by Anthony Asquith
and David Lean and starring Leslie Howard as Higgins and Wendy Hiller as Eliza.
It was filmed in 1964 as My Fair Lady by George Cukor,
with Audrey Hepburn as Eliza and Rex Harrison as
Higgins.
LESSONS IN GRAMMAR AND LOVE FROM PYGMALION
Act II, line 73ff
HIGGINS (. . .) I shall make a duchess of this
draggle-tailed
guttersnipe.
LIZA (strongly deprecating this view of her) Ah-ah-ah-ow-ow-oo!
HIGGINS (carried away) Yes:
in six months in three if she has a good
ear and a quick tongue I'll take her anywhere and pass
her off as
anything. We'll start today: now! This moment! Take her away
and clean
her, Mrs Pearce (. . .) Take
all her clothes off and burn them. Ring up
Whiteley or somebody for new ones. Wrap her up in brown paper 'til they
come.
LIZA You're no gentleman,
you're not, to talk of such things. I'm a good
girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do.
HIGGINS We want none of your Lisson Grove prudery here, young woman.
You've got to learn to behave like a duchess. Take her
away, Mrs Pearce.
If she gives you any trouble wallop her.
Act II, line 95ff
HIGGINS (suddenly resorting to the most thrillingly
beautiful low tones
in his best elocutionary style) By George, Eliza, the
streets will be
strewn with the bodiesof men shooting
themselves for your sake before
I've done with you.
MRS PEARCE Nonsense,sir. You mustn't talk like that to her.
LIZA (rising and squaring herself determinedly) I'm
going away. He's off
his chump, he is. I don't want no
balmies teaching me.
Act II, line 113ff
that the girl has some feelings?
HIGGINS (looking critically at her) Oh no, I don't
think so. Not any
feelings that we need bother about. (cheerily)
Have you, Eliza?
LIZA I got my feelings same as anyone else
HIGGINS (to
HIGGINS To get her to talk
grammar. The mere pronunciation is easy
enough.
LIZA I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like
a lady.
Act II, line 152
HIGGINS I've taught scores of American millionairesses how to speak
English . . I'm seasoned. They might as well be blocks of wood.
I might
as well be a block of wood.
TIME AND THE MAN
1856 Born in
1876 Moves to
1884 Joins Fabian Society
1888 Becomes music critic of The Star, as
Corno di Bassetto
1892 First play, Widowers' Houses, staged in private
1894 First public production of a Shaw play, Arms and
the Man
1895 - 1898 Drama critic for The Saturday Review
1902 Mrs Warren's Profession
produced
1904 - 1907 Ten of Shaw's plays, including John Bull's
Other Island,
staged in repertory at the
1913 Pygmalion receives its first production in
1921 Meets Molly Tomkins
1923 First production of Saint Joan in