As a matter of fact, the interviews were written by Shaw himself. They certainly got him talked about. Three reasons decided us against waking him up on the present occasion. Firstly, no one was quite sure of the number of the house. Secondly, we knew his room was up six flights of stairs; and none of us seemed eager for the exercise. Thirdly and lastly, the chances were a hundred to one that, even if we ever got there, Shaw wouldn't come down, but would throw his boot at the first man who opened the door.

The Euston Road had not a good reputation in those days. I expect it was the cheapness of the locality that kept the Marstons there. Philip made very little by his writings; and his father's savings could not have been of any importance. In those days, if a dramatist made five hundred pounds out of a play, he was lucky. The old gentleman was in bed when we reached the second floor, but got up and joined us in a dressing gown that had seen better days. Philip, a while before, had been sent a present of really good cigars by an admirer; and sound whisky was then to be had at three-and-six a bottle; so everything went merry as a marriage bell. Philip's old father was in a talkative mood, and told us stories about Phelps and Macready and the Terrys. And this put Robinson on his mettle, and he launched out into reminiscences of Dickens, and Thackeray whom he had helped on the Cornhill Magazine, and Lewis and George Eliot. I remember proclaiming my intention of writing my autobiography, when the proper time arrived: it seemed to me then a long way off. I held—I hold it still—that a really great book could be written by a man with sufficient courage to put down truthfully and without reserve all that he really thought and felt and had done. That was the book I was going to write, so I explained. I would call it “Confessions of a Fool.”