Bernard Shaw was...

Bernard Shaw was a very quarrelsome old man.

He was so quarrelsome that even stray dogs used to avoid him in the street because his bite was actually worse than his bark.

He liked having petty squabbles with every writer he met. Writers had grown used to it and when they’d notice him walking along the street in his usual manner - with a little, hardly perceptible leap motion -  they’d warn each other, pushing and wispering: “Hey, Bernard is here, quick!”. And they used to sit safe in their hideouts and giggle at him, just like silly little kids hiding from their strict headmaster.

In those days when Bernard Shaw didn’t have a good old-fashioned squabble over one or another unimportant thing now completely forgotten he felt very very lonely. And when he felt lonely he started to write.

But there was one guy who used to appear out of thin air on purpose to disturb him while he was working.

It was a ghost of his fellow countryman, Oscar Wilde.

Oscar Wilde hated Bernard Shaw for three unimportant reasons. So unimportant they were that Bernard Shaw used to pretend that ghosts (poor Oscar Wilde included) didn’t exist at all.

Oscar Wilde was the only writer (in Ayot St Lawrence at least) at that time who didn’t have a single squabble with Bernard Shaw.

And it was a great loss indeed.

And that’s why Bernard Shaw always got away with it.