2004-2005 Season: Major Barbara
Poverty and the Salvation Army
“My reputation has been gained by my persistent struggle to force the public to reconsider its morals.”
Following is an excerpt from “George Bernard Shaw and the World of Major Barbara” by Peter Lewis, which appeared in the program for Peter’s Gill’s 1982 Royal National Theatre production of Major Barbara.
SHAW’S THEME IN MAJOR BARBARA WAS POVERTY and what could or should be done about it. It was a ti mely subject. Although Britain was still at the summit of her imperial power in 1905, there were nearly a million people receiving Poor Law relief. One person in 36 was a pauper, over two-thirds of them women and children. In London the proportion was higher, one person in 31. On 1 January 1905, there were in London 148,000 paupers, including 1,365 “casual paupers,” most of them described as vagrants who spent the night on the streets or in the workhouse casual wards, or Spikes. (There are still 23 Spikes, now called Government Reception Centres, in England and Wales, catering to 30,000 ho meless.)
Their number had increased substantially since 1878, when William Booth founded the Salvation Army and became its first General. In 1888 the Army had opened its first hostel (it still runs many today). Booth’s book, In Darkest England, claimed that one person in ten lived “below the standard of the London cab-horse,” which was at least assured of food, shelter and warmth. From the beginning women enjoyed equal status with men in the Salvation Army as officers, soldiers and preachers, thanks to his wife, Catherine Booth’s initiative. There were many Major Barbaras.
Shaw had shared pitches with the Salvation Army when he went speaking in the East End streets. When a newspaper described a noise as “worse than a Salvation Army band,” he wrote to complain, vouching for the bands’ excellence on his authority as a well-known music critic. As a result, General Booth invited him to a mass meeting at the Albert Hall and he was seated among the Army leaders.
“I led the singing in my crowded box with tremendous gusto. A tribute to my performance came from a young Salvation lass who, her eyes streaming with tears, grasped both my hands and cried ‘Ah! We know, don’t we?’ ” The next day he wrote to the manager at the
Court Theatre, J. E. Vedrenne, “When the roll is called up yonder—I’LL BE THERE. I stood in the middle of the grand tier centre box and sang it as it has never been sung before. The Times will announce my conversion tomorrow. What other author would do that for his management?”
When the play opened he persuaded a box-full of Army commissioners to attend in full uniform, although they had never attended a theatre before. The Army had refused his invitation to actually take part in the second act, but had lent the uniforms for the production. They came to his aid when the play was treated by some critics as a jibe at the Army on the ground that the Salvationists were too light-hearted and took money from the whiskey distiller. “The Army received this with the scorn it deserved, declaring that Barbara’s fun was perfectly correct and characteristic. The only incident that seemed incredible to them was her refusal to accept the money. Any good Salvationist, they said, would, like the Commissioner in the play, take money from the devil himself and make so good use of it that he would perhaps be converted, for there is hope for everybody.”
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