Set Our Feet on Lofty Places 88 Days A Writer and His Image - Alumni

letters, manuscripts and proof copies, virtually every
book Shaw published, as well as playbills, photographs
— his own, as well as portraits by several of
the most famous photographers of his day — cartoons,
paintings, drawings, caricatures, and other
renditions of Shaw, ephemera such as his gardening
gloves, and even a few items with a Colgate connection.
Beginning in the 1980s, Weiner, who owned
and operated the rare book store Escargot Books in
Brielle, N.J., began donating his collection to Colgate
in installments. He died in 2002.
The images presented here are just a few of those
included in the exhibition, which will open October
15 at Case Library and Geyer Center for Information
Technology.
Thanks to exhibition curator Carl Peterson for his
contributions to this article and to Warren Wheeler
for his photographic assistance.
8
The exhibition of George Bernard Shaw items, A
Writer and His Image, will be on view at Case Library
and Geyer Center for Information Technology from
Oct. 15 until Dec. 1, 2009. For information, call
315-228-7305. For information on other arts events,
visit www.colgate.edu/arts
Alvin Langdon Coburn’s photogravure of Shaw appeared in the April 1908
issue of Alfred Stieglitz’s well-known photographic journal Camera Work.
©George Eastman House, International Museum of Photography and Film
This mixed-media drawing
of Shaw, with cloth and
wood by someone named
O.P., was autographed by
Shaw with a touching note
in 1948.
George Bernard Shaw plays produced at Colgate
November 1951 Androcles and the Lion, Russell Speirs, director
April 1954 Candida, Russell Speirs, director
November 1960 The Shewing Up of Blanco Posnet, Russell Speirs, director
November 1961 The Devil’s Disciple, Russell Speirs, director
October 1964 Arms and the Man, Russell Speirs, director
July 1975 Candida, Jerome Kilty, director (Colgate Summer Theater)
July 1977 Heartbreak House, Atlee Sproul, director (Colgate Summer Theater)
July 1979 Major Barbara, Euan Smith, director (Colgate Summer Theater)
March 1991 Misalliance, Jerome Kilty, director
February 1992 Candida, Dean Keppler, director
Eduard Steichen’s four-color halftone portrait of Shaw appeared in the
same Camera Work issue as the Coburn (facing page).
Shaw liked to divide his time between
London and his country house at
Ayot St. Lawrence (Shaw’s Corner).
Wartime rationing made this
impossible; hence, he announced
his confinement in London with a
caricature of himself, circa 1941.
Colgate Connections
This 1929 photo, taken at a London hotel, depicts Shaw with Colgate’s academic dean
at the time, William Crawshaw (pictured to the right of Shaw), and several students.
Crawshaw, who was the acting dean of “The Floating University,” which sailed around
the world with students from various colleges, describes the meeting in his memoir,
My Colgate Years (1937).
Sir Robert Ho Tung (right), the Hong Kong industrialist and philanthropist, and father
of Colgate alumnus and benefactor Robert H.N. Ho ’56, inspired, in part, Shaw’s play
Buoyant Billions. L.F.H. Beard took this photograph on July 4, 1949, just before Shaw’s
93rd birthday, and 16 months before his death, on the back porch of his home, Shaw’s
Corner. Sir Robert was repaying an earlier visit by Shaw to Hong Kong. He also brought
the colorful Chinese robe that Shaw is wearing, which later became part of the permanent
display at Shaw’s Corner.
40 scene: Summer 2009
News and views for the Colgate community 41
Permission of Joanna T. Steichen