Monday, Mar. 11, 1929

Mrs. Shaw

As the wife of a Christian Scientist, Mrs. George Bernard Shaw hesitated for just one day, last week, when her 72-year-old husband caught influenza, and then, despite his protests, called a physician.

The husband of Mrs. Shaw recently sold to an English review a cowardly attack on the physicians of George V. He insinuated that they did not employ a certain mode of treatment "because the inventor was both an American and a Jew." His courage was such that his insinuations--although unquestionably directed against the royal physicians--were cast in the form of an allegory and entitled An Improbable Fantasy.

Charlotte Frances Payne-Townshend and George Bernard Shaw, 42, were married in 1898. She had just nursed him back to health after a severe accident. She is gracious, completely self-effacing, smart, Irish. Her principal achievement has been to translate most of the plays of Eugene Brieux--previously considered an obscene French playwright by most Englishmen--and to get them triumphantly produced in London, after years of bickering with the Lord-Chamberlain, Britain's play censor.

The Shaws moved from their famed quarters in Adelphi Terrace when the building was torn down, and live today in a modern elevator apartment ("service flat") overlooking the Thames.