A retro-post from earlier in the year, scribblings the Saturday morning after I took an evening walk with my friend Sanjay.
Sanjay and I became friends having met and got chatting in the gym on Chestnut Street, years ago. And, we randomly stayed in touch since. You know when you catch eye contact with someone, take that momentary instinct to say hello or make a comment, and just get chatting straight away, curiosity unraveling in some kind of deepening resonance?
We would trade notes on life in London, where we both lived for years and talk about American-ness and European-ness and Indian-ness. And, both being ‘late single’ we’d find the time to take a neighbourhood walk every now and then. Seems we both enjoy long meandering conversations on the nuances in life.
And, I always learn so much from Sanjay, across music, philosophy – and on this occasion the infamous banter between Winston Churchill and G. B. Shaw.
Churchill and G.B. Shaw contrasted in their political bent, let’s say.
Per the stereotype of the culture of theater and the arts, G.B. Shaw’s lean was to the left, quite far to the left (while enjoying capitalist wealth generation from his plays in Berlin). And Churchill was a conservative.
As The Churchill Project writes:
Shaw was as enthusiastic about the Soviet Union as Churchill was censorious. Churchill compared Lenin to a typhoid bacillus; Shaw called him “the one really interesting statesman in Europe.” In 1931, Shaw joined a party led by Nancy Astor on a well-publicized Soviet tour. Shaw returned describing Stalin as “a Georgian gentleman.” At a Moscow dinner he declared: “I have seen the ‘terrors’ and I was terribly pleased by them.”
The intellectual admiration across political poles led to years of exchanges that became famous.
And Sanjay was spewing these out to me as we rounded the beautiful Palace of Fine Arts and its small lake, resplendently lit at night in the most beautiful corner of San Francisco’s ‘mediterranean revival’ style architecture of the Marina.
I was laughing out loud at these quips, the talent and playfulness in the acerbic wit.
My favorite was the one where Shaw was reported to write to Churchill with an invitation:
“Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.”
And Churchill replies:
“Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”
I just had to look it up, in the inspiration of hearing fine English banter!
And so found the Churchill Project article, cited below. You might enjoy a read too, with the same disappointment I had to learn that researchers have found, through Churchill’s letters that some of these exchanges were denied by both sides.
Which leads me to ask : “who invented them?” and “these are so good, why would they deny them!?”, clearly both enjoying the infamy of their wit.
Good stories proliferate, as the Churchill Project article concludes, and I’m still glad of that!
A Google search for the exact phrase, “bring a friend, if you have one” nets 77,000 hits. We have not however searched all 77,000…
