He stood in the hallway of the West Strand Registry Office, tugging at his rough, woollen jacket. Beside him stood Charlotte Payne-Townshend, a woman of formidable intellect and even more formidable patience. She was dressed sensibly; George was dressed, as usual, like a hedge that had decided to take up socialist lecturing.
The morning of his wedding, George Bernard Shaw did not look like a man about to enter the "monstrous engine" of matrimony. Instead, he looked like a man who had misplaced a very important pamphlet on Fabianism. Getting Married by George Bernard Shaw
When it came time for the rings, Shaw fumbled. "A gold hoop," he muttered. "The smallest handcuff ever forged by man." He stood in the hallway of the West
As they stepped back out onto the street, the London fog swirling around them, Charlotte took his arm. The morning of his wedding, George Bernard Shaw
"You look remarkably like a prisoner waiting for the gaoler, George," Charlotte remarked, her eyes twinkling behind her spectacles.
"Here I am," he sighed. "A victim of my own exhaustion. I have worked myself into a state of physical collapse, and you, Charlotte, are the only person with the efficiency to see that I am properly buried or properly fed. Since I am not yet ready for the former, I suppose we must proceed with the latter via this legal ritual."
"I am merely contemplating the absurdity of the contract," Shaw retorted, his red beard bristling. "To promise to love, honor, and obey is a biological impossibility and a legal farce. One might as well promise to keep one’s hair the same color for fifty years." "And yet, here you are," she said.